Predicting who will make a good manager is a critical task for organisations across the globe. Get it wrong and the consequences can be disastrous. But now researchers claim to have discovered a new way to predict who is likely to succeed in a managerial role and who is likely to fail.
Psychologists from the University of Toronto, Harvard University, the University of Hawaii and McGill University say that their new computerised measures of executive function mark a breakthrough in predicting who will excel in a managerial role or in a competitive academic environment.
The research findings found that men and women who do exceptionally well at tasks that access the cognitive functions of the pre-frontal cortex of the brain are also viewed by their supervisors as having a high degree managerial competence.
The reason for this connection is that good cognitive functions in the pre-frontal cortex – often described as the CEO of the brain – is what enables individuals to manipulate many ideas simultaneously, to plan for the future, to avoid impulsive actions and to react thoughtfully to novel situations.
Organisational psychologists routinely use intelligence tests to predict success as a manager. However, standard intelligence tests evolved specifically to assess the ability to solve well-defined (academic) problems and therefore do a rather poor job of assessing an individual’s ability to solve ill-defined problems.
While executive functions are most likely to be assessed in brain impaired patients, they are equally important for successful adaptation and performance in real-life situations.
Executive functions allow people to initiate and complete tasks and to persevere in the face of challenges. Because the environment can be unpredictable, executive functions are vital to human ability to recognise the significance of unexpected situations and to make alternative plans quickly when unusual events arise and interfere with normal routines. In this way, executive functions contribute to success in work and allow people to manage the stresses of daily life.
“These abilities are clearly relevant to managerial and high-level academic performance,” says Jordan Peterson, psychology professor at the University of Toronto and senior author of the paper.
“We took the description literally and started to apply executive function tests to normal people in practical environments.”
“In the past, psychologists have used IQ and personality tests to predict managerial and academic performance, with real success,” Peterson added.
“However, this is the first demonstration of the unique potential of pre-frontal or executive function tests to more accurately determine who will and who will not excel.”
Previously, such tests have been used by cognitive scientists only for experimental purposes.
Peterson and co-author Robert Pihl of McGill University first started using tests of executive function in the late 1980s to assess impulse control and decision-making among aggressive and alcohol-abusing teenagers.
“After the tasks were programmed, we started predicting academic achievement at Harvard, replicated those findings at the University of Toronto and then moved into the business environment,” Jordan Peterson explained
Their figures suggest that using executive function tests as part of the recruitment process would result in productivity gain of 33 percent per hired employee.
“Obviously, gains of this magnitude cannot be easily ignored,” says Peterson.
“Neuroscience has revolutionised our understanding of the brain in recent years. Perhaps this is the beginning of the neuroscience revolution in management.”
Reference
Higgins, D. M., Peterson, J. B., Pihl, R.O. & Lee, A. G. M. (2007). Pre-frontal cognitive ability, intelligence, Big Five personality, and the prediction of advanced academic and workplace performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 298-319.
