Discovering Psychometrics and Personality with Dr. Stewart Desson

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr. Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions or to access some of our resources at resilienceunravelled.com. Let's get started.

[00:00:33] Hello and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled and in front of me today, a shiny face. In fact, actually, if we put the two of us together with two shiny foreheads and two pairs of glasses, I reckon we could almost pass as young, handsome twins. What do you reckon, Stuart? I will take that as a compliment and try not to deflect too much light towards the camera. I have to put makeup on mine. Look, today sitting in front of me, Dr. Stewart Desson. We're going to talk all things psychometrics today.

[00:01:03] And I've always had a bit of a... A bit of a thing about psychometrics. I'm not a fan of all this stuff about personality and measurement and self-report. However, I did bump into Stewart's tool a couple of years ago. He allowed me to have a look at a free copy. So I was always immediately entrapened by the word free. And it was really interesting and a bit different when I thought, let's do something around psychometrics. There's only one person to talk to. So first of all, good afternoon and welcome, Dr. Stewart. How are you?

[00:01:34] I'm doing pretty good. Thank you very much. I'm already intrigued by your challenge as to being like not always convinced by psychometrics. So I'll do my best to rise to that challenge. Excellent. Look, just before we get started, set the scene a bit for us. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what it is that you do. So I'm Stuart Dessen. I'm the CEO and the founder of Lumina Learning. I'm the author of the Lumina Spark Psychometric Model. I'm someone who 25 years ago, Russell, may well have agreed with you and not been keen on psychometrics.

[00:02:03] So by the way of my background, I started out incredibly technical in something called operational research. The first part of my career, I was really quite analytical and nerdy and into science. And then I gravitated towards being more what I would call humanistic. And then I wasn't really into numbers and psychometrics for the middle bit of my career. And then I've been reintegrating a desire, hence business psychology, to use psychometrics with a more kind of qualitative humanistic approach.

[00:02:31] So I've been on my own journey, but essentially I do that with Lumina Learning. I've been doing it 15 years, growing it from a few ideas around the kitchen table with a PhD thrown in for good measure. And as you mentioned as well, we've got the connection at the Association for Business Psychology. And I'm now the treasurer and the organiser of Vents for the ABP, which I've been doing for the best part of a decade now. You mentioned your PhD. What did you do the PhD in?

[00:03:00] So it's in business psychology. I did it part time. I don't tell my supervisors, but largely at the weekend and through the middle of the night quite frequently. So I was extremely passionate about how to measure personality, but how to do it in a way that actually would appeal to people like Russell. People would normally be a bit sceptical about numbers that are a bit reductionist and oversimplifying and labelling, which are the things that also didn't appeal to me.

[00:03:26] So my PhD was all about, can we find a way to measure our personality, our way of being in a way that is more appealing to people who are, in my terminology, somewhat more humanistic and not wanting that reductionist approach. I was trying to merge two different worlds.

[00:03:45] And in doing that, I was also trying to reduce what I saw as some of the bias in psychometrics where we, an evaluative bias where we overemphasize and talk up certain bits of personality and downplay others in a way that's not necessarily helpful or inclusive. The one that everybody can relate to is extroversion and introversion.

[00:04:08] So we often, certainly in the UK and US, Canada, we tend to overplay and overvalue extroversion, cheerful, enthusiastic leader. And we tend to downplay or be slightly negative about introversion. You're shy, you're timid, you're inhibited, kind of brackets, something's wrong, close brackets. And so I was rallying against that lack of inclusivity to find a way that was more balanced that would, say, describe, in this case, introversion equally positively.

[00:04:36] You listen before you speak, you're boundaried with your emotions. But introvert, extrovert is just the most obvious one. And there's all sorts of dimensions of personality where we can have these interesting biases if we're not aware. And many psychometrics do. So in essence, my PhD was, can I do a psychometric and take some of these biases out? And if we do, is that helpful? That was basically seven years of my life. Look, let's start at the beginning of this, if I may. And actually, we've both got doctorates.

[00:05:06] So let's leap into definitions. I guess it would be good for you to explain what do you mean by personality and what is a personality? And from the fact that you talk about measuring it, is it something that's fixed? So let's start with those three questions. I'll go in reverse order. Is it something that's fixed? No, that's already a controversial statement because it was originally defined by Cattell and others as those aspects and traits within you that are consistent, i.e. fixed over time.

