so thanks so much for coming and talking with me about all things personality and you know the area is so huge right um and you have taught personality in so many different contexts and you've used personality assessments in so many different contexts maybe a good place to start is just with something about your background and how it is that you came to this world of personality assessment through you i'm the culprit is that it okay it's all your fault but but actually it's interesting because going into graduate program thinking that i wasn't sure what i wanted to do if i want to be a therapist or to be in sort of administration not knowing what was out there and then getting to a place where i wasn't sure how i felt about therapy now of course i love it and i have a private practice but um trying to figure out what my lane was realizing that i liked assessment and then really digging into it pretty heavily in my work then um after a while there was a little bit of a break right because i went and taught at a community college where there was not assessment but then being recruited into teach assessment again at the graduate level really helped me just i mean i i love assessment you know at the time i was doing really sort of a traditional kind of assessment pais and nmpis personality assessment i would teach a class on intellectual or cognitive assessment teacher personality assessment this was a teacher college columbia a supervising assessment i was you know reading a million assessment reports and just being really in depth but then about seven years ago seven yes seven years ago now i went to a faculty meeting and one of the faculty was wearing a suit which as you know we don't do that right right right now except for now that's faculty right but and i and somebody asked her in the faculty meeting where are you going and she said i'm going to a funeral but it was a blue suit so i knew that something was fishy oh and so i waited about a week later and she said actually i went to this interview for corn fairy the biggest executive search firm in the world and she said she was going to be a search assessment manager for the new york office and i had no idea what executive search was i didn't know what a search assessment manager was anything um and she explained that what happens is um in these sort of big retained search firms a company will pay the the firm you know a huge amount of money more than we have right to do a search and then when they get to the end when they're looking at their last two to three finalists they need somebody to come in and in court fairy's case do a screen so they have an internal ip tool that was created or that um that they were using at the time that wasn't theirs but you were able to sort of get on the phone with the client and say here are the things here's what this person's going to do well here your watch outs help them give them data to make a decision now by screen you mean you're looking to screen things out yes okay yeah well i mean it's screen fit okay right so um in the tool that we first were using it's this tool that that doesn't really get used anymore called decision styles it was about interpersonal sort of how a person is interpersonally how they connect with people and then cognitive how they make decisions so um that role then ended up opening up in los angeles after she was already there and i thought why not uh-huh right it's using assessment and when i was being recruited you went out and got a blue suit is that it and i sat with this woman who recruited me who now is one of my close friends she works she actually left also search and went to google she said you are still doing assessment you are still a psychologist you have not sold out to the man like that's why i thought i was like oh my gosh this corporate oh she's like you're helping people make really important decisions they're just different types of decisions and so because it's a giant change moving from academia where you're teaching graduate students assessment to moving into a corporate culture right especially with teachers college you're spending a lot of time in multicultural counseling competency you're talking about race and culture and ethnicity and sexual orientation and all of these things and you're moving from that to a very corporate culture where you're dealing with a very different not only client base but internal client base right that is not what's going on well you get to use some of your cross-cultural things don't you because it's a whole different culture yes there's a whole different culture so i i ended up taking the role in los angeles and moved to los angeles and was doing that and so at corn ferry you do the assessments for every search that that they do so at one point i looked at my at my sort of in the system i was on 195 searches in that moment so what would happen is every search that would happen in the los angeles houston dallas offices and in the sports practice so mba searches nfl searches um which were fascinating in their own right right i mean you're watching it on espn and you're also doing the search but anything there i was on those searches but i wasn't meeting the candidates i was just looking at the data right and then getting on the phone with the board and saying here are my thoughts okay and so i got really good at understanding a profile and looking at it pretty quickly and and so they would always say like here she is she's a wizard and it really wasn't that magic but after you see that profile so many times so these assessments would have been given by somebody else and then you would have the profiles oh it's all online you would you would say great here's a link candidate yep you know and sometimes it was like an nfl coach for you know and say take this thing right or it'd be a ceo candidate or be a vp of sales canada or something and then you would