RHR 123: The Future of Assessments with David Jones

David Jones: 0:00

but it's also really important for the individual to understand what is required in the world of work, what is not just, you know, the sort of things that were thought to be important that work 50 years ago, but the things that are on the horizon today, right? So we tended to take a very strengths based approach. So we've got great scales, great data on things like resilience, grit, growth, mindset, collaboration, confidence, courage, you know, all of these types of aspects, which actually, those key transitions most employers are more interested in, right? Because if you don't have this sort of CV, or you don't have this organizational experience, you've just got your educational experience, what they're looking forward as does this person have the attributes to be able to deal with the current and the future world of work and how fast it's changing?

Kyle Roed: 0:44

This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast, where we talk to HR innovators about all things people leadership. If you're looking for places to find about new ways to think about the world of work, this is the podcast for you. Please subscribe from your favorite podcast listening platform today. And leave us a review revelon HR rebels. Welcome back, HR rebels really excited for the conversation here. This week, we are going to be talking all about talent assessments. Our guest this week is David Jones. He is the founder and CEO at the talent enterprise, a leading Think and Do tank focused on the elevation of human capital, integrating modern psychometric tools and assessment solutions. With the latest advancements in AI, and data science. Welcome to the show, David.

David Jones: 1:33

Thank you very much, Kyle, pleasure to be here.

Kyle Roed: 1:36

I'm just really glad that I got through the intro and pronounced psychometric correctly, you almost tripped me up on that. So

David Jones: 1:43

you did well said it's 10 o'clock in the morning. So if you can't do it, 10 o'clock? I can't do any time.

Kyle Roed: 1:49

Exactly. Well, I do want to thank you for joining us in your evening hours and and for spending some time here, helping our listeners learn a little bit more about talent assessments and some of the work that you've done. So before we jump into that, just give me a little bit of an overview of your background and what got you into the talent assessment space.

David Jones: 2:09

Yeah, so I've been in the HR space, since I graduated, have a lot of other jobs and stuff beforehand, but and I guess I had some really quite unusually really good career guidance University. And they I had no clue what I wanted to do. And the career guidance counselor said, look, think about what is it that you enjoy at university, and we'll try and think of some careers that relate to that. So I used to work for the student newspaper, I used to interview all the rock bands and politicians would come to campus that was a favorite of mine. I used to play rugby also. And I got trained to be a coach as we sort of got better as a team. And I enjoyed coaching those sessions. And then in the UK university situation, which I think is a little bit different to how it is in the US we every time we have what we call a session where you actually run the session for your professor. So you prepare the lecture, you prepare and you lead the session right? And I really enjoyed those as well. So so the guy said, why don't you go and take on like, okay, fine, and it actually worked. It was really good experience I went to work for a supermarket in the UK called Sainsbury's, it's one of their HR graduates and worked in their very highly unionized distribution division in with lorry drivers and warehouse people, do a few different jobs with them and then went into the banking sector, the consulting sector, then a lot of my clients were in aviation at the time. And I went to the air show in the UK called Farnborough air show, I met these guys from this place called Dubai with an airline called Emirates, which I'd never heard of. This was in 1996. And they said, Hey, we're looking to professionalize our HR and get performance management and competencies and elearning and psychometric assessments, would you be interested? And I said, Well, okay, fine. So I went for an interview and stayed with them for eight years. Then I became the HR manager for Dubai Airport. Then I went back into consulting with a company called AON Hewitt, which is now called concentric I was their Middle East North Africa, leader and then 10 years ago, myself and a few colleagues, we set up our enterprise to really try and come up with some innovative differentiated approach

Kyle Roed: 4:42

that's awesome. Yeah, I think most people probably know who the emirate you know, the Emirates Airline is now just because the the all the well, football jerseys but soccer for me.

David Jones: 4:56

They also got into which I think was very innovative. They sponsored a lot Have the referees and the umpires and the judges, which I think cost a fraction of sponsoring a team. But actually, we're on the camera more often than the team if you think about it, so that's pretty good in their branding.