[00:05:34] I don't go with that definition. I think a more contemporary definition that I like is it's the instinctive preferences inside you. It's the feelings, natural emotions, and then your behaviours. And it's what you do under pressure. And yes, it's a basket of those that tend to repeat in patterns.

[00:05:56] But the idea that they're completely fixed over time, the research doesn't support that or more recent research doesn't because people, of course, can change over time. They can change with ageing. They can change with therapy, counselling, leadership, and so on. So I view leader personality as it is your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and so on. And it's the patterns that tend to repeat, but you can also choose to develop. Yeah.

[00:06:25] What do you think? How does that sound? Is that why personality might adapt or meld or move forward? Yes, I say that your personality can change. It might not, of course, but it can. So it can change with things beyond your control. The ageing process brings about some change. Your circumstances will bring about change. If there's a war or something traumatic happening, that will bring about a change in your personality.

[00:06:52] I'm also, however, interested in the conscious change that we can engage in. So I like the idea, you've probably heard of the Viktor Frankl approach of between stimulus and response as a space. And in that space is the ability to choose how we respond. And in that choice is our freedom. So the gist of that idea, for me, is about how we can change our personality.

[00:07:17] Because if we have a stimulus and we choose to respond in a different way, not in always the same way, we're bringing our conscious intention to it. Then for me, that's a form of personality change. If you do that often enough, we can change how we actually behave. And I like that. And I've also been a massive fan of that concept. And that, for me, it's great. It's about agency. It's about empowerment. It's about accountability. I like all that. But in terms of recent research saying that, we don't really look at the world that way so much now. We have an idea of what the world is.

[00:07:45] And we just fill in the details so we see the detail that we want to see. So basically, in a sense, we've decided what the world is like before we look at it. And then the world fits into our shape and view of it, which is why we see things the way we want to see so often. Yeah, like the perception is reality type stuff. Yeah, it's sort of the sort of we live in a hologram and slightly matrix. But there's a heck of a lot of brain science now that's that sort of... Now, you might argue that actually makes the case of personality even stronger,

[00:08:11] because those probabilities that come from having beliefs, that way of looking at the world is shaping bias. And bias could be construed as personality. I think I would say it slightly differently, actually. So the first thing, I think I would... I'm not keen on the idea that we just look at the world and then we fill it in and it becomes what we want it to be. And we've got a confirmation bias that we keep going with and keep seeing more and we create our own reality.

[00:08:39] Now, when I say I don't like that and go with it, I don't mean that's not what we often do, because confirmation bias is obviously a thing. Guess what I'm saying is I want to challenge it. And in the work that I do, both myself and for other people, I'd like us to become more aware of our biases and to aspire to be more objective and evidence-based in doing that.

[00:09:05] I certainly hear in personal development terms, people often saying things like, oh, we create our own reality and it's my perception. I find that language can be quite unhelpful because it's encouraging people to double down on their biases. And that's quite unappealing to me. So I guess compared to what you're saying is more contemporary around neuroscience, I might be a bit old school or something. I don't know. I do hold a view that we have thoughts and feelings and emotions.

[00:09:31] And sometimes our emotions come from thoughts that can be quite inappropriate and actually not correct, as in some things are true and false. It's not all perception. Sometimes we have absolutely unhelpful false thoughts and we need to challenge ourselves. That's where I'm coming from, which is a little bit Viktor Frankl, I think. Yeah. I'm not saying anything's right. We're just having a debate and kicking this around a little bit. No, I'm just muddling it over as well.

[00:09:58] I think the fact that we probably both come from the school, that personality has adapted. And I think it's been very unuseful for the last hundred years to think that we have a personality and that's it. And you're right. We see obvious occasions and instances of personality changing. And I guess where I came into this, and I got quite interested in it years ago, was the old five dimensions of personality. I think it was ocean or whatever the numeric was that week. And I thought that was interesting, wasn't it?

[00:10:23] Because that came to do as a meta research of all the different theories and boil it down into those five areas. So I wonder if you could speak around that somehow and whether that was a significant thing. It was. I think it still is a significant thing. So the ocean model, which, as you say, it's really it's not the most elegant of theories.

