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Episode 490: Hiring, Self-Awareness, and the Behavioral Science Behind Better Leadership — with Jason Carroll
Introduction
Hey, everybody, Doug Thorpe here. Today we’re going to talk about one of the biggest challenges that business leaders have. And that’s hiring and finding the right people. And there are a lot of abused phrases out there that surround that subject matter. But our guest today is going to give us some new insight that is very much, data driven as well as some form of predictive indexing. So my guest is Jason Carroll. Jason, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Meet the Guest: Jason Carroll and Aptiv Index
Yeah, let’s just kind of dive in. Talk about what you’re doing with your current effort and how you’re supporting business leaders.
Yeah, I mean, I don’t really know what you’re talking about. Like, hiring is easy. Said. Said. Said no CEO. Ever. Yeah. So, just as a quick history, I was running a company that I helped grow from 20 million to 80 million. I was there for seven years and made a lot of hiring mistakes.
Wrong people, wrong seats. I also lacked some self-awareness in my leadership. Surprise, surprise. And I got introduced to psychometrics back then, and it was a huge game changer. And so, you know, post exit and everything else, this is the world I wanted to be in. And it just turned out to be a pretty dated, kind of industry or category. And so really set out to do that.
But yeah, it’s the premise — it’s called adaptive index. It’s a made up word, Aptiv. And it starts with an assessment. It’s a behavioral assessment, scientifically validated, all the fun stuff there. But then the real power is, what now? Like, what do I do with this? I don’t want it to collect dust. Sure, I can use it on the hiring side. But how? And then after that, what do I do?
And so we have this AI called Aria. That’s a behavioral psychologist in your pocket, essentially — used anywhere from custom interview guides to conflict resolution to — it’s saving marriages, literally.
So I’m pretty proud of it. And it’s a lot of fun. Clients are using it every day. Yeah. I love what I do.
Key Discussion Point 1: Hiring Is a Crapshoot — or Is It?
Well, I totally like what you said. You packed a lot in there, which we will unpack, but starting with “hiring is easy.” I often think back on a chapter in my career when I was hired to run a division of a national company and the chairman CEO and I were having a chat one day. I was trying to ramp up this unit. So we were doing a lot of hiring, and he challenged me. He said, what do you think about the hiring process? And I said, I think I’m pretty good at it. I think, you know, we’ll do fine. And he said no. He said hiring is a crapshoot. And I said, what do you mean?
And he said, well, you know, anybody can play the game. People can, you know, do just a minuscule bit of research and probably learn some of the key buzzwords and things that you’re going to want to talk about.
And they will sound good, but they’ll be terrible. And he was just a real negative nelly on the topic. And I pushed back on it. I said, well, that’s not always been my experience. And, you know, we had this friendly debate going on and after a while, I confessed — I said, you know what, boss? You’re probably right.
In our situation, it wasn’t until I developed a practical test that I included in the interview process pertinent to the work we needed done that our results scores kind of went up on our hiring offers. But I love the psychometric idea. I’m a big fan of that. I’m, as a coach, I do a lot of assessments for people. I’m certified in several different tools, and there is definitely a distinctive value there. But what’s a little bit different about Aptiv?
There’s — we’re similar on the assessment side. We’re similar to a couple of offerings in that. A big differentiator is time to completion. You know, some of these out there are really in-depth — 45 minutes, 60 minutes and beyond. Our average is around ten minutes, 10 to 12, depending on what segments we include. There are some out there that are like 6 to 8, you know, really, really fast.
And so we did a lot of trial and error to figure out the point of diminishing return — like adding enough that we get the depth, but now there’s too much so we can cut it back. But if we cut it back too much, now it’s not accurate enough. So we did a lot of playing around with that.
So time to completion is a huge piece of it. The UX matters. There’s a lot of UX science out there about how to keep users engaged, making sure that they’re actually not just engaged, but they know what they’re seeing and that they’re not reaching cognitive overload. So like the Hick’s and Hyman Law of UX — if I’m looking at the same thing too long, I can read it, but my brain doesn’t register it anymore.
So you have to do what’s called chunking. We also have multiple modalities. So it’s the little things that add up to be really big in the end for getting total accuracy.