look at it you'd get an idea saying what does this candidate need to have given this role right you need something different from a ceo than you need from a vp of sales right and then you would look at the profile and say okay where are the benchmarks at the time i was at corn ferry they were developing a neutral so that was fascinating i was sitting next to um james lewis who was one of the brains behind corn ferry's new tool which is is one of the best tools in the market wow so it's a combination of because we're in leadership and sort of business so it's not a hardcore pure personality measure but there's a lot in there right yeah confident arrogant you know interpersonal savvy being too political like all of that all of those things come into play so personality in some ways that's adapted to the kind of workplace environment of business and industry yeah and so i stayed there for a while i moved more internal as well running a couple teams in data science and they have a cordon fairy institute that was there so i was doing some behind the scenes and then i really missed doing the client-facing work yeah yeah yeah yeah and i never got to meet the candidates very well that's a big yeah and i never got to pitch the work so all of that sort of big corporatey stuff that i thought i would be able to do i wasn't able to do and then i got recruited by hydric which is one of the other big search firms in the world um they have a bigger ceo and board practice okay um as as a part of uh as a percentage of their work so they do more work they do less work than corn ferry but they do more work at the top of the house okay they put in more ceos yep yep so and you can work more not just on the back end but on the front end right and that was the that was sort of the the carrot saying you come here it cornferrio has a team of eight here i'm a team of one uh-huh so they said you're by yourself you don't have anybody but you have um you'll be the person that flies across the country and helps us walk in a room with the board and pitch a search you'll be the person that sits with each candidate and interviews them in depth so and and you'll be the person who then presents that information back to a board and now you're really helping make important decisions because you're able to spend a lot more time so that's why i moved over so you're in you're not just interpreting profiles now you're actually collecting the data itself right which is through that interaction and that must open up another whole opportunity for assessment because you're meeting the person right and all the personal cues and interpersonal right actually now i feel like my therapy background has been really useful because you know it's not just here's the data what i what i tend to do is say here's an online battery where i use a variety of different measures usually two to three because otherwise you don't want sort of diminishing returns the candidate gets tired right there are some firms and assessment houses that will do they'll talk about simulations they'll keep a candidate for full days they'll do multi-hour assessments i find that if i can can i get the most out of them in a short amount of time then i'm going to get them more engaged so i'll give them a couple of personality measures i'll give them a leadership measure sometimes we give one about agility because i think that that's something that really comes into play agility like flexibility and capacity to change yeah and sort of transform and being thrown into things with ambiguity or a lot of uncertainty because that's what happens a lot of these places and then i'll take the data and then i just think about it like what are my questions now if i see a profile where somebody is highly extroverted low interpersonal sensitivity and then overconfident and then has high power needs for example you're seeing some warning signs is that it right now but that's actually most ceos but when it gets too too extreme you think okay what does that profile tell me now what do i want to know so now i want to ask them questions about when did you get something wrong tell me about the last person who let you down tell me about um you know when when you had to change your your plan your strategy midstream because something was you you didn't you didn't give all the information like you want to figure out is this is this how are they sort of rigid in this right right so this is like this is a case then where you're using the data from the personality inventories as a springboard to ask additional questions so you're not just interpreting what they give you but you're using that as an opportunity to dig deeper into wow okay this is a whole different dimension then isn't it right because you can see sometimes people are they've learned a lot they've been coached they are highly self-aware sure right so you they can say they'll say to you i had one that i was talking to dubai did not sleep it's because they're 11 hours ahead of us but i was talking to this guy in dubai and i said um i said you know your talking to you is really interesting because your profile looks really different than this he goes uh yeah he's like i've gone through years of coaching i know what i do i know if i have these sort of direct reports i used to be much more command and control i used to be a lot more of a micro manager and now i've learned to soften myself and so i tell clients i would rather have that guy who has a quirky profile who is self-aware who has made adjustments and they kind of know their own they don't have blind spots they know interesting right then somebody who is like has this amazing profile who is like born on third base and thinks they had a trouble right right right because once that guy gets into trouble right he doesn't have the resources the resilience the self-awareness to kind of see around the corner and know how to