[00:10:45] It's an empirical observation from literally thousands of psychologists that over decades have surveyed literally millions of people and found empirically, if you factor analyze these five factors appear in the data. And I was drawn to that and excited by that because inside me is a desire to be quite empirical and check the facts. But then when I get into it, the ocean model has some biases in it as well.

[00:11:13] Obviously, it's just reflecting the society. It's a measurement of what people think of their personality. And so if I just run through it, would you like me to run through it? Yeah, why not? For those who don't know it, yeah. Yeah, for those who don't know the ocean model, I'll link it a bit to what I do with Lumina, if that's OK as well. So ocean, O stands for openness. Some people are open, curious, open to change. But, Russell, what's the opposite? If you're not open, what are you? Well, it could be resistant.

[00:11:41] It could be resistant, it could be closed. That's the challenge with the language of saying here's this dimension. One end's open, the other end's closed. So I see that as a form of bias. So what I've done when I measure it, I try to say we can be open. And I call it big picture thinking. Or the opposite is not closed. The opposite is being quite grounded, down to earth, don't get carried away, don't get drawn in by bullshit. In the real world is the opposite of open. And then the C is conscientiousness.

[00:12:09] It's described as disciplined and focused and hardworking, which, much to my shame on all the questionnaires I've done over the last 30 years, I've always scored low on it. I was actually described as disorganised and lazy by one coach. That was a bit shocking and wounding. And look at them now. Indeed. Yeah, conscientiousness. Obviously, low conscientiousness doesn't sound good. So I remember when this person did coach me saying,

[00:12:35] is there not something we can say about going with the flow, doing things spontaneously, being a bit impulsive? Might it not make me entrepreneurial? And they said, no, not really. We didn't really measure that in our ocean model. We only really looked at, are you organised, focused and disciplined? And you're not. So I want to look at the opposite of being disciplined, which is someone who's moved by their inspirations and seemingly maybe a bit more random, but can get really joust and into things or not.

[00:13:03] I call that being inspiration driven. So we've done OC. The E is extroversion, which interestingly didn't come from the big five. It came from Jung. Jung, he coined the term introvert, extrovert in the 1920s. And it turns out to be a pretty, pretty useful concept. So generally speaking, if you're extroverted, you're enthused and cheerful and so on and upbeat. And if you're introverted, you're quieter and so on.

[00:13:30] And that's where I first started to notice the bias, because extroversion good, introversion bad, was how I've sometimes seen it teach in the past. And I like to address it. So that's the E. The A in the ocean model, a lot of empirical research found out that some people were just nice, kind, altruistic, empathetic, accommodating, wanted to help people. And they called it agreeableness. And what's the opposite of agreeableness, would you say, Russell?

[00:13:58] In linguistic terms, of course, it's non-agreeableness. Non-agreeableness or disagreeableness. Non-agreeableness or disagreeableness. Yeah. And the downside of disagreeableness is most people don't want to be seen as disagreeable. So a better way of framing it is logical, maybe a bit competitive, direct, tough. I call it being outcome-focused. So it's good to be agreeable, which I call being very people-focused, empathy and consideration. But it's also good to be outcome-focused. It's good to look at the benefits at both ends.

[00:14:27] And these things can be important, by the way, for neurodiversity as well. So if I'm very neurodiverse and say someone's high on ADHD, they, on average, are more likely to be high on that disagreeable end. But no one wants to be told they're argumentative and disagreeable. But to be told that they're logical and will tell the truth and get to that, that's more appealing. So you sometimes find that the ends of ocean that are typically not framed as positively are

[00:14:55] also the ends that many people who say, for example, may be neurodiverse have. And that's part of the bias, actually, people may have against neurodiverse people. Anyway, the fifth component of ocean is probably the most problematic one. It's N, and N stands for neuroticism, which I have to say is a horribly judgmental, like 1920s term. Yeah, hysteria. Era. And it's a slightly gendered term as well.

