Translator: Rik Delaet
Reviewer: Ivana Krivokuća I both love and hate
the business of human resources and you will soon understand why. This vivacious young girl was diagnosed
with schizophrenia at the age of 21. Like so many patients
diagnosed with schizophrenia, she did not want to accept her disease and she often refused
to take her medication. She became so desperate that she decided to put her fate
into the hands of a charlatan. Very soon he had convinced her that it was the medication
that made her feel ill. So he urged her
to abandon that medication, and he convinced her to take
his Bach flower remedies instead. Now, her condition soon deteriorated. And one late afternoon in 1996, I received a phone call from her boyfriend because she was standing
on the escape ladder of the apartment building
where they lived. And she was threatening
to throw herself off. So I rushed over, and we somehow managed to save her
by recklessly storming down the ladder and grabbing her tightly. And with the help
of her family and a lawyer, she was rid of the charlatan. But the damage had already been done. She tried to commit suicide
on several occasions. And this was, of course,
a turning point in my life and my career because I realized, because I personally witnessed how dangerous pseudoscience
and quackery could be, so I realized how dangerous it could be. And what has this got to do
with human resources? Well, at the start of my career, I had to attend training
in Transactional Analysis, and this theory states that during
the first three years of our lives we make our life script, including the diseases
we will have and try to conquer. And this sounded so very strange to me
that I decided to challenge the trainer and I asked her, "Is schizophrenia a choice too?" And she confirmed that it was! Now, in fact, the woman
I've been talking about was my sister-in-law. And we had been well informed by the doctors and specialized
patients organizations that this was total nonsense. She finally killed herself
at the age of only 36. And yes, I realized
how dangerous it could be, but I also - with a shock - realized that HR could be dangerous too. And I have experienced many examples. Take for example the case of Pete who had been a successful
manager for many years until the point
where he had to take a test based on an entirely crazy theory
called "Spiral Dynamics". It offers an alternative explanation
for human evolution. And he lost his position as a manager and even got fired after a few months. And still today, five years later, he hasn't been able to find a new job mainly because he often felt
too depressed. And he and his wife
had to sell their house and they now live in a small apartment. This made me very angry
and still makes me very angry if I see that desperate
or vulnerable people are lured in. So I decided to join the skeptic community
and like a Don Quixote, I set out on a mission to reveal the truth about the many HR models
and questionnaires. I consulted the scientific literature to see whether these models
were theoretically sound and what was the available evidence,
be it positive or negative. So of course I started looking
at the practices we used at the bank first, where I worked. There was the practice
of employee performance scores, giving people a score every year, and we even applied
a forced ranking on that. And we also created big pay gaps and paid individual bonuses, and we imposed top-down
performance goals on people. And in coaching I had to attend a training based on John Whitmore’s GROW model, and of course, Transactional Analysis. And I was led to believe in training that people have
four distinct learning styles. I learned about Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs. I learned about the so-called
Communication Rule by Albert Mehrabian. And our leaders had to follow a course
in Situational Leadership by Ken Blanchard or a training based
on the Stages of Grief model by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and they applied this
as a guidance for change. I even had to follow a training
in speed reading. Now what did I find out
about all of these models when I applied these criteria? Well, all of these models
were quite simply wrong. Now this left me very confused
and sometimes angry. I felt confronted. And maybe by now some of you have
recognized some of these models and have the same feelings already. Because indeed, changing our deeply held convictions
can be very challenging. This reminds me of this famous quote; ("The truth will set you free,
but first it will piss you off.") But I decided to search
for the truth, so I continued. In recruitment I came across practices such as graphology
or brain scans, allegedly predicting
your future performance or your honesty. And I found out
that a lot of the questionnaires used the ipsative format
or the forced choice format, basically making you choose
between apples and pears even if you like them both. And in development I found out that Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
