Business psychology for HR professionals

As MBTI practitioners, we often meet people who are sceptical about the instrument’s potential and credibility as a development tool. Criticisms can range from saying that the tool is nothing more than a horoscope that puts people in unrealistic boxes, to it being based on out-of-date theory and lacking any evidence of reliability and validity.

In this 30 minute webcast OPP practitioners and researchers (and Chartered Psychologists) John Hackston and Rob Bailey discuss the basis for these challenges, why they don’t hold up and how you can respond to them.

Recruiting the right people is never easy, especially for smaller organisations without a dedicated HR team. This webcast will outline the challenges faced by organisations, drawing on real-life examples to show when the best of intentions can have disastrous consequences. We’ll explore a new way of identifying the underlying competencies and attributes needed for success in a job. With the help of Melanie Francis, Head of HR at The University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, we’ll learn how this new approach has helped them to objectively assess and shortlist candidates against these criteria, using psychometric tools and structured interviews. Even if you have limited experience in this area, you’ll learn how you can achieve greater hiring success simply and cost-effectively.

With more people chasing fewer jobs, and new technology to help, you might think that selection and recruitment is easier than ever; but more applicants is not the same as more good applicants, and more choice of assessments can just lead to confusion.
John will go through the reasons why you should (or shouldn’t) change what you are doing, and how to put together a cost-effective, fair and valid selection process that will enhance your organisation’s reputation.

Join neuroscience and personality expert Dario Nardi, PhD, to get up to speed on the cutting edge of neuroscience. Using colourful slides and humorous anecdotes from his lab, Dario introduces the latest insights and answers:
- How do people of various personality types use their brain differently?
- What's "flow", and how can we get into it?
- Your brain's terrain: What cognitive and emotional skills do you favour?

The co-author of the TKI assessment will provide a deep understanding of how the increasing levels of stress experienced in the workplace can not only prevent people from using the best conflict mode in a given situation (competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, or accommodating), but can also push people to react blindly to conflicts with fight, flight, or freeze.

Join Dr Ralph Kilmann on 5 June to find out how you can help people maintain moderate stress (neither high nor low), enabling them to manage their conflicts mindfully and thus successfully.

Workplace stress is always a hot topic in the HR press, and even more so currently as organisations push to achieve more with reduced resources and budget. Is the media’s portrayal of stress as bad correct – or is stress something we can learn to manage and even harness for positive benefit? Although most of us know what stress feels like, many of us fail to identify the best coping strategies for the productive management of the challenges that we face. And if we have trouble managing our own stress, how can we best support colleagues who experience stress differently?

Penny and John will step through a well-established dynamic model of the stress process and explain how you can build individual and organisational resilience, not only to avoid stress turning into distress, but also to understand when it can be a positive, motivating force.

When it comes to offering career guidance to students, educational institutions have a vested and growing interest in giving them the boost they need to enter the workplace. Personality questionnaires are sometimes used to inform decision-making about next steps, but some assessments are more robust than others, and timing is everything. So what are the key ingredients for delivering valuable perspective? And how can careers advisors and tutors provide the best possible experience for their students?

In this webinar, OPP’s John Hackston, Head of R&D, and Amy Baskerville, Education Sector Manager, share their thoughts on the challenges currently facing careers advisors and students, and consider the value of applying personality insights to course and career choice.

At every level, leaders struggle to receive, and use, constructive feedback – subordinates hesitate, leaders lack time for reflection, ‘edgy’ managers think their edge is effective, and acknowledging any weaknesses hints at incompetency. Psychological type, the framework behind the MBTI instrument, depersonalizes many critiques, helps leaders make sense of feedback, and provides pathways for successful change tailored to the leader's own style.

Jane’s webinar will introduce several easy-to-use yet profound strategies that take your leadership coaching skills to the next level.

Jane Kise, Ed.D. is an executive coach, consultant, and author of over 20 books including Intentional Leadership, Introduction to Type and Coaching and Using the MBTI Tool in Organizations. A past president of the Association for Psychological Type International, and a faculty member of the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, Kise consults worldwide, helping individuals and organizations be more intentional about how they plan, lead, influence and change.

As an MBTI practitioner, you’ve had time to realise the value of MBTI insights. But for many people who receive feedback, knowing their four-letter type and understanding that people have different preferences is often where their journey ends.
Improve the return on your MBTI training and the value of your interventions by helping participants to apply their MBTI type knowledge more effectively, every day, with our brand-new resources.

Join Pauline Siddons, Learning Implementation and Development Manager at OPP, as she presents the new recommended MBTI feedback process, and shares her experiences using our newly developed materials, including:

• Practitioner feedback prompt cards to facilitate better quality individual feedback sessions
• A group feedback kit containing interactive exercises to help your clients identify their best-fit type as a group
• A practical desk resource that makes the MBTI concepts readily available for clients to refer to, supporting their ongoing development.

What will I learn?
• How to deliver more inspiring and impactful individual MBTI feedback, which provides a platform for users to continue their application of type beyond their feedback session.

It is for me?
• This webinar is ideal for all MBTI practitioners who qualified before July 2012. It will enable you to reinvigorate your MBTI work with new exercises, approaches and materials to create more memorable feedback sessions and add value to your work.

For over 20 years, OPP has been using psychometric tools with leaders to enable them to reach their potential, by developing self-awareness. Our approach to leadership development is based on understanding the whole person, and enabling each individual to develop an authentic style of leadership, allowing them to make the most of their inherent strengths and drive organisational success.

Join Alice King and Lorraine Mills from OPP’s Consultancy team as they share insights from their work with leaders, and discover the benefits of using psychometric tools to enhance authentic leadership.