[00:15:24] But the idea was, if you're neurotic, you might be volatile, anxious, angry, and so on. And the opposite is being emotionally stable and resilient, which is often in the literature prized as the ultimate thing. And it took me a while because I looked at this in my PhD. But eventually, I came to the conclusion that, firstly, let's not use that word. So I prefer to use the word a risk reactor. So you mentioned earlier the brain science. It's like we're looking for, in the environment, what might go wrong. It might make me more anxious. I'm looking for risks. I want to stay safe.

[00:15:54] So I call it a risk reactor. And the opposite is, instead of emotional stability, I talk about being a reward reactor. You're just more of a confident optimist. And both have got their place, even though the neuroticism gets a really bad rap. Actually, my observation in leadership is we don't have a huge problem with neurotic leaders. We do have a huge problem with overconfident, overoptimistic leaders. Yeah. So that's interesting as well, isn't it? Yeah. So that was a long answer to a short question.

[00:16:24] But that's... So basically, it sounds like the way you've designed Lumina is to sit around the ocean model. Because you're showing or illustrating the various factors. Is that fair? That is exactly what I've done. It's a big five model. So I started out research. But my whole PhD was like, but I don't want to bake in some of what I see as biases. That's called an evaluative bias in the literature. I want to balance it. So I've done a balanced big five.

[00:16:50] And to do that, I've needed to change some of the linguistics so that it neutralizes some of the sting in some of the words. So you see, this is what's interesting, isn't it? Because people talk about the predictive nature of analytics like this. Yes. I remember sitting down and doing exactly the same processes for you and designing a questionnaire and saying, let's start the ocean model and put different pairs. And which words were at the other end? And let's design the things. Because a lot of people talk about resilience as being high conscientiousness.

[00:17:19] Because it's that grit factor, that sort of worthy stamina type approach. The difference between you and I is that you went and built a big business out of it. I got distracted and did something else instead. So you got carried away. On that occasion, I did become disciplined. You did. You did. And you've created a significant organization at the back of it. And it is this starting point that the point of personality is not about whether one's good or bad. It is what you do with it and actually how you interact with other personalities.

[00:17:46] And the benefit of testing that is to be able to, not testing, measuring maybe is a better word, is to understand yourself so you can find your place in the world and operate more effectively with other people. Again, that's my assumption. Put me right if you want. No, it's a good assumption. What's the point of learning about personality? So I can be more aware of who I am. So there is a self-awareness benefit. But quite quickly you get into, I need to be able to read other people. I need to be able to value other people, actually.

[00:18:15] I need to value people who are different because one benefit of knowing about personality, I think, is realizing that not everyone's like me and nor should they be. And to value that. And if we do that, we're in with a chance of having more rapport and better collaborative relationships. Why did I create Lumen on this model? Actually, the real reason that I actually really did it is because I just simply want to help people be more aware of themselves, have better relationships with others, and particularly at work, get on better and be more effective.

[00:18:43] Given we spend so much of our time at work, I'd like us to be happier there. And this is Stuart's kind of way of trying to do that and make a difference. So is the point of a toolkit like this to, for a player, let me think of my own language on this, is it for leaders to apply for everybody else and themselves? Or is it people to apply for themselves and to drive their own sort of career development?

[00:19:13] So it's very definitely both. So at one level, it's for all individuals, actually. And one of the nice benefits is if you learn this at work, because I normally do a lot of my work in workplaces, of course, I'm always pleased when it has a benefit outside of work because we are complete beings and it helps us in all our relationships.

[00:19:31] Yes, it is that. However, what I've noticed is more than half the time with Lumina, we are working with leaders because they have a huge, obviously, leveraging effect on the team and everyone in them. In fact, the higher up the organisation you go, the more you can help a leader be more self-aware, value diversity more and collaborate better. So that will ripple through the organisation, through role modelling and other things in a huge way.

[00:19:57] So actually, it is really important, in my opinion, to help leaders understand this as well. So once I've finished the PhD, I have typically five or six research projects on the go at any time. So I was at the BPS conference last week in London and I presented some research on neurodiversity. I also did some on convergent validity back to the big five and so on.