Key Discussion Point 2: Benchmarking and the AI Behavioral Psychologist
Fabulous. And so I’m familiar — there have been assessments out there that I, as a business owner, can say, hey, here are the results from my most productive people, and we’ll call that the productivity profile. And I’m going to now measure candidates against that yardstick. Does yours do anything like that?
A little differently. Yeah. So when we are hiring for specific positions, we can set targets for the attributes we’re measuring. We measure eight total — four for what we call primary, for standalone. And you know, you can set the targets for all four of the primary, and then you can optionally set some of the standalone ones.
Using what we call benchmarks — so the kind of ideal success pattern. You can use benchmarks to help determine what those ranges of attributes ought to be. There’s also other tools built into the software, and then there’s the AI, which will help you really hone in.
Most people don’t know what they’re trying to hire in the first place. That’s one of the main reasons we fail — we just have this bullet point list of duties and requirements, but we’re not honing in on what’s going to separate great from mediocre. Like, what are the qualities? What is this person doing 75% of the time? Thinking about the whole of someone’s activities isn’t going to do us any good. Think about the things that will set this person apart and set them up for success. AI — Aria — is really good at asking the questions that we don’t think to ask, and so we sharpen what we’re looking for in the very beginning as well.
And that’s just another benefit.
Key Discussion Point 3: Self-Awareness — The Biggest Leadership Game Changer
You also mentioned self-awareness as a leader, and that’s probably a whole other storyline we can talk about. But if you don’t mind sharing, how did you come to that realization?
Man, I would buy a subscription to a platform like mine or my competitors just to get the self-awareness. It’s that powerful. And so that was the kind of the surprise when I started using psychometrics back at Champions — that was the name of that company — that was the biggest light bulb for me that I was not expecting. I was like, yeah, I need more awareness of other people, how they’re wired, where they’re going to be a good fit. But the inward look was far more impactful. And the ripple effect of that was a much bigger ROI than just hiring the right folks.
For example, I had the data of self-awareness. Like, sometimes I steamroll meetings.
But what I realized is that’s not doing any good. Just knowing that I do it, putting that on a spreadsheet — that doesn’t help anyone. So I had to go deeper, and I started really seeing the impact of my actions and behaviors on the team. And then the psychometrics started helping me realize what was driving those behaviors — not excuses, but like, oh, I have this really high need to shape outcomes, to kind of be in charge and have my fingerprint on ideas.
And so I’m trying to fulfill these drives in really unproductive ways, but there’s so many other things I could do to still meet those needs. And so I started shifting. I also realized how emotionally unaware I was. Not like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory unaware, but pretty clueless as to the undercurrents of what was going on in the business. And so I went all down that rabbit hole. I went and met Brené Brown and got trained by her for three days.
Just super intensive on understanding the emotional world. So it was by far the greatest impact for my whole life — parenting, husband, all of that.
Personality Types, Self-Awareness, and Emotional Intelligence
I have often, among my own coaching circles, brought up the discussion that all of the things we like to talk about as coaches — things like elevating self-awareness — my humble observation, and I don’t have a lot of hard data, it’s just purely anecdotal, but I’ve done it hundreds and hundreds of times. I think there’s a direct correlation to personality types and profiles. And if you want to pick a measure, think of something like the Nine Variations in Enneagram. There are indicators. Some personality types are more naturally self-aware than others.
And you can get into understanding that a little bit to try to help people in a leadership role elevate their self-awareness. I think there’s a common consensus that as a leader, the ability to become more self-aware — and self-awareness is part of the journey toward emotional intelligence.
And it kind of has to start with that awareness factor. And it’s sometimes, as you try to bring that up and talk to a person about where they are, in some extreme cases, it’s just so foreign they don’t even know what you’re talking about. And in other cases, they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m good with that. Let’s move on. And as soon as they say that, I say, no, we need to camp out here a little bit.
Yep. You know, I think people who have a hard time with change are probably in that anecdotal evidence of self-awareness. But I think my anecdotal would be to agree with you and say that I myself, and profiles like mine, are probably amongst the least self-aware.
And I think it’s because the entrepreneur, risk-taking, push-the-envelope mindset is often accompanied with success. And if all we see is success, that causes us to not go, oh, but some of this is in spite of me.