Kyle Roed: 5:15

There you go. So, you know, really interesting background. It's funny, I started my HR career at a supermarket as well. So, you know, that's, that's funny, the correlations that you find there. But, you know, so I know, you know, stepping out and starting your own enterprise is not an easy task. As you started up your company at the talent enterprise? Where did you see the problem that needed solving? Or what was what was your kind of your your goal as you started the organization?

David Jones: 5:47

Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's, there's probably a couple of dimensions to it. One was from a sort of regional perspective. And another one, I think, was from an industry perspective. So as someone who was a practitioner on many different psychometric assessments, and including organizational assessments, and 360, or that sort of stuff, I felt increasingly dissatisfied with a number of the tools, right, I think there are some really good tools in that space. But I also think there are some really anachronistic, outdated, and increasingly irrelevant tools. And I think the more you probe into some of them, the basic statistical robustness of some of them, particularly the validity, the reliability, the stability, the research groups that they've used, and the sort of applications that they try and broaden from that, I think it's questionable in some ways. From a regional point of view, obviously, I've been based in the Middle East for some time, our company is headquartered in Dubai, we do a lot of work in Africa and Asia, some in Europe as well. But mostly with fast moving fast growing economies, where the population profile is much younger, the culture is quite different. And you sometimes think that, okay, these sort of Western tools that are seen as best practice, have the strongest brand names may not always be appropriate to some of the applications or some of the, the users that are actually taking the test in that regard.

Kyle Roed: 7:24

You know, that's really fascinating. And it's, you know, it has been my experience that some of the tools that are, you know, a lot of them originated in the, in the United States, or, you know, eu UK, when you try to leverage those for other very distinctly different cultures, the data is really hard to interpret. And it's almost like there's, there's a cultural disconnect, you know, my organization as an example, we have, we have a large contingency in Southeast Asia. And when I do an employee engagement survey, I, there's no way for me to really benchmark that against the other locations, the survey results are just so drastically different. It's almost like, Is this even valid data? What do I do with this data? You know, it's really hard to unpack so. So how do you address that? You know, what were some of the strategies or tactics to come up with a new way to do it?

David Jones: 8:16

Honestly, one of the major things is we want it to be a lot busier with our data. So I think some of the international companies and brands were quite lazy in the sense that they felt okay, we, you know, we have a global benchmark, global norm group, we have maybe some very broad regional norm group. But it's quite a small sort of n size when you when you probe into it. So we we started to say, Okay, let's get really busy with the data, right? So we started to really break it down by demographics, by by graphics by different educational factors. One of the key things we found quite early on, and we've really, sort of play with this photo. very earnestly since then, is we always also tried to provide all of the tools in the local language or a variety of languages. So one of the things we find, for instance, here in the GCC, obviously, Arabic is the major language, if you ask somebody to complete a survey about their preferences, or their style or their capabilities, and you ask them, if they're a native Arabic speaker, you ask them to complete it in English, they would tend to be much more cautious in the way that they answer the question. Typically, the responses are collapsed to the mean. Okay? Whereas if you ask them exactly the same questions, double reverse translated in Arabic, they'll be much more confident or much more expressive to be able to say actually, this is particularly high or particularly low. So the problem then that means from a practical point of view, if you're using mainly global mainly English tools, then a lot of local respondents are going to come across this average because they're just not Really deviating from the mean, in many cases, right on the response scale, which, if you've got a large sample is really not not logical, right? There's going to be people who are across the full range. So that was one key aspect that we're really focused on.