[00:20:21] But yeah, I like to, realistically, I probably spend a day a week doing research. So it's not huge, but I've got lots of things to do. But I like to make sure I protect at least a day a week to engage with my team and do research. And part of the learning process, I guess what's different now, I'm just reflecting as I speak to you, is that I'm able to have more freedom in the research to make it more applied, to engage with more organisations, you know, more quickly, more easily, without having to go through always the dreaded ethics committee,

[00:20:51] which sometimes is a bit of a killer in terms of timescales and energy for getting stuff done. So I'm just interested whether you've got any research on the go at the moment you might want people to contribute to. I have, so thank you for asking that. I've got some research around neurodiversity and I'm keen for people to do that, whether they're neurodiverse or not, because it's like, I want to contrast different people's experience of assessments and performance management and so on at work. That research typically takes about 45 minutes, your experience of work, you just need to be in work to do it.

[00:21:20] I've also got some great research on working remotely, working at home, working hybrid, what's your experience of it. And I always, by the way, when I do this research, link it to personality. That's my obsession. You know, does my personality have a bearing on whether I like to work remotely or at home? And that's what it does. What you do with it is another matter. Those are two of the big ones. And then if there's anyone out there that wants to help with a series of different personality psychometrics, I've hooked up with some other people in the market, other researchers,

[00:21:50] like Dr. Wana Kurz that's got a Hukama model. They've got other just different views of personality. And I've got a battery of these things that you can fill in and get lots of different reports from different people other than me, if you would find that interesting. So if anyone, if that floats anyone's boat, please do reach out to me. And I will happily give you these wonderful research questionnaires. So that would be on LinkedIn, I'm guessing? I mean, it's easy to find on LinkedIn because there is literally only one Stuart Desson on the internet. Really?

[00:22:19] Oh, I've never found another one. It's an unusual name. Yeah. So on LinkedIn is probably the easiest way. Or you can just email me at stuartdesson at luminalearning.com. That's equally good. So you went on, developed Lumina Learning as a way of looking at things. You've said this is a leadership tool, management tool, all that sort of stuff. You've told us some of the dimensions. And you've told us who might want to use it and what it might be for. Is it something, let's just say that I'm thinking, planning my own career. Yes. Let's stop this.

[00:22:48] And I fancy doing it for myself. Is that possible? How long will it take? What am I going to get for it? Yeah. So if you're planning a career move or a younger person planning your first career, yeah, it will enable you to take stock of who you are. It will help you look at who am I underneath in terms of my natural preferences. It will help you contrast that with, but how do I behave given that we've all got either relatives or bosses or friends and we tend to adjust.

[00:23:14] It will help you look at those adjustments, which often is a healthy and good thing. Sometimes it might not be. Sometimes we might be masking or hiding. So it goes into how we might overextend and it will help you look at what stresses you out, what triggers you, what might cause you to lose your resilience. So it covers a range of those things and gives you a nice report to cover that. And as we said, good for leadership, good for team building, also good for reflecting on your career. What do I want?

[00:23:42] And asking yourself the question, if you're already in a role, am I aligned with my role? Is this really what I want to do? In my case, it took me a while, but I eventually realized that my first job was the perfect job for my father. Yeah. Sometimes we realized that we're doing things for reasons we were unaware of, and this can help increase your awareness. It's the gist of it. Interesting.

[00:24:08] So is it possible to go on your site and then download a test or a questionnaire and then do this? The best way to do it is actually you can go on the site and you can reach out. We've got contacts and offices like all over the world and the US, Canada and Asia, Japan, China, everywhere that translated. So you can reach out to whoever the local person would be. Of course, you're also welcome to reach out to me directly too. And I can just put you in touch with the most relevant person. But no, love to give people an experience of this. That's what we're all about.

[00:24:37] The most common application is to look at team dynamics, particularly people working hybrid. Teams are forming and reforming seemingly more often than they ever have in the past. So it's a catalyst for going through that storming, norming, forming sort of process to get to know people more quickly and improve the team dynamics. Yeah. So what I would always advocate, you need to start with who you are first and understand yourself, but quickly move into how can I connect with other people in the team? And create some cohesion with other individuals, create some intimacy.

[00:25:07] And of course, if the leader is fully supportive enough for it, them disclosing something about their leadership style and who they are and talking about how the team communicates and the team dynamic is usually where you want to go with it. So, yeah, I would say that is probably the most common application. So one of the criticisms has been leveled at me about tools like this is that they've all, so you go and you sit down for a day and you fill in the thing and then you stand in the corner and say, this is what I thought I was. And this is what you thought you were.