fix the problem and this is part of what you can only get by virtue of talking with the person then too that would have been much more difficult to get from the profile alone if it were static but in the process of interaction you can kind of sus some of that out right so what would be some example of some of the inventories or instruments that you use and some of the characteristics because you said you you kind of look for different characteristics for different positions so you're kind of trying to fit the person to the position what might work for one position might not work for another right so what would be some examples of inventories that you might use or characteristics you might be looking for a screening for well there's a few that people use um the ones i use the most mostly use the hogan um the hogan is broken down into three different smaller inventories one's called the hpi token personality inventory which is really your technically your big five okay measure it looks at extra version and conscientiousness you can see agreeableness right right all that stuff okay they also have the hds which is a it's a it's a derailers measure so it's saying under stress uh-huh what's going to happen with this person i see right so we all have those things it's very boring when somebody has it's all low you know they're just so blah blah blah yes um so it's good to have a little spark right but you don't want to have too much right you don't want to flame you spark yes flame no okay and then they've got the motives and values inventory which is what gets this person out of bed in the morning okay so they look at things like recognition needs power needs altruism needs something really interesting with marketing or chief operating officers chief marketing officers they have a little section that looks at aesthetic needs and analytical or science needs and so you'll have some people who are very high aesthetic for example and they don't understand that people who have low aesthetic needs who are like if data can be ugly just give me the data it has to be right whereas the other people are like it's not right unless it's beautiful ah right oh interesting so you know you can see when you have some people who are kind of other other things that are micromanaging and you're like why is this not working and they get really nitpicky because it has to you know i mean i i feel for them because i i also have high aesthetic needs okay but still it's those kind of things you look at so you think about the position so for you know for example a ceo you're looking at somebody who not only is able to inspire influence people right because they have to do that but they also have to have a strategic mind they can't be too detail-oriented right they don't have that luxury they've got to have a big picture they need to be somebody who doesn't need a hundred percent of the information to move forward yep it'd be good if they liked you know 75 percent of the information we don't want somebody who only needs 30 percent yeah but they can't get analysis paralysis either they've got to be able to make a call exactly somebody who values learning somebody who wants to develop other people i mean there's all of that that that person needs so you're looking at how that fits and they have to be comfortable in front of other people right they have to be someone who is willing to be sort of front of camera visible um they got to be hood on it but they got to be comfortable being a hood ornament right pretty much yep pretty much and and so you're sort of looking at all of those things together when you take all the three measures and they have some they have a bunch of really interesting subscales which have horrible names so we never showed them to the client i mean the scales for the hogan are bad enough they have like a hedonism scale oh yeah that doesn't sound too good right right it's not good um they have a leisurely scale they have a mischievous scale it's just not good names but the sub skills are worse it's like fantasized talent manipulative risky passive aggressively territory here yeah yeah it's just bad no one needs to see that need to know basis huh yeah but if you look at all of that you can get an idea of where are the pain points where is this person going to struggle and then you think about where you're trying to place this person for the organization so like we just did a search for a company that makes and leases railway cars right it's a big industrial company it's like i mean i learned all these really interesting i didn't even know that there are companies that even did that and they just they would tell me like well when you when you make a railway car if it's going to transport oil for example it has to have this particular coating or it has to have this maps to that so you think about that when you sit with a candidate and and the internal guys you would say tell me you know tell me about something that went wrong and they're like oh you know i made these railroad cars and i put the wrong coding and then we could do i mean they're they're telling you about these multi-million dollar mistakes they're making sure but you want to hear that because you're looking at their data and sort of saying okay is there is is the the places where they have the quirks is it going to get in the way is it going to keep them from being able to do a job right so you sort of take all of that with all the questioning and then you come back you write a big really long report and then you go walk into a board room and you say hear my thoughts wow wow you literally pitch it the various and you're talking about a number it feels like sometimes like a like a defense right because some every client's different some clients are like that's great thank you very much so helpful so helpful some clients are like let me ask you this so if this person does so and