Kyle Roed: 10:18

Absolutely. And I think, you know, I think it's really interesting to think about that. And it's, it's, to me, it kind of reminds me of like, you know, you can't just, you can't just take a question and put it into Google Translate, and expect that that's going to be asking the same nuance that you intended that question to ask, right? Like, it's like, culture is so drastically different language is drastically different. And an intention is different, depending upon the language you

David Jones: 10:45

use. Yeah, I think the other thing we decided to really focus on a lot was also to try and, again, not because there are some great tools out there, I didn't want to copy or duplicate anything that was was good. And we and we use a lot of great tools that have been established for many years now. But we tried to focus in areas where we felt that either there were no good tools, or questionable tools, or no tools at all. And trying to really sort of think about how we can address areas of the employee lifecycle, which was sort of underserved, right. So we focus a lot on things like career guidance tools, right. And we found now that, you know, that transition, whether you're joining a company from high school, or from, you know, graduate level, that is a really key transition for people to make, right, it's key for the employer to really identify the talent, where really most of the data to go on is their educational performance, you don't really have a lot of sort of organizational track record to go on. So that was really important for employers who were, obviously our clients. But it's also really important for the individual's right to understand what is required in the world of work, what is not just, you know, the sort of things that were thought to be important that work 50 years ago, but the things that are on the horizon today, right? So we tended to take a very strengths based approach. So we've got grayscales, great data on things like resilience, grit, growth, mindset, collaboration, confidence, courage, you know, all of these types of aspects, which actually, those key transitions most employers are more interested in, right? Because if you don't have this sort of CV, or you don't have this organizational experience, you've just got your educational experience, what they're looking for, is does this person have the attributes to be able to deal with the current and the future world of work? And how fast it's changing?

Kyle Roed: 12:39

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, the value of a tool like that, for me is it's it's so much deeper than a than a CV, or a resume or anything like that, where, you know, so many times you'll have somebody on, on, on paper, that looks like a perfect fit, yes, but you might be wrong. And then vice versa, you might have somebody who doesn't look like a perfect fit on paper, but what actually fit because of the, you know, kind of the behavioral tendencies that they just have, they'd be, you know, the right fit for that seat. So do you typically see organizations put these types of measurements into their their talent assessment processes? Or do you see this more broadly across organizations that successfully leverage this type of information?

David Jones: 13:26

So I think if you can, if you can deploy the assessments in a, what can I say in an open, transparent, sustainable way? Then I think assessments those those of our clients, those organizations that we work with, do that successfully, then actually, assessments become more pervasive? What I mean, is, if if assessments is something that is sort of secretive, and you're sort of asked to do it with no explanation, and then somebody in HR gets to keep it, and it goes on your file. And maybe you did it for a leadership development program, two years ago, and then you went for a job today and somebody pulled up the same psychometric from your file and said, all your psychometrics weren't very good. That's, that's not that's not really going to promote that sort of positive approach. Right? So if I'm what we advocate, right, and using a lot of interesting technology, right, we say, Look, this is a tool, which has many different stakeholders, right? One of them obviously, whether it's data protection, whether it's providing timely feedback, whether it's telling people exactly what's going to happen to their results, is the person who's taking the assessment themselves. Right. So we want to make sure that if it's appropriate, you get high level headline results immediately on your phone or your tablet or your laptop or TV or whatever it might be right like and it's for you. And it's not necessarily very statistical. It's not necessary. Really, that you have to take some one of the psychometrics accreditation programs to understand that. It's saying, look, okay, Kyle, these are your top three strengths. These are your bottom three strengths. This is what you might want to do to leverage your strengths. This is what you might want to think about in terms of priorities for development, maybe you could discuss this with your manager or your, your HR representative, like it's practical, right? It's very, it's very inclusive, right? And then obviously, there's much more detail for the HR professional, for the manager, if they're going to perform coaching or make selection decisions, then we would then be very pinpoint and say, look, again, here's the very basic highs and lows. And here's some questions, you might want to ask Kyle about his top strength or about his is biggest area for development, right, with some probing questions suggested etc. So we want to be squeezing the juice out of the investment in the assessment, but also making it a much more open and positive experience.