or MBTI was very popular - it's a fad that never dies. And there's also the ever-increasingly
popular Insights Discovery. There was the Herrmann
Brain Dominance Instrument, making us believe that we have
four distinct thinking styles and they're located
in nice areas in our brain. And there's the Enneagram,
and there's the Belbin Team Roles. And in coaching I found out that Neuro-linguistic Programming
was very popular, or NLP. But also Alpha training, making you believe
that you can become more creative or be ever more intelligent
by plugging into the universe. And believe it or not,
but some people actually believe that you can become
a better leader of people (Audio: horse whinnies) by getting feedback from a horse. (Laughter) And what is it with human resources
that they so often follow the latest myth? Take for example the 70:20:10 model
by Charles Jennings. He is an Australian engineer
who claims to be an expert at learning. But the research sucks, and the true experts
in the field of learning say it's total nonsense and some of them
even call it an urban myth. So maybe by now you can raise your hands if you have ever been subjected
to any of these models. (Indistinct chatter in the audience) Why doesn't it surprise me? (Laughter) So I continued, and there's many more, and the list behind me
is really very long, and this is evidence of the fact that human resources
and management thinking is really very problematic. Let me give some examples. In HR systems for example, there's the practice
of giving people an annual score and applying a forced ranking. Some organizations even follow
the advice of Jack Welch, who was the former CEO
of General Electric, to fire, every year, the bottom 10%. Fire or yank - that's why
they called it "rank and yank". This is very strange,
because already in 1996, Kluger and DeNisi had conducted
a meta-analysis demonstrating that giving people a score
has a zero effect on performance. But only in the last few years have some organizations
started to abandon this practice. And take, for example, the big pay gaps
created by Rank Order Tournament Theory. It was a theory
invented by two economists. But this led to less information sharing, more fraud, lowered group performance, the best people actually leaving first, and a lot of people perceiving
the payment policy as highly unfair. This theory, in the US, led to the CEO to worker
average pay ratio explosion. In 1983, the average CEO
gained 46 times more. By 2013, it had already increased
to 331 times more. But if you compare it to the minimum wage, it's even a staggering 774 times more. And it doesn't need to be like this, because we know in HR systems
there are good frameworks and tools. Take for example the Productivity Measurement
and Enhancement System - ProMES: a meta-analysis has demonstrated
that it increases productivity whilst people keep their autonomy. And they can participate
in their goal setting and in the decision
about their performance indicators. And sometimes theories are really absurd and it doesn't require
a lot of intelligence to understand. Take for example the Enneagram. It's very old, it goes back several thousands
of years ago to a Sufi sect, but the most important
proponent was Gurdjieff. And he believed that we are
three-brained beings, here on this Earth to serve the Moon. Because we are forever in debt
towards the Moon, because the Moon was split from the Earth. Can you believe that? Or take Organizational Constellations where they put people in a room, and through a kind
of paranormal or quantum process, they solve their problems. The only problem is, quantum mechanics simply cannot operate
in a warm environment like our brain. And some believe in the paranormal. Few people realize that Carl Gustav Jung
believed in the paranormal and that tests like MBTI
or Insights Discovery are based on it. They prefer me to call it
a questionnaire but… He believed that in a far away
parallel universe information is stored. And this information contains
pre-existent psychological archetypes. And you can get access to them
through a paranormal process. Very absurd. Some theories are just dead wrong. Take for example LIFO,
Enneagram, or MBTI, that make us believe
that the distribution in the population looks a little bit like this:
a dichotomous distribution. If you compare it to other features
of humans like physical height, this would mean that we would
almost have noone between 1.60m and 1.80m. And that is, of course, simply impossible. And indeed, we know
that most human features and also our personality traits follow a nice continuous distribution. Like this. And this is something
that already Charles Darwin had told us. Because he explained
that evolutionary processes lead to variation, resulting
in this nice Gaussian distribution. And take the myth of NLP
or the learning styles. They are both based on the false premise that some people are more visual,
others are more auditory, and yet others are more kinesthetic. And this is entirely wrong,
