Sun 12 Feb 2006

This article was published in the Autumn 2004 edition of the magazine of Executive Action, a leading out placement agency.


After transforming his own career as a client of Executive Action, Phil Jepson is now helping other people to understand their working lives using a revolutionary profiling tool.

From the cardinal humours to Myers-Briggs, the trend since 1000BC been to profile people’s behavioural make-up in two dimensions, reducing their infinite variety to straightforward categories, often based only on a two by two square grid. This is a mistake according to Phil Jepson, consultant and head-hunter and advocate of a new approach called Parallax that uses a 3D approach based on the biological make-up of the brain.
He said: “The 2D approach will give you a broad steer on how people behave, but it will miss key issues. For instance, if you need to recruit a dominant CEO, a standard 2D test will find someone dominant, but it won’t tell you about the nature of their dominance. They could be an autocrat who is motivated by power, a dealmaker motivated by money or a competitor motivated by winning. If you don’t know which they are, you could get a mismatch.”
“Similarly, the 2D tools can be misleading if you’re trying to create a cohesive team. In a past role I worked with someone who appeared to be very similar, matching three of my four behavioural categories on a 2D profile. In fact the profiles for both of us were very superficial and the reality was that we were nowhere near as compatible as the profile suggested. In reality we didn’t gel at all.”
It is also relatively easy to influence the results of a 2D test, which was what inspired Parallax’s creator John Battye to come up with a new tool.
“During his work in the City, John became aware of the shortcomings of the tools used for assessment and selection,” said Phil. “He needed something better to use within his own organisation for assembling a large project team. Using cutting edge work on consciousness and brain development, he created a new form of profiling that was more rigorous and robust and would be much more effective.”
Since its genesis in the eighties, Parallax has evolved into an online questionnaire that assesses the three dimensions of the brain: from above, to assess your external view of the world; from the rear, to assess your internal processing state; and from the side to assess your motivational attitude. When the questionnaire is completed, a consultant like Phil is on hand to interpret the results and give feedback appropriate to the brief, whether it’s recruitment, succession planning, performance management, stress analysis, personal development or any other application.
“Parallax is biologically based, relating to the areas of the brain that govern specific behaviours, which means it’s much more comprehensive than psychological tools,” said Phil. “We all know about right and left brain characteristics, but all behaviour is governed by the brain and understanding the locations in the brain which govern the prevailing behaviours of an individual provides a wealth of information about them.”
“Parallax shows exactly which areas of the brain people use most often. Each person will have a focal area in their brain which they use the most. That tells us a lot about how they are likely to behave and about how they are unlikely to behave.
The questions in the Parallax questionnaire provide information which is multidimensional and the inter relation in three dimensions makes it extremely difficult to beat.
Parallax is a pattern-based system which means that every profile is unique so the feedback is truly relevant to you.”
Another key feature of Parallax is that it not only provides surface level feedback on how an individual sees themselves but also deep level feedback on how others will see them, or the behaviours they will default to over time.
Phil’s profile shows that he is a team-oriented, values-driven strategist who is progressive and change oriented.
“I recognised myself in the profile, in a way I never did with 2D tests. Now I’m enjoying helping other people to get the benefits of the tool.”
- To find out more about Parallax, call Phil Jepson on 07775 742366.