so we've got this cfo that we're thinking about getting rid of her we have this board member who's really difficult that we're thinking about selling the company in five years and they give you all these different scenarios and then they say this candidate that you just met tell us what he's going to do in this situation wow so you do a lot of that's almost like an interrogation then that's almost like a tribunal it's reminding me of a doctoral dissertation defense or something where you're on the spot yeah okay so there's a fine line between being a a a diagnostician and a prague prognosticator and they're asking they're almost putting you in a position of magician right tell me what would happen to this so how how precise can you be i mean how i mean obviously they're they're paying good money so they're expecting that there's value in those assessment services and and how accurate can you be when you do this work right i mean in the end you say i spent two hours with the guy uh-huh right but when you think about these searches as ceo search they may be paying our company half a million dollars right they're like they're and what they think of and the partners pitch me and they're saying she's your backup she's your d-risk you know you're sort of de-risking fire yeah right so that and there are times in which i've sat with somebody and i've said you know i just have concerns right sometimes i get it wrong like there is a a client that we had i saw the guy's results and i was like this guy's a jerk you know and i told the board this guy's a jerk and one of the board members said i like that guy he's just like me and they hired him and now i didn't get it wrong in the fact that he was the way he was that when they called later they're saying when he called as the new ceo and i had to go over his data with him i did not share the report it didn't say that he was a jerk but it was kind of close but i shared his data with him and i went over the data and said here are the concerns that we that i had about you and so he understood that and then we went we hired his he wanted to have me along when they hired a cfo and his c.o.o so he was like i know i'm kind of difficult so can you find somebody that will that will work with me oh right so now you've got to find somebody to work with a guy that you didn't want him to hire to begin with right okay so the partners in the beginning were saying you know what you just can't say that like he's he's he's not he's not that bad but i think in the end we were both right because he did get the job he's done a good job he is the way the result said i mean he's not a relationship manager let's put it like but he has found a way to make the company successful and he's now picking a way to hire people around him who can handle him well it sounds like he was mindful enough to know that he's he's asking you to help him find somebody who could work with him right which is but that's pretty interesting right and he still likes us i mean he still calls like i'm thinking about hiring this guy you know and can you give me an example of one that seemed that you seemed to nail it um either good bad or ugly that it worked out uh you know that you screened somebody out that would have been a real problem or turned out to be a great asset and a great fit i mean i think we get them right more than we get them wrong like i think about um you know we recently put in the i mean it's it's still short-term but we recently put in the ceo of bed bath and beyond um the company was um you know in in sort of a troubling situation and the board was really great board and and they're trying to figure out the right candidate and um we had it was really a hard one because we had three amazing candidates and so that's sometimes the hardest reports embarrassment of riches yeah you're just trying to figure out how do you differentiate how do you you know um but we're very different from each other in some ways they had some styles there was enough you could sort of get that feeling and they the person they picked is when they announced the pick i thought that's the right pick you know i mean it's still early i think he's been in the role now for a few months but i mean especially and then he's the right person to be there with covid and everything else that's happening and just sort of navigating that he's been fabulous that's great so i think um so that's a good that's an example of one that looks like it's gone really well yeah yeah it's interesting because you you it's not just it's not just the person it's it's not just the position it's the fit of the person with the position and then there's also like a corporate culture right like bed bath and beyond is probably different than i don't know ibm right i mean we just recently put in somebody in the head of a big family company that owns a nba team so it's a huge conglomerate it's just huge it's massive but the culture there was so intense it was not in a bad way it's just so strong it's um it's just everybody that we talked to and we went and walked the halls and and met everybody that everybody spontaneously were like the culture is really important we have to get the culture fit important you have to get the culture fit right and you're like oh my gosh we actually have measures that do take the temperature of the culture i see okay so that we have an idea of what we're looking for that help as well wow so you really look at organizational fit as well very interesting now now we've been talking a fair amount about what might come under the category of sort of objective assessments right and there's this whole category of sort of projective assessment which i loved which you loved okay i love rorschach okay more than anybody all right tell me about your let me tell you talk about your love affair with rorschach what is it that that uh you and rorschach what is that