Kyle Roed: 15:59

Yeah, absolutely. I laughed when you said like the, the, you know, make it transparent, because it just reminds me so much of, you know, an experience I had earlier in my career where there was like this secret list of high potential employees, right. And nobody really knew who was on the list. And everybody kind of hoped they were but like, would randomly find out when they were talking to somebody and human resources

David Jones: 16:24

were defined by when they resigned? And obviously, I was so disappointed.

Kyle Roed: 16:27

You were so high potential? Absolutely, yeah. So I think that's a really great point, you know, and I think that, you know, one of the experiences I've had, especially with somebody who's not used to this type of an assessment as an employee is, you know, you really, it can be scary. You know, these assessments aren't necessarily comfortable for everybody to take. And people like me, I love taking these things. You know, I'm taking the quiz to see what Disney princess I am, you know, what kind of, you know, what kind of sandwich would you be, you know, whatever, I just, it's just,

David Jones: 17:09

those are the types of results talking about earlier, the ones that were good.

Kyle Roed: 17:16

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, and like, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's, it's, you know, there's a lot of different types of assessments out there. And so which, which ones actually work? Which ones actually, I think give you actionable insights. Right. You know, that's, that's really kind of the key word, and I love the I love in your, you know, your, your bio, that's, it's not a think tank, it's a think and do tank, right? So, you know, so how do you approach the post assessment work? So you know, it's one thing to take an assessment, and have all this information? What what makes a successful kind of a post assessment? Action Plan?

David Jones: 17:57

I know, I'm, we're really passionate about our we can get very geeky, right, we can get into analysis paralysis, we want to like do more data processing, right? And that can be really, really beneficial, but only really, if you're pragmatic about it as well. Right? So if you've got an insight that helps you to, I guess our vision, right is to is to help make labor markets more efficient, right? And to make any market more efficient, you need information, and everybody needs information. Right? So if you, if you have some insights, that you can glean from analysis that you can share with people, then this can be really interesting, right? So one of the big changes we're seeing, just for a practical example, right, is we're doing a lot of now meta data analysis on psychometric assessments, right? So so for instance, right, we have a platform called light tanks, which is the sort of environment where you go and the professional users have a dashboard to see the status of everybody's assessments when the individual gets a message or a video that says, hey, this is what this is for. And this is what's happening, right? And we can get some very interesting insights on people's behavior. And their preference is directly from how they interact on the site, even around actually taking the assessment themselves, right. So if we have for instance, right, like a typical classic cognitive battery, right of like verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, or those spatial reasoning or error detection or something like that, depending on the role. In most cases, you have the choice about which one you do first, right. So which which card you click on the on the on the dashboard, right? Which one you want to do first. Now that reveals a lot about which one did you choose to do first, which one do you feel more confident about? How do you interact with the instructions? Right? We have standard instructions. We have practice questions, which you can repeat endlessly if you want to, right. So do you do that? tool or do you jump right into the the main questions? It's like, Ikea furniture thing, right? Like, do you rip open the box? And then like get stuck in? And then read the instructions that last the last resort if things go wrong? Or are you more meticulous and more organized in the way that you do it? Do you highlight things in the instructions, all of these things can be very revealing, particularly if there's some sort of personality or strengths based assessment which is associated with that in the battery. So what what we're we're trying to sort of develop now is not just psychometrics, where you use questionnaires as a proxy measure for all these preferences and capabilities. We're also we're now moving into what we call behavior metrics, right, which is a direct measurement of people's behavior, and using technology to try to give additional insights.

Kyle Roed: 20:56

Yeah, it's really interesting. I wanted to talk about this because I know you've done a lot of work and and the the term is behavior metrics are where the science of behavior metri behavior mitre, Yes, correct. Okay, perfect. Thank you a lot, you know, really stretching my pronunciations here today. I appreciate.

David Jones: 21:13

Fantastic, but we're gonna test. So yeah, tell,

Kyle Roed: 21:16

tell me a little bit more about that science, you know, how, how do you approach that I think this is, this is one of those areas, for from my standpoint, one of the most exciting areas of human resources is the, it's really the the element of human behavior. You know, and, and helping an organization have good, you know, human behaviors, you know, it's really kind of the secret sauce of a successful, you know, culture and HR program. So, so tell me a little bit more about how you how you really make that a science, how do you, you know, survive some objectivity there?