[00:25:37] And everybody gets this and all that sort of stuff. So you get awareness going. You recognize the difference. But it didn't actually help you at this stage. You're going to tell me different, I'm sure. It didn't actually help me think actually, how do I, what do I do? Where are my skills to actually either change myself, which is the hardest thing of all, or I was going to say manipulate, may it's more about my biases, manipulate, coerce other people into carrying out my innate demands.

[00:26:06] I've been studying in America recently, can you tell? Shameless. Yeah. I do relate to what you're saying there because I'm not a lifelong psychologist doing that. I've had different things in my career. And for the first part of my career, I've had it all done to me basically in terms of training and psychometrics. And actually that left me quite dissatisfied, which is what's given me a burning desire to do it better. So I've experienced plenty of trainings where it raises awareness and then it goes away or you have a great team build and then nothing happens.

[00:26:36] And then I went through a phase in my life where I was involved in delivering some of these things and eventually got the time to think about doing it better. So I guess what I would say is people that do those sorts of interventions, they're letting us all down because as an industry, it's the curse of the industry to have a one hit wonder training psychometric. My personal opinion is there should always be a learning journey. It should always be designed into some bigger process.

[00:27:01] And there's lots of research now that says, yeah, if you just do a one-off team building, it is of limited benefit. It has some benefits in terms of cohesion of the team, but it's limited. If you really want the benefit, you need to engage your boss to know what you're working on. You need a development plan that you talk about with others. You need peer support. You need to, in the team, disclose some of what you're doing to everyone else and they disclose to you when you hold each other accountable. And it needs to run over a couple of years.

[00:27:30] And whoever facilitates, it needs to come back in and remind people what they said and hold people accountable. That's when really good personal and professional development happens. So I know this requires more time and money and people don't always have that. It's just a good thing to do. Let's do it because it's helped me and I've seen it be beneficial. I have changed my tune on that. So I think I'm pretty firmly in the camp of you're not getting the maximum benefit if you do that. You're squandering an opportunity.

[00:27:58] So I do think we should always look at what are the specific learning objectives for the team and the individual. We should look to track that. Now, I'm not obsessed with having to totally measure everything in an obsessive way. And I certainly don't want to do false statistics just to pretend we can prove it. But I think if you're clear on what people are wanting to do to develop and there's some sort of accountability there, you are more likely to stay the course and keep focused on your development.

[00:28:28] I don't know. Would you agree with that, Russell, actually? Or would you? Yeah, no, I do. I do. And I've always been a believer. Obviously, I do a lot more work in evaluation, peer evaluation than many. But I've always thought that the problem with things like team building and such is not the tool you use. It's the fact that you're using it for a purpose. And I think you're right. You get this over-professionalized, over-trained organization where there's stacks of training and very little learning. And I think that's a real challenge. It can be. And I've been into some of those organizations.

[00:28:58] And unfortunately, what will develop is like a cynicism towards training. So even if you are going in to do something worthwhile with a purpose, some of the previous cynicism will be creeping in. And to contrast that, I did an event a few weeks ago with the Amos Bursary charity in London with a kid who was 16, 17 years old. And it's probably for most of them the first kind of thing like this they've ever experienced. They're wide-eyed. They're open. They're thinking about their career and what they want to do.

[00:29:26] And that's quite exhilarating to be with young people like that and play a part in helping them. So, yeah, I prefer the wild enthusiasm to the cynicism. Although I can also enjoy turning the cynics around because if people have had a bad experience, it may not be their fault. They just may have been in organizations that haven't done it well. And it's always an opportunity.

[00:29:46] So whenever I get the chance to share something about personality or Lumina with people, I always see it as a gift and an opportunity to do my best to help them, even if they don't like it or they're coming to it with baggage. Yeah. Yes. And that's a problem, isn't it? You don't shoot the messenger. If you've had a bad experience in the past, that's not the new messenger. It's interesting, just a couple of things that you've said. I wouldn't mind just diving into a bit around gender and a bit about ND.

[00:30:10] So the neurodiversity, does that mean you have to factor accommodations in for people completing these forms? And also, do you see different personality results coming out the other end for different variations of neurodiversity? I know they're two joined together by the same term, but there's very different questions. There are different sorts of reasonable adjustment that can be made. In personality, it's not timed, but there can be all sorts of things that can be helpful, including having things explained to people and so on.