about you know and it's funny because i don't get to use it anymore and my my toddler was walking around i found her yet this morning with my rorschach book maybe it was preaching this conversation when she was walking and i was like oh no no baby but um i just loved that if you knew what you were doing and i think that's the biggest key is that a lot of people aren't taught meticulously i mean you cannot teach a rorschach to somebody in six weeks right right i mean it's when it's a skill it's really a skill it was through an entire semester and even then it's not enough time right i mean it's just getting used to seeing and scoring and just all the practice and you know those core practice tests that you've had in the workbook or really important but if you did all that right you would find out things about people that you would not be able to find out in in other words like what what would be an example of what you in the best of worlds might be able to get out of a projective rorschach would be a great case in point that would be really difficult to get through an objective assessment you know i would think about the things about how a person scans the environment how a person sees the world that you don't no one thinks about that right no one thinks about when someone walks into a room what do they see are they spending all of their time on this detail in this deal and this is the fact that it's overwhelming their senses and maybe that's why they're not paying attention to you in that moment as opposed to someone who is they walk in they see you they focus on you it's a different way of approaching the world i mean i think there are really other interesting factors about the rorschach looking at anxiety or suicidality or or all these other things that were you know the idea of looking at rage and figuring out what anger under likes from underlying anger things like that i found really interesting but what i think we we can still get to that in other ways where i think that the ability to understand how a person and maybe that's more in some ways neurological but it's still important yeah and seeing how somebody initially approaches and engages with an environment it's an interesting point yeah um i always found to be fast because that that would be more unidimensional when it comes to objective assessment whereas here you have access to sort of the process you're engaging the person in a process the rorschach wouldn't work online in the same way that a objective measure would and it really is that interactive element the way they engage the way they process that that becomes sort of a figural element not just what they say and the product of what comes out of it i mean it will never happen but if i was able to sort of walk in and see a ceo candidate and say do all these other things these are all really important and this is actually what the the client needs to know but we're going to do real shock you would in the perfect world you would add you would slip in the rorschach it's 45 minutes right but it just but not but you're in a corporate environment now yeah and so you can't do the projective tests okay i mean the most i can do now is think about i try to i think the most projective thing in a way i can do is ask questions that people are not expecting that feel like they're completely unrelated i see so i feel like it's not projective but it's still it still catches people off guard like i'll walk in and i'll see somebody and we're chatting about something and i'll like i said i'll say who's the last person to let you down they're like like personally professionally i was like you know anything right or like just throw them some some sort of sideways from left field right right right that you you want to that give you nuggets about who they are that you're not gonna get from tools or so it's rorschach-like in the sense that you're getting a sense of their reaction kind of an unvarnished reaction from something that's unanticipated and you're really interested in not just what they say but how they react okay interesting interesting okay you get more when you start talking to candidates too just about personal things i mean if you can sort of throw that in some candidates go straight for it they're like oh and then my daughter did this or oh you know my kids did this or you know especially now in the time of doing everything via zoom yeah you know so i was interviewing somebody and then all of a sudden you see their cat you know come across oh for sure and getting those those are trying to figure out who they are because everybody until now can sort of hide a lot of those things they put on a suit they leave their house they walk into a building they walk into a board room they yeah i know that as much as anybody else i mean i have to do the same thing and you know you won't see me in a suit ever in life outside of that moment so you really have access to them in a different way right which is interesting now when i think about personality assessment i you know i think about it you know nested within the the whole developing field of personality and i think about it as kind of this like the study or the investigation or the assessment of individual differences um you know how what makes this person tick what makes this person distinctively greg or teresa or or whatever and what are the you know what are the good bad and ugly what's the profile of strengths and weak but that's all kind of like individual differences um and and and yet we're in a world in which there's also dramatic cultural variation right um and so what do how do you reconcile the need to sort of assess these broader societal and cultural contextual features with the assessment of the individual i mean it comes into play when you think about the environment okay right so when we first started doing this when i first started doing this i was doing