David Jones: 21:47

Yeah. So I think in a lot of HR practices, talent assessments included, right, you've, we've gotten to this habit, and the last 150 years are saying, well, what do we need, we need a survey, the survey is going to give us the information, and we're going to be able to then analyze the survey, right? And it's not just human resources, it's probably the whole of social science, right? It relies on this sort of survey methodology in lots of different fields. Now, okay, 150 years ago, that makes a lot of sense, right? Because you had somebody probably knocking at your door with a clipboard and a quill pen, like recording what you said, right? But I think what we can do now is, in some cases, we can now say, well, actually the survey and let's face it, we all have probably survey fatigue, right? Because we're completing surveys all the time. In our, in our organizations, the survey, in some ways can be augmented, and increasingly replaced by direct measurement of those behaviors that you're using the survey for. So at the moment, a survey is like a proxy measure. And in some cases, it's still the best. But if you can go to that behavior directly, and you can measure it, well, why wouldn't you do that? Right? So, for instance, you know, if we were having a video interview, or a face to face interview, okay, the gestures that you use, when you're answering competency based questions on particular factors, right, or the way you explain how there was an example that demonstrated a particular competency or a particular behavior, we can, we can gauge your confidence, we can gauge your congruence of what you're saying with how you're saying it. So we can measure like a confidence factor that this, this person has a high rating in this competency, and we can have a high confidence in that. We can also do all sorts of things, right. Like, you were talking about engagement surveys, I think, on your previous podcast, right? And engagement surveys, you know, I believe they should be engaging as an intervention, right? And not just oh, my God, there's another questionnaire I have. Right, right. The ways to do that augment it or add to it is that you can have direct measurements of engagement. Right, you can do some really interesting things, right? There's a really interesting research around gait analysis, right? So like the cadence of your your walk, right. And if you put a camera in a public space, like your sort of reception area of your office or your factory or something, you can measure the rhythm of somebody's walking. And you can see this change over different time points of the day or different points of the shift. And that gives a very good correlation, a very good indication of overall levels of employee engagement. Fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. You have to be careful with this stuff. Because I think we're really still in the stone age with a lot of this stuff and you read a lot of stuff and you think that sounds great, but I really would like to see the proof of that. And you have to be very cautious and you have to manage people's data. You have to clean data, you have to have good data ethics. and it takes time to develop good quality data. But I think we're at the beginning of this right. And I definitely predict this is one of our sort of big strategic bets at the talent enterprise that at some point before the middle of the century, right, like, the question is going to be dead? Like we're not going to have question is

Kyle Roed: 25:17

fascinating. It does do you so as you're going through the kind of the, you know, analysis and finding, you know, some of the the correlations between behavior, do you also find that some of those, you know, like the nonverbals, and the, the diligence of somebody taking a survey, that there's a cultural nuance there as well? Or is it? Or is it kind of universal, regardless of upbringing and geographic region? And so on?

David Jones: 25:43

I think I mean, culture is quite pervasive, right? It's quite powerful, right? So I think you have to be able to try and have whichever benchmark you have. And we try and use multiple benchmarks, right? So with our clients, we're trying to use Global regional industry, or any other sort of demographic benchmark, so you can get multiple sort of insights and comparison groups. And I think, for sure, culture is going to be one of the one of the factors, right, like, it's, it's really about the way that we're brought up, right, like the early years of our development, where there's no rules, there's no sort of curriculum, we're brought up by our relatives, or, you know, people around us people at school with us have a big influence, and that affects us for the rest of our lives. Right. And that cultural context cannot be ignored.