it's entirely false, because just like all other primates, our visual sense is the most dominant
in literally everyone, as extensive research has demonstrated. Sometimes theories are wrong
in other respects like, they offer wrong measurements. Take again these forced
choice questionnaires: they often lead to entirely
opposite selection advice, compared to normative tests for example. Or take the MBTI again: it has many flaws, and the US National Research Council has calculated that if people
take the test a second time after only four weeks, then the median of people having
an entirely different personality type is a staggering 60%. Imagine what it would do
to your family life… (Laughter) if you had to wonder every four weeks what personality type
will your family members have? And again, it doesn’t need
to be like this, because in recruitment and selection, we know what kind of tools
are good predictors, like intelligence
and some aspects of personality. And indeed if you look at personality, there are theories based on that, like the five-factor model
or the six-factor model. And we have good tests like the NEO-PI-R, measuring the five-factor
model of personality or the HEXACO, measuring
the six-factor model of personality. And if you look at the real research data, then we indeed see that these traits
follow a nice distribution, like this in extraversion. So there is no such thing,
there are not four types like in LIFO or nine as in Enneagram or 16 as in MBTI. There are literally more combinations than the number of people
living on this Earth. Finally I also found out
that many people lie, not only about the so-called
scientific status of their theories, but also about their own degrees. I contacted several universities and they told me that a lot of people lie
about their PhD for example. So the problem
with all of this is, of course, if you put in garbage,
then inevitably garbage must come out. Nobody has ever been able to prove that you can take right decisions
based on entirely false information. And the burden of proof, of course,
is on them, not on us. And I know some people say
it's only a tool, or only a discussion starter. Let’s consider this: imagine you are on a city trip in Paris and you're lost and you ask
someone for directions and that person says, "Well you can have my map
because I'm going home." And you gratefully unfold that map, only to realize it's a map of New York. So you ask that generous
person what it means, and that person says,
"Well, it's only a navigation starter." (Laughter) Of course that's silly. Like that city map - that wrong city map - won't get you anywhere in the city, a wrong personality test
or intelligence test won't get you anywhere,
for example, for your career decisions. So the best option we really have
is science and reason. And we don't have to be
so negative about science because after all, it's only a method
we have invented ourselves to overcome our biases
and thinking errors. It has allowed us to abandon practices like magic healing or witch burning, and it has given us many benefits like purified drinking water
and lately, the internet. So we don't have to be scientists
ourselves but we can enjoy science. Would you accept having surgery
by a surgeon who never updates her skills? Would you accept taking a drug that doesn't help,
but has a lot of side effects? Would you accept it if an engineer
lies about his degree as an engineer and builds an unstable bridge? Would you dare to fly with somebody who has never been trained as a pilot
and fly on this plane? I think the answer is a clear no. So if you don't accept
a flawed blood test, you should not accept
a flawed personality test, and if you don't accept
a bogus cancer therapy, you should not accept bogus coaching. Think of the damage it can do
if you use pseudoscience. So if we don't accept bad practices
and lies in other fields of our lives, we should not accept them in HR. Especially not since there are
so many valid alternatives that often are cheaper,
easier to understand, and more accurate. And we have them in training,
and we have them in coaching. And we also have good explanations
like psychology based on biology, explaining things like why we both compete
and collaborate for example. So the list of valid alternatives
and approaches is very long too. So there's really no excuse
not to use them. It's high time to abandon
these bad practices, it's high time we abandon
the gurus like NLP guru Emile Ratelband and Richard Bandler, and turn towards the Champions League
of biologists and psychologists instead, like Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. I have made a choice to abandon the bad,
the wrong, and the pseudo models because they can do
possible harm to people. And I embraced the science-based instead, because they're much more reliable
and they allow me to act morally. And that is, of course,
a choice we all can make. Because with knowledge
comes responsibility. I urge all the leaders
to critically question your HR practices. Thank you.