Then the success actually becomes one of the most dangerous forms of failure, because we’re not looking at ways we can improve and hone our strengths. And sometimes our strengths are actually the things derailing us the most because they’re just on overdrive, mowing everybody else down as we go — leaving damage in our wake.
And so it’s hard because we have to confront ourself to get self-awareness, and the things that we might not be doing well, maybe even damage or harm that we’re causing. And so that induces shame and all kinds of other things. And then we have to figure out how to change. And if you don’t see any need to do that because things around you seem to be successful, then yeah, we’re just going to sit there clueless forevermore.
Key Discussion Point 4: Entrepreneurial Wiring vs. The Corporate Ladder
Well, you bring up another point there that I’ll extrapolate a little bit. There is the notion of sort of natural entrepreneurial nature. You know, somebody that really has that drive and hunger and ability to go out and start something up or buy a business and take it over and leverage it and move it to the next level.
But there are others who might, for instance, be coming out of the corporate world where the story is more about a progression — starting out as an individual contributor. You were a great engineer or a great accountant or a great scientist or something, and you got recognized by the company and got promoted into management. You’ve done that for a while, and now you think you can control a business, so you decide to make the exit from that situation and go either start up or acquire a business — never really comprehending aspects of the true entrepreneurial mindset that it takes to make that happen. And now you crash into the big brick wall. You know — what got you here won’t get you there.
Yeah, it happens a lot. It’s unfortunate. And, you know, we can see the profile and, like, we don’t want to pigeonhole and say that only certain profiles are built to take risks and be entrepreneurs. But there is something to be said about how much energy is required to operate outside of our natural wiring.
And so if I’m — for example, there’s no amount of money you could pay me to be your accountant. But there are fantastic accountants out there. And so if an accountant is now managing an accounting team and then says, oh, I’ll go start my own firm — maybe their expertise and their client portfolio can launch them, but they’re going to hit certain things along the way with sales and marketing.
And you know, what do I do when I’m down to my last $8? And they’re going to be in such panic mode and be stretched so thin in terms of their wiring, whereas other people are like, well, I don’t need $8. I could do it with two. You know, it’s just a totally different mindset and hard wiring.
Key Discussion Point 5: The Founder Plateau — When Growth Stalls at the Top
Well, and even those that are naturally wired — and that’s a broad brush statement — those that might be naturally wired to succeed, there’s another aspect of it. Once you get the business going — and I have talked about this a lot, I saw it in my banking days — founders that had something going and it looked really good, and it was starting to get traction and scale a little bit, but then it inevitably would hit a plateau.
And the plateau was always directly related to that founder’s ability to make the changes they needed to make — for instance, give up control a little bit. Hire a deputy. Hire a CEO. Hire a sales manager, or hire something that could take on more of the day to day and keep you in that visionary, inspirational mode rather than being the implementer of everything that’s going on every day.
Yeah, and I think self-awareness plays a role there — totally realizing, I mean, I don’t want to be the CEO of Aptiv Index even in three years, much less five or six. Plus, I want other people to come in and take on those things — the go-to-market strategy, sales, marketing — and to take on client success. And let me just keep tinkering and building things.
And then, you know, the clients will have to tell me, hey, slow down with the features, we can’t keep up. I’m like, oh, yeah, sorry.
And so even my tinkering has to take a step back. There’s this constant need for listening and holding nothing sacred. Right? Like, if my business model is failing, I have to pivot. If clients are demanding something new. If AI is entering the fold — and I think it’s either Malcolm Gladwell or Adam Grant who in one of their books talks about the statistics of businesses that succeed — companies that pivot two times or more are astronomically more likely to succeed than those that don’t. And I think that’s a wiring thing and a self-awareness thing.
Behind the Scenes: Chasing Shiny Objects — and How to Handle It
Right. Yeah. And the flip side of that coin is founders who chase bright, shiny objects and are constantly preventing and disrupting the momentum that the team might be creating. I was engaged with a founder a couple of years ago, and as I got working deeper with that company, on routine team calls every other week, he would come up with a new goalpost. And the team — you could see it in their faces.
Some were like, okay, here we go again. Whatever.
The distraction of the week. Yeah.