Kyle Roed: 26:36

Absolutely, it's, it's really interesting. And I think it's, you know, it's one of those things that I could see be really, really powerful. It could also be, like you said, there could absolutely be, you know, some risk there if people take some of these assessments and, you know, don't think objectively about the, the individual, right, so, so how do you kind of work through that, like, I'll just give you an example of what I'm thinking about. So like that hiring manager who gets this assessment that uses this, and just takes that as, as gospel, you know, that says, Well, this says, I can't hire this person. So I'm not going to

David Jones: 27:16

that is not the way that psychometric assessments should be used, right? The way they should be used is, that can be very efficient, right, in terms of getting a high number of applicants, very quickly shortlisted to people that you want to have a video interview with, or even ultimately have a face to face discussion, right? So it can be very good at that, it can be very good at helping you to improve the quality of your discussion, right? Because it's going to give you an insight, and accelerate your insights and your understanding of this person to say actually, these are the things I really want to find out more, because these are the things that are coming up as distinct about this person compared to the average or compared to the norm group of 10s, or hundreds of 1000s of other people. Right. So that's the way it should be used. I think, ultimately, you know, talk about human resources, you know, we are still human being human beings, right. And we were using this as a decision. decision making tool, right. It's like a decision aid. And I think a lot of AI and a lot of technology, at this point of its evolution is safely used as that, right, that you are sort of trying to give more information, trying to get more insights to a human being, the human being uses that judgment, which is their professional skill. And is the decision making the things that may come in the future? I'm not sure. But the things that are probably a little bit alarming right now is when that whole process is automated? Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's where we need to be careful, because we're still at the infancy of this. And if we, if we go in the wrong direction, the data can be biased, the applications can be biased, and we could end up in pretty bad space. Why all we have to rip it all up and start again.

Kyle Roed: 29:07

Absolutely, I think, you know, that's a really great point. And I think I've seen this time and time again, we're, you know, we've used some sort of an assessment and, you know, in, and it almost is like a crutch to eliminate the decision making process. It's like, well, this said that, so we can't do this, you know, and it's like, no, you have to apply, you know, some reasoning to this. And, and there's a lot of different factors that could be at play. So like, Yeah, I like how you said it, that it's a tool to aid in the decision making process.

David Jones: 29:44

Absolutely. I think the other the other thing to mention that I think is really fascinating is even in we're only a 10 year old company, right? But even in that 10 years, we've seen some quite interesting developments in the data over that time period, right? And so you have to be a minded enough to be concerned about the data and see how dynamic that data is right? The two biggest areas that we've seen changes in particularly for under 20 fives you complete some of our assessments is that you used to be thought on a lot of assessments, right? That you were either introverted or extroverted. Right? And then from a motivation perspective, it was thought, Okay, you're either going to be intrinsically motivated, or you're going to be extrinsically. motivated, right, and you're one or the other, right. And what we're finding increasingly with with the younger age group, and also with returning women to the workplace, this is another demographic where these these these these these factors seem to come into play is we're finding that actually, what people are demonstrating is, is the preference and the ability to be both, right? So we're finding people who are and be Trinsic in their motivation, right. So like, under 25, is coming to the organization saying, Okay, I want to be very highly rewarded. And I like to be recognized. And I like praise, and I like feedback. And I expect that right. And I thrive on in that situation. But I also at the same time expect to be paid very well. And so I want all of that extrinsic recognition. But I also want to work in a environment where I get a sense of meaning, where the organizational values are aligned to my values, where I think there's a sense of purpose, I feel proud about talking about my job with my friends and my family. I want both of those. I don't want one or the other, I'm not willing to sacrifice one or the other. And similarly with extrovert and introvert, we're finding this ambivert phenomenon, right with, with younger people, right? Where, right, right in different fields, maybe more on social media, I'm willing to be very open with you, right, I'll like your post, I'll not like your post, I'll troll you, I'll tell you that you're amazing. I'll tell you that you're terrible, no problem. And I'll share lots of information about myself, that maybe, you know, people of my generation would hesitate to do, right. Conversely, on the face to face aspects, the same person in a slightly different situation is maybe going to be slightly more uncomfortable or less, preferring the sorts of interactions that maybe we you know, we all relied on much more exclusively, 2030 years ago.

