Testing, Testing...

Entrepreneurs have long used psychological tests to screen potential employees. Here's how to use tests to get more out of the workers you already have.

Willy Wonka may never have subjected the Oompa Loompas to personality tests, but the tactic has proved invaluable to David Taiclet and his real-life chocolate factory. Along with his co-founder, Taz Murray, Taiclet sat down in 2002 to craft a strategy for making Alpine Confections, based in Alpine, Utah, one of the largest candy makers in North America. To help chart a course of action, they turned to the Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style, or TAIS, and learned that their management team may have been slow to act because it was stacked with more thinkers than doers.

Working with a consultant, Taiclet and Murray used the results to prioritize more effectively, and the result has been two major acquisitions in the past two years and a major licensing agreement with Hallmark. "The test illuminated some of our management tendencies," Taiclet says, "and our confidence level definitely increased as a result."

While psychological tests have long been a part of the hiring process for many companies, a growing number of CEOs are using these multiple-choice mind games to help them better manage employees already on the payroll. According to the Association of Test Publishers, overall employment testing, including personality tests, has been growing at a rate of 10% to 15% in each of the past three years.

Alpine's personal Nostradamus is a former Inc. 500 CEO named Keith McFarland, who founded McFarland Strategy Partners four years ago and uses the TAIS to help companies cultivate talent within their ranks. "The best way to grow a business is to grow the people," McFarland says. "It just doesn't make sense to be replacing people all the time." An entrepreneurial company's dynamic changes dramatically within its first few years, he says, and all too often the management team does not evolve together. Testing helps bridge some of the gaps.

When working with a company, McFarland administers the 144-question TAIS, reviews the computerized findings with employees individually, then embarks on a "strategy slam" -- essentially locking senior staff in a room for 48 hours and brainstorming. Test takers might learn that they have high "external distractibility" or easily express support and affection, and these qualities are reconciled with those of their colleagues. The goal is three-pronged: fostering self-improvement, helping employees understand one another by sharing their test results, and giving the CEO insight into his or her team.

The TAIS was first developed for, and is still used by, Olympic teams and elite military units -- small groups in high-pressure environments with one common goal. Sound familiar? Over the years, it became clear that challenges on the track or the battlefield weren't all that dissimilar to those in the boardroom, and business leaders have since adopted the test as their own. The questions involve topics you would expect (personal decision-making style) and slightly more obscure predictors of business behavior (high school dating patterns). McFarland acknowledges that other tests offer their own insights, but he was drawn to TAIS because it focuses on action and performance.

"The best way to grow a business is to grow the people. It just doesn't make sense to be replacing people all the time."

That said, there is no shortage of other tests with ardent advocates. David Duncan, chief operating officer of Silver Oak Cellars in Oakville, Calif., turned to the Birkman test to help his staff learn about him as much as he sought to learn about them. When Duncan took the reins of his family's 85-employee winery a year ago, he inherited a management team that had close to a decade of experience in grapes. In hopes of writing a new chapter in the company's history, Duncan had the group take the Birkman, which measures 11 components of behavior, highlighting everything from morning grumpiness to whether people are "outdoorsy." Perhaps even more telling than the test is the off-site retreat that typically follows, where employees come together as a group and attempt to explain, well, themselves. "It led to a real breakthrough of everyone's likes and dislikes, as opposed to their skills," Duncan says. "Those little insights are the key to a functional team."

Duncan is quick to concede that the Birkman is not a magic solution for all woes, but the healthy dialogue that comes during a Birkman retreat lays the foundation for working relationships that he believes can have a tangible effect on the bottom line -- especially in a fast-changing, fast-growing entrepreneurial company. "If I understand you and you understand me," he says, "a lot of those business processes fall into place."

Ginny Corsi, an executive consultant with Strategic Solutions International in Boulder, Colo., says her clients are often stunned that the Birkman's seemingly benign questions -- such as how much time you prefer to spend alone -- can create such accurate personality sketches. "What the Birkman says is that there is absolutely no normal behavior," she says. "Nobody's scores are better than anybody else's. It just says, 'Here you are.' The beauty is that you learn about yourself through this profile." Entrepreneurs tend to enlist the help of friends when launching a company, and the result is often a homogeneous staff, at least on the surface. The Birkman identifies key differences, and can suggest who might be more effective -- and happier -- as, say, a sales manager versus a CFO.

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