mostly work with american companies for example and um but if you take some candidates and let's say that it's a it's a chinese corporation it's a japanese corporation it's a german corporation a german corporation and you put we're not in kansas anymore somebody who's who is they know who they are they're interesting they're they're compelling they can inspire people they're emotional and you put them in some a very sort of static buttoned up cultural context no matter how great they are they're gonna fall on their face yeah right similarly if you take someone who is thoughtful processed um detail oriented executes well high integrity you know doesn't really show a lot in their sleep but but they really get everything done and you put them in a brazilian company they're going to fall in their face right because you know you'll have you have a lot more executives who are more emotionally transparent and who are more what we think of as excitable which here we might think of as a bad thing there it's actually a good thing right right so you have to think about all of those differences about um you know it's not just is this person a good person or when we started a sane person right it's are they the right person that's gonna go into the right environment so we would always think about and pitch to a client about you know it can be a good heart but if it doesn't fit the body it's going to be rejected right and so you have to make sure that that the the body doesn't reject the organ doesn't matter how pristine and perfect the organ is so you know i think all of that is thinking about not just anything bigger than who this person is right yeah no i i i can see that i can see the importance of being able to assess the the culture and the business as much as the individual him or herself and um and that adds another whole dimension to trying to establish a goodness of fit this person for this position at this time uh and that's another element of it if the business is imperiled and you're trying to get somebody into rescue and change and they need an extreme makeover kind of person because those guys are usually sometimes they're not that nice i mean i recently we put in a ceo that we knew was a turnaround like when i think of a turnaround ceo it doesn't have to be all the time because there are some really interesting fun kind of turnaround guys but a lot of times there's somebody who comes in they look at the lay of the land they don't make a lot of relationships they're going to fire a bunch of people they're scorched earth slash and burn they move quickly they're like you out you you have seven kids who cares you're out you you whatever you work here for 25 years too bad you're out and they just heartless right right now they save the business right but they've just left you know a trail of bodies right right right right so but sometimes there are times you talk to the client you're like that's what you need uh-huh that's what you you're giving me three candidates they're all like this no one is going to go golfing with this guy right right right right but this is you know this is what you're looking for and they're like yes and you had a recent example of just this and the board they what do they do they say can you they they know they're like we know okay can you find us at least the nicest of the the one you know the least satanic of the three huh right but the thing is if you look at the if you look at let's say the linkedin profile of sometimes that are you'll see somebody they'll say i'm a turnaround ceo and you look at their linkedin they stay everywhere for two to three years two three years like they just they they're amazing they save your business they we're thin and they're also just not interested anymore they're like i saved it what's next sure so they think about things differently yeah no no no yeah no i can see that they're good for a purpose they're good for a cause they do that well the record reflects that right and then they slash and burn they move on they make all their money right and they they cash out quick investing with them you invest them for a few years well but it works for everyone doesn't it works for the candidate it works for the business the business is rescued and then they can find a different kind of person who can build from you know not the ashes but to build from a foundation that was left behind that's right and the other guy has an island somewhere all right because he just keeps making money from all the places so you so you have had an interesting relationship to personality assessment across your time from from being from teaching in a doctoral program to applying it in a corporate uh a corporate kind of environment what's next for you what do you see as you as you enter this next stage i mean it there's there's a couple answers one is i really like where i am because i'm just getting my feet wet and just i've been doing that for about three years here so i feel like i feel like i could could i look back and say oh i've been here for 15 years yes it'd be the one place i've been the longest but it feels like there's a lot of challenges right i don't want to keep doing the same thing over and over again so i feel like this is a place where i can i can spend a lot of time and have a lot of interesting work right so for example we're just in the process of doing a getting ready to beta test a tool that i helped sort of as a spearhead with the main um h-lapse which is the the tech guys and sort of the the brains of hydric giveaway so we're creating a tool where you can give to a board and you can have them take a little tool on their phone or their tablet that may then you can get a report afterwards it'll say here's all the characteristics that the board thinks this person should have and here's the level of alignment that everybody has so it can it can help sort of lead a discussion instead of just asking everybody for an hour how do you feel how do you feel so that is interesting yeah now if i left here the natural place would be something like a venture capital firm private equity firm possibly like a hedge fund place like um a lot of the the partners here call me wendy from billions oh really because they also sometimes want they're like give me the truth about myself i'll go and take all the tools and i'll do all these things and then i'll just say here's the deal so um so there's there's a bit of that that happens and that would be a natural move to kind of move from doing this to let's say moving to a private equity firm and so they say before we buy this company that's in peril go look at them you know assess the current ceo should we keep him did it does should we keep the leadership team like that might be right a natural move but then there's also the be here for a while do something interesting and then end up as a old lady who has a little private practice with my like dog on my lap that's another possible future i mean because right now i have a private practice it's probably 70 therapy 30 is now turned into executive coaching i see yeah so it sort of feeds into this yep but it's it stays interesting so and so what is it when you think about your because we've talked about individual differences we've talked about the connection the importance of the goodness of fit between person and environment uh workplace uh occupation whatever what is it for you that is rewarding about this work how does that fit for you what are the well it's a few things okay one is the feeling when you you you they pick somebody that you know is gonna be great it's like yes yes okay you're just like this is why you know i also think there's a part of it um as a black woman thinking about i have an opportunity to put my finger on the scale sometimes you know and and sort of say this person this person is really interesting you should think about this person or you know this is a different way to think about this person and i'm not the person that many times you know i've only done search execution which is the beginning to the end where you're actually finding the candidates and doing all that i've done that a couple times now just because some of the partners are like want to try it out i'm like okay but it's interesting there to say who do i want to push forward to say who might be able to do this job when you think about the makeup of boards the makeup of c-suite executives and all of those things so feeling like there is what my friend did say a long time ago which was you have the opportunity to ask questions to help people make really difficult decisions and have some influence like it's not a huge it doesn't feel like it's huge but when i get to sit with a ceo candidate and say hey what are your thoughts about environmental sustainability you know and they say oh what are you talking about no it's a plastics company right right or somebody who says it's a plastics company what can we do with it well this is what i'm thinking you know and so having those discussions or somebody said interesting you know i haven't thought about that you're like yes think about that you know so that opportunity sort of be in the as you know as in the hamilton speak being in the room where it's happening sure what i mean so like have that that's kind of interesting yeah yeah but also the feeling of like you helped put the puzzle piece in that fits right and then you get to see that fit i can see the satisfaction yeah like um we last year we put in the ceo of the san diego zoo which is actually much bigger than the zoo the san diego zoo global organization they've got a seed bank they've got they do um a lot of work in africa where they're sort of helping with wildlife like conservation and stuff like that so they've got all these different pieces of them that's way bigger than just going to the zoo but it'll be so interesting now because the person they put in is perfect oh that's crazy so excited he came from disney he's amazing and watching him like even seeing on linkedin right now sort of what he's doing and just knowing that i'm gonna go to the zoo like a year from now and go look at this like it's amazing zoo but seeing what he can do with it so that is wonderful you know walking into a bed bath beyonce or hopefully in like a year and going well it does help you see things in a different way i mean you make the same kind of enduring differences at an institutional or a systemic level that you might in therapy at an individual or a personal level right and you get to see the satisfactions of that sort of barriers the criticism like we just um did we just did the well i was i was involved in the doing the facebook oversight board that just was created so interviewing a lot of those candidates of course interviewing them all over the world so i was calling people in nigeria at three in the morning or you know whatever um but seeing that board being put into place and being all excited and then seeing some people going this is trash you know you're like it really is a great board i'm really excited but seeing the backlash from some sort of areas of the world or some sort of some from people different political spectrum and all of that and seeing taking the criticism and going okay so as we think about the the next phase of that board what do we do what do we do differently right it's an interesting point it's an organic process and it's not a one and done right these things have their own lives and uh and the way they are today may not be the way they are or what they need in a year or in five years right so you may have an opportunity to revisit some of these things as we move forward yep teresa thanks so much for taking the time and talking about the world of personality assessment it's been a pleasure yeah thank you