Identifying Potential in a Large UK Retailer
The relevance of assessing Personality, Abilities and Motivation & Mental Toughness
As part of a large Organisational Development programme, one of the UK’s largest retail organisations (employing c. 50,000 staff) introduced an assessment centre programme for managers who were previously assessed as having potential for growth and promotion. The interest lay in identifying people who would be successful as Regional Managers and as Large Store Managers
The assessment centre programme comprised, as you might expect, a typical mix of psychometrics, group and individual exercises, presentations and structured interviews. The two psychometric measures used were the Prevue Assessment and MTQ48, the mental toughness questionnaire.
The Prevue assessment is a high-quality measure of personality (behavioural), abilities, and interests that is widely used in recruitment and selection. It was originally developed by Prof David Bartram, one of the world’s leading psychometricians.
Mental toughness is a leading-edge concept that describes the aspect of personality that explains how people respond mentally to stressors, pressure, opportunities, and challenges. Fundamentally important for the ability to thrive. The MTQPlus, which is the advanced form of the MTQ48, assesses these elements in significant detail (8 factors).
On completion of the exercise, a validation exercise was carried out by Professor Peter Clough. This correlated data from the development centre programme with data from performance reviews and an assessment of each individual’s potential and performance in their current role. All are already at the Assistant or Deputy Store Manager level.
The study showed that there was a strong relationship between Mental Toughness scores (MTQ48) and performance on the Assessment Centre and performance in the workplace.
There was also a strong relationship with key scales in the Prevue Assessment – particularly the ability scales and the independence, conscientiousness and extraversion scales.
The study also identified that these two measures were the strongest indicators of promotion potential and performance in the assessment centre programme.