Those were like, what? You know, I just busted my butt doing X, Y and Z, and now you want to trash all that and go do something else. And, you could just see the air go out of the room every time he announced a new initiative. And the company was floundering and trying to get him focused. But he was one that, quite honestly, had very minimal self-awareness and was convinced he was the smartest guy — not just in the room, but probably on the planet.
Yeah. That’s always fun. Yeah. I’m with you, man. That’s a big issue. It’s one of those things that I have to rein in myself. Right.
Like, change for the sake of change, or just, hey, I’m bored. Let me solve some problem that only maybe 5% of my clients would even care about. And so the strategy I’ve taken there is, when I do kind of get in my ADHD focus and I’m like, hey, here’s a new feature that would be really cool — I’ll build it and then I’ll hide it.
Like so — it’s not turned on by default in anybody’s portal. And if then I’m asked about it, because these other two clients are using it and somebody is like, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you could do such and such — then I get to surprise and delight. I’ll be like, yeah, give me two seconds. Pull out my phone, go into their account, turn it on. Like, hey, hit refresh. And they’re like, what? So those are fun moments. And that’s how I figured out how to do my shiny object thing without derailing my team or my clients.
Yeah. Well, great. Kudos to you for that kind of awareness — realizing, and what I’m hearing as you describe that, you’re satisfying your own hunger for developing those kind of solutions, but at the same time, you’re aware enough not to disrupt the world around you where everybody’s in kind of an effective, functional operating mode.
And not always, though. I mean, we just had a client mastermind a couple of weeks ago, and the consensus was, slow down with the dev updates. Right? Like, maybe release features once a quarter and do a full webinar training on these new features. And so even the little minor things — clients were actually getting frustrated with me. And so back to self-awareness. I have to realize that this is their perception. And I can’t just push back and be like, no, I’m going to do what I want. I have to take a step back and not do what I want sometimes.
Yeah, yeah. As the founder, you have to honor that feedback you’re getting.
If the paying clients are telling you, don’t go that way.
Yeah. It’s tough sometimes.
You have to try to honor that. Or else you do alienate because — and the other thing I think I’m inferring, and please correct me if I’m wrong — back to your point there, there’s cognitive connection. And if somebody feels like they’ve gotten used to your product and then now something’s flipped on the screen or there’s another line item or that breaks that flow that they’ve developed, that’s an unsettling outcome for them. And being sensitive to that and realizing that you want to elevate the affinity for the use of the tool and not push people away.
Yeah. Getting people acclimated — especially in the SaaS world — getting users acclimated to the way we do things is how you make them loyal. It’s how you get them singing your praises. And so if you’re constantly shifting what they have to acclimate to, it’s completely counterproductive to their satisfaction and to their loyalty and everything else.
So it’s tough. If you’re a founder listening — I’m with you. It’s hard.
Practical Advice: Onboarding With Aptiv Index
Well, Jason, let’s walk through — when an owner approaches you and says, I think I’d like to turn this tool on to benefit my company, what does the general onboarding process look like? What things do you coach them on and counsel them on before they go live?
So if they’ve become a client — like they’ve decided, hey, I’m in — onboarding is pretty quick. It’s a four-hour training. And we start off with getting people dangerous enough with the attributes we’re measuring to kind of just understand the basic science behind it, why it’s important, how to interpret it. But you’re going to end up drinking from a fire hose. So we don’t harp on it. That’s the stuff that sinks in over time.
Then we talk about here’s how to use the tool — different use cases on a high level. Like, the more they use it, the more advanced they’ll be able to get.
So we cover the basics. Here’s how to use it as a hiring tool — get the right person, right seat. That’s huge. Here’s how to use it as a coaching tool. Here’s how you can use it to manage conflict or prepare for a meeting. Interpersonal dynamics — those are kind of the basics. And then there’s the software tool aspect and the AI aspect — how do you really use Aria and get the most out of her?
A lot of people, even if they’ve used ChatGPT, they don’t know how to prompt well. And so we’ll spend some time — now, we’ve engineered Aria so that you don’t have to prompt well, because she has all of this data in the backend about you and your people that you’re talking about. But still, we try to give them some more tribal knowledge of the things that have worked really well for us.
