Column by Peter de Bruin
"Green and Yellow"
“You are not your test results,” argues Peter de Bruin in his most recent column. In doing so, he makes a case for personal development. A management test provides feedback that, ideally, leads to a choice to adopt different (collaborative) behaviors.
“Yes, but you’re mostly green, with a little yellow, so I can understand why that’s difficult for you,” one executive team member said to another. And with that, the matter was explained and settled. The entire executive team had taken a management test a year ago, and based on the results, they had set their behavior in stone. “That’s just the way I am”—used as an excuse for not developing or adapting. So much for bringing out the best in each other, for the sake of customers and employees?
I don’t want to lump all management tests together, nor the various types of management tests, but unfortunately, I still come across this quite often. Management tests are an excellent tool for gaining insight—into yourself and into others. But in many places, the means has become an end in itself, with the test results serving as the ultimate justification for maintaining the status quo.
The fact is, few people really know themselves well. Unfortunately, that goes for managers, too. So an interpretive test result isn’t such a bad idea after all. Sharing it provides a sort of “user manual.” There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with that, but there is. Your user manual, as it were, requires you to apply yourself as a given. The other person is expected to adapt to your limitations. Does that help make the organization better? My argument is that greater adaptability requires us to change ourselves, not the other person.
You can’t change someone. Only that person can do that. The environment serves as a mirror, providing input for that process, so feedback can help initiate change. A management assessment is designed to foster self-reflection and thus serves as the starting point for development. But that’s a choice.
The choices you make in what you do reveal who you are and what you stand for. More than ever. In the past, you derived your identity from the group (geographic, religious, social, environmental, or professional) you came from. Without these groups, we must define ourselves. That’s quite a journey in our individualized and digitized society. We are a product of our choices in a world where, because information is always available everywhere, social pressure has increased exponentially.
It really gets on my nerves when people say they’re “green and yellow.” Or any color combination, for that matter. You aren’t your test results! It might give you something to hold onto, but your identity comes solely from the choices you make. Every test is the starting point for the question of change: what’s needed to help the organization, my colleagues, my clients, and—last but not least—myself move forward!!
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