[00:30:39] The bigger question, though, is, was your second part right? Do you get different results if people are neurodiverse? I think probably the answer to that, on average, yes. Yeah. But in an individual's case, obviously, we're all so completely unique. I can't show you someone's portrait and they'll say, oh, that person's neurodiverse.

[00:31:02] No, you can't do that because someone who is neurodiverse and absolutely not neurodiverse could have very similar looking portraits. That's possible. But to go back to the yes bit to your question. So we did some research and we looked at people who had been diagnosed with, say, ADHD. We looked at whether they self-identified with it, diagnosed or not. And we also gave them questions that helped indicate whether they might be or might merit investigation.

[00:31:30] And we correlated that with their personality. And it is the case that some trends come through. So on average, someone who scores high and I've turned it into a continuum rather than you have it or not. But if you're higher on the ADHD scale, you will like to be more inspiration driven, a bit, as I described earlier, like me, spontaneous, a bit impulsive, not so disciplined and time aware.

[00:31:55] You are on average more likely to be full of bright ideas and changing topic and throwing your good ideas in. And you may be a bit more pokey with people when you want to debate them and so on. What does that mean? Just means you've got a personality. There's lots of people who are not neurodiverse do that as well. It does mean in our research that certain competencies at work tend to be higher.

[00:32:18] So I think I could say with my hand on my heart, on average, people higher in ADHD will score a bit higher on competencies like fostering creativity and conceptualizing strategies. It is, of course, on average. And there could be people with ADHD that are total opposite of that. So one of the challenges with these definitions is that they're not really robust at an absolutely granular level. They're very high level labels that can cover a basket of great different things underneath.

[00:32:46] But with autism, with ASD, it's similar on balance. On average, you will see more introverted than extroverted, which is why the measurement of introversion in a constructive way is so important. So when they're filling in a questionnaire. Yeah. It's an important thing to say that this is not a test of neurodiversity as well. No, no, no. Because actually, neurodiversity is not a personality thing. And that's important to say, isn't it? But it's good that you've got those accommodations.

[00:33:16] I promised you this would take 20 minutes. And here we are 40 minutes later still chatting away. All right. It's always a sign that I found it really interesting. How do people get in touch with you? You said LinkedIn. You said the site is luminallearning.com. Luminallearning.com is the best one to go for. And Stuart Dessen on LinkedIn. There's only one. That's the best way to get in touch.

[00:33:36] I'd love to hear from people whether they want to help with research or experience the spark or just talk about how their organization could use these ideas and concepts. I'm all ears. And a lot of coaches and consultants listen to that. And you can be trained as a coach and consultant to... You can, yeah. We have a number of different programs. Some completely online. Some face-to-face where we will impart the knowledge I've tried to share here today about personality, how to work with it in different contexts. And we've spoken more today about development.

[00:34:06] We do use it in selection as well. There's different applications of it. This is an impossible question. Given your entrepreneurial background and such, had you filled in that, the current version of the test 15 years ago? Do you think it would have predicted where you were going to get to? And I know it's not a prediction tool, so that's a very poor question. My personality might change or predicted the business. I predicted that you would have been capable of having the potential to drive this organization to where you're going. Good question. I think it would.

[00:34:35] What it would indicate was that Stuart has got entrepreneurial gifts and can make connections and has ideas. It might suggest, though, that I should probably get out after three years and give it to someone else and start another one, which I haven't done. And so, interestingly, I probably did find the getting it going bit more exciting and easier, whereas I have to do more adaption for what I'm doing now, 15 years down the line, in terms of contracts and business plans and so on.

[00:35:02] I need to outsource some of that discipline to some brilliant people that I've hired, is probably how I'd put it. That's the pure point of it, isn't it, is to have teams which have different skills and personalities coming together. Stuart, I'm going to stop because I know I can ask you the question and you and I could be just drawing on for a little while longer. And so it's been a joy to see today Dr. Stuart Desson from luminallearning.com. And he's going to wave goodbye now and I'm going to wave goodbye. And I'm going to say thanks so much for your time, Stuart. You take care.

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