Fit in or f**k off?

People working in corporate HR/OD/people roles are, in general, a touchy-feely bunch. Big on emotional intelligence, schooled in the dark arts of appreciative enquiry and intellectually curious about new theories and methods to get the best out of people. So how do they cope when tools designed to do good produce the opposite effect to what was intended?

Last week we met a prospect at a global financial services company and a throwaway remark he made got me thinking. “Sadly, we use Myers Briggs”, he said, “as a stick with which to beat people.” I took this to mean that people whose personal profile doesn’t fit the corporate profile (ESTJ) aren’t valued as much as those that do. Or worse, that deviation from the ideal is seen culturally as a defect rather than a natural and welcome function of human diversity.

Of course in theory, there’s no such thing as a “good” or “bad” profile - and HR professionals and their suppliers can’t stress that enough. But corporate cultures and leadership teams are very good at forgetting this technical health warning in determining what it takes to be “one of us.”

Our conversation reminded me of the most extreme example of the same phenomenon I ever encountered. Another financial services company whose (unofficial) HR policy was “fit in or f**k off”. (Forgive the asterisks – mine not theirs.)

The leadership team would joke about it, but the potential consequences were deadly serious – particularly if you were one of the 40% of people who were assumed (wrongly as we proved) to be unsuitable or incapable for the long haul. And this in an organisation that prided itself on people as a key differentiator both inside the organisation and externally with customers – and also boasted one of the grooviest People Directors I’ve ever met.

So back to my opening question, what do you do when corporate obsession with managing only what you can measure leads to misuse or abuse of tools that were originally designed to improve performance by recognising and embracing difference and diversity? How many HR professionals bump up against this tension in their daily lives? And what do they do about it - push back, roll over or look the other way?