Kyle Roed: 32:29

Absolutely. And I think I think that's really interesting. And I think the key, the key takeaway there is it's it's dynamic, right? And we're talking about human brains, we're talking about neurodiversity. neuroplasticity, things change, people change, cultures change. You know, it's in, you've got to be open minded and, and flexible. So well, we are with that we are coming towards the end of our time together, and I want to make sure that you actually get to enjoy your evening a little bit. So we're gonna shift gears go into the rebel HR flash round. So question number one, where does HR need to rebel?

David Jones: 33:09

Okay, well, I think probably the short answer is everywhere. I think the longer answer would be. I don't. I'm British, right? So I guess we'd love aphorisms, right? So I'll give you a couple of aphorisms, right. So I think rules are for the guidance of wise men and the adherence of falls, okay. I think HR best practice HR policies, they are all there for a very good purpose. And they're written for consistency and fairness. And you can see the value of that, right. So I'm not getting that, right. But if we want to value individuals, and we want to be creative, and we want to stick to our philosophy and our principles, then we need to use those as guidance for decision making, but we don't need to slavishly follow them. And maybe this is the difference. I don't know that this is the cultural difference. But this I think, is really very important that we, we understand the purpose, but we think pragmatically and we think dynamically about how we how we do it, and I think the other aphorism, which really resonates for me is, you know, human resources. When I went into the profession, whatever that was, like 30 odd years ago now. I think. Actually, for me, the priorities change, I think we don't need so much human resources. If you think about how we're perceived by our customers, by our, by our organization, sometimes what we need is less jargon, maybe less talking to ourselves, more understanding other people and ultimately, we need less HR and more resilient human human beings right in the more resourceful human beings, right? So if we can create a culture where people are empowered, they're confident aren't capable, that that's actually what we need to do rather than legislate for what they should or shouldn't do.

Kyle Roed: 35:08

Yeah, yeah. I don't want legislate to be anywhere in my job description. I agree. All right, question number two, who should we be listening to.

David Jones: 35:20

So I think that sort of guidance that we're getting like about the sort of echo chambers that a lot of us live in is probably a wise one, we should listen to, like, people who disagree with us, because I think we can learn a lot from people that we disagree with, we can either confirm our beliefs or we can learn something new. I think we should also listen to people that we trust, because people that you trust, whether that's your colleagues, whether that's your friends, your family tend to give you more open and honest feedback. And then on one of the technical points we discussed earlier, I think there's cultural aspect, as a really good book, and a really good researcher at the moment, which I'm really getting into which I would highly recommend a guy called Joseph Heinrich, I think he's Canadian. He wrote a book a couple of years ago called weird people weird is an acronym for Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. So basically, he's saying that all of social science, including human resources, is over reliance on this sort of culturally biased datasets. And we need to sort of get a more sort of representative sample.

Kyle Roed: 36:24

Fascinating. I love that I'm looking that book up. I haven't heard that but weird people that, you know that that definitely does describe me. So you know, I think he's fun. All right. Last question, how can our listeners connect with you and learn more?

David Jones: 36:38

Okay, so if anybody's interested to find out more about the talent enterprise, then you can look at the top enterprise.com. If you want to contact me directly, there may be my email, David at the talent enterprise.com. I'd be happy to field any questions or give any further information, if that's relevant.

Kyle Roed: 36:59

Absolutely, we'll have that information in the show notes. David also has some some books that he's he's written. There's some published books out there are some great resources on the website. So encourage you to check that out. David, it's just been absolutely wonderful getting to connect with you appreciate you sharing some of these insights. Thank you so much.

David Jones: 37:17

Thank you very much, Carl. Thank you very much. Enjoyed it. Enjoy your evening. Thank you,

Kyle Roed: 37:22

too. All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe