Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson explains in this video emotional intelligence testing, which results in what experts call The Big 5, can determine who is a conservative and who is a liberal. We often see these two groups mentioned in political discussions and most democratic nations have labelled liberal and conservative parties. When tested for emotional intelligence, liberals tend to have high openness and a low conscientiousness attribute. Going into the details, liberals usually have low orderliness. This is because the liberal niche is the free flow of information, and they think that is worth taking risks.
Openness means being open to new ideas and being creative, which is great when we need to solve a problem we have never encountered before. Conscientiousness relates to one’s ability to see a situation in all its scope and constituent parts. A conscientious worker will strive to do quality work, responsible, organized, hard-working and goal oriented. These are all quality attributes for any company employee. On the other hand, responsible employees will usually be risk averse when risk taking may mean the success or failure of a project. It is a double-edged sword.
For liberals, an environment without some risk and diversity can very uncomfortable and boring. Liberals prefer the free flow of concepts across categories. Breaking the mold is great when a company needs to innovate, create new paradigms, and enter a new market. Most innovative companies are stock full of liberal thinkers for that reason, and for that same reason, they often break social and business norms.
Conservatives tend to measure lower in openness and high in conscientiousness, especially orderliness. In those attributes, they are the exact opposite to liberals, and as such, they take the opposite position to liberals, seeing danger in the porosity of conceptual boundaries. Though a conservative person may be less open to new ideas and less creative, they are amazing at keeping things running smoothly, keeping project timelines and budgets on target.
Dr. Peterson says that both ideas are correct, depending on the situation. Sometimes we want the team to find alternative solutions to problems, disrupt an industry, or take risks on a new key feature to roll out to customers. Sometimes, the team needs to focus on running their unit smoothly, on time and according to existing customer expectations. Most companies, like governments, need both types of people who measure in the opposite ends of these characteristics to cover all the bases, depending on what the team is trying to achieve at any given time. A large organization may need more conservative thinkers in finance to keep the company afloat while the research and development team discovers new products to sell in the market the following year.
Thankfully, CykoMetrix has useful tools to measure team member’s openness, conscientiousness, orderliness and over 50 other attributes that can be useful to managers who want to create effective team compositions. Organizations that want to make sure they have a well-balanced team of liberals and conservative thinkers can use CykoMetrix services to measure and adjust their teams for best outcomes.
The company’s Team Evolution tool allows human resources departments to find the perfect candidate that will balance out a team regarding consciousness, orderliness, and openness by offering a more complete vision using The Cykometrix Super 7. The CykoMetrix surveys quantify a new candidate’s complex personalities, motivations and cognitive abilities and combines them into those important 7 characteristics.
Conservatives will tend to measure high in the CykoMetrix Leadership, Collaboration, Execution, and Dependability within a team environment (what CykoMetrix measures. Within a diverse team, these are the people who will take care of everyone, and they will ensure the team reaches its objectives. Liberal thinkers in the team will usually measure high in the CykoMetrix Presence and Empathy to where openness and creativity contributes most. In the team, they will read the room, ensure great communication between team members, and they will be the ones to bring up the most innovative out-of-the-box ideas.
The CykoMetrix “Team Dynamic” tool helps companies create an ideal team composition when there is a need to downsize or shift personnel around, while improving team climate.
Using these advanced tools allows organizations to include liberal thinkers and conservative thinkers into their teams to become resilient, effective, and productive. With these services, anyone can build a steadfast team that can also disrupt an industry.