JVR Ukwanda podcast Ukwanda (JVR Africa)

In this fascinating conversation, Leoni van der Vaart shares valued insights on the art and science surrounding the measurement and management of work motivation and performance. The two concepts are mutually reinforcing in the workplace and play a crucial role in ensuring that people are inspired by what they do and, based on this drive, demonstrate the necessary actions to remain contributing members of an organisation.

Corrigendum. Xander indicated that he mistakenly referred to introjected regulation (doing things out of fear of shame) throughout the podcast, while he intended to refer to more autonomous forms of external motivation (doing something because of a personal conviction in the importance of a stated goal). Leoni generously work around Xander’s misconception in the podcast and her references to self-determination theory throughout, by contrast, is correct.

Personality characteristics, often seen as universal adaptations that evolved in humans to meet the challenges posed by nature, might be misconstrued as something that people should always be higher on. While this statement might hold in many situations, the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect might be at play when people overuse their strengths. For example, an overly conscientious person might have a rigid perfectionism that their ability to finish and submit tasks in time.

To use a Star Wars analogy, we often think of the positive outcomes associated with bright personality but might miss the negative outcomes associated with excessively low or high personality characteristics, which is associated with the dark side of personality. In this podcast, we will speak with two experts from Hogan Assessment Systems (Dr Fuhrmeister and Dr Ferrell) on how we should think about dark personality and apply metrics surrounding the measurement of dark personality in practice.

Dr Fuhrmeister and Dr Ferrell have written an eChapter on the “added value of dark in selection” as part of a larger eBook that JVR Africa Group is compiling. Access to the eChapter can be obtained here: https://www.marketing.jvrafricagroup.co.za/dark-personality.

Game-based technologies are a transformational development in psychometric assessment. However, if psychologists do not do the required work in order to provide the scientific rigour of these methodologies, such as accumulated evidence on its reliability, validity, and measurement equivalence, its potential might be left as a fad. We are excited to speak with Dr Matthew Neale, Vice President of Assessment Products at Criteria Corp and expert on the scientific rigour required to develop game-based psychometric assessments.

Dr Neale holds a PhD from Queensland University of Technology and is a practising industrial-organisational psychologist. He is the immediate past state chair of the APS College of Organisational Psychologists in Queensland, where he led the profession of Organisational Psychology in the state. He has a passion for people and organisational development projects informed by scientific research in industrial and organisational psychology.

In this episode we interview Professor Paul Spector about survey design within organisations and more broadly conducting research within organisations.

Professor Spector has designed many well-known and globally utilised surveys dealing with anything from job satisfaction to workplace conflict. We were fortunate to pick his brain in this regard and some of the topics covered in this episode are concerned with good item construction, new methodologies/platforms when conducting surveys, ethical issues around dealing with data as well as how to go about communicating results in an effective way to key stakeholders.

Paul Spector is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida. He has an interest in both research methodology and in how organisational factors, work-nonwork interface, and personal characteristics interact to affect employee health, safety, and well-being.

His methodological interests focus on the connection between design, measurement and statistics and in the nature of scientific inference. Professor Spector also studies the proper use of control variables, and common method variance. His health and safety interests fit into the newly
emerging interdisciplinary field of occupational health psychology. In addition, Professor Spector also studies accidents/injuries at work, counterproductive work behaviour (things people do that harm co-workers and employers such as aggression and theft), interpersonal conflict, job attitudes,
job stress and workplace violence also considering how personality affects each of these areas.

For more information and resources visit: https://paulspector.com/

There has been a recent resurgence in questioning the predictive validity of personality assessments. These concerns have been consistently addressed in academic circles and have laid to rest any questions about whether we can use personality assessments in selection procedures. With this in mind, we talk to Dr Xander van Lil to better understand the historical debate as well as consider what it is that personality predicts when it comes to important outcomes in the workplace.

In this episode, we speak to Cherylene de Jager, Chief Imagination Officer from CheHan Ideaneers and author of CQ@Play: Shaping your Future in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Cherylene discusses the power of creative intelligence in the workplace.

Creativity has long been viewed as the exclusive domain of writers, artists, musicians,
and actors. The shift in thinking is that everyone is creative. Creativity can be developed
by acquiring and utilising creative thinking and problem-solving methodologies,
frameworks, and techniques. Creativity and original thought ensure competitive
advantage. Design thinking ignites creativity and innovation.

Contact Cherylene:
chehan@netactive.co.za
Facebook: CheHan Ideaneers
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylene-de-jager-ph-d-89159047/