And that’s the typical entry point. And then clients are using it all the time, which is really encouraging.
Day-to-Day Use Cases Beyond Hiring
So beyond the hiring process, help me understand what else people do on a day-to-day basis with the tool. Is it like prepping for that classic difficult conversation with an employee or employee development conversations?
Yeah.
What?
It’s all of the above, which is kind of tough because the sky’s the limit. You know, imagine if you had a behavioral psychologist slash therapist slash Simon Sinek slash Brené Brown on speed dial. And they knew your people and you intimately — like they knew how you’re wired, how you make decisions. What would you do with those people on speed dial? Just go crazy.
I mean, give me three quick meeting tips for this podcast with Doug — if you had taken the assessment, it would have given me that, super simple. Right? Or, you know, Doug and Jason are at odds. They’re trying to move a very specific initiative forward and they’re butting heads and really bringing the whole team down — like, what might be going on there and what do we do about it? And Aria will come up with a whole dialogue model and conflict resolution guide. And clients will literally print that as a PDF and follow it to a tee and just be shocked.
I get to hear those testimonials more than anybody. And just hearing how it occurs on a regular basis is really encouraging.
Then there’s crazy other use cases. I have two CEOs who literally say that Aria saved their marriage, which is wild, but it’s true — they’re not exaggerating. We’ve got head coaches of Division I sports teams — basketball, baseball, hockey, etc. We’re talking to some pro football people right now, which is wild.
And so coaches are using it to help their players with bounce-back strategies — that mental and emotional game that sets the best players apart from the wild cards. Those reset strategies. And we’ve even seen live in game during March Madness — we provide the Aria guides to some of these coaches because they don’t know how to use technology. And a major coach in March Madness used an Aria line verbatim in game, and the announcer noticed it and called it out and was just like, that’s why coach so-and-so is so great. We have an NDA — I can’t say his name — but stuff like that just makes your head explode emoji in real time. Going, I cannot believe this tool is impacting so many people and organizations in so many different, unique ways.
Key Discussion Point 6: AI, Human Judgment, and the Coaching World
Well, I think it clearly speaks to the positive power of effective use of AI. And I know that’s a raging debate among many. And people have opened up the doors, they’ve given access, but they’ve put very little thought into what — so what? What does it do? What does it really mean? How can we leverage it?
I’m glad that’s being effective. And it is impacting the executive coaching world. You know, there are tools out there. I have one at my disposal that, if I get to a particular sort of logjam with a client, I can do some prompting and thinking about what other direction can we go — if I’ve sort of exhausted my own innate ability to analyze the situation and think about alternatives, I get augmented with a very powerful AI that’s been built for coaching. And it’s a great tool, and positive outcome from it.
Yeah. It can really — I’m using the term — it liberates human judgment. At least what we’re doing with it. It doesn’t replace it. It does scale it, I guess, but it’s like it liberates it. So in your world as a coach, your clients aren’t going to replace you with AI. But if they’re using an AI coach, they might be able to get further and then they get on with you.
And that time is now liberated. You don’t have to walk them through some of the basic crap that they should have figured out on their own already. That’s not a good spend of their money or use of your time. Now, their time with you is even bigger picture — it’s like working on the business instead of in it, in a more profound way. And they’re going to come away from that coaching session being like, wow, I’d pay double for that kind of insight.
So yeah, I think we live in an interesting time, and there are ways that AI can be abused. There are ways that companies are trying to over-rely and replace humans too quick. But I like seeing the world that is liberating human judgment. Yeah.
Practical Advice: Overcoming Cognitive Bias in Decision-Making
Well, I think another big benefit, particularly with a tool like yours — psychologists, psychiatrists, coaches, everybody’s aware — we as human beings show up with certain cognitive biases. And some are not as egregious as others, but nonetheless, they’re there.
And part of that self-awareness is filtering and pushing through those biases that might really contribute to a bad decision. For instance — going all the way back to hiring — when you interview someone who sounds like they could probably take over and have your job in a short period of time, some people are horribly afraid of that. Others are — that’s cool, bring it on, let’s go. And that’s a kind of cognitive bias, whether it exists in your consciousness or your subconscious consciousness, it’s going to affect your decision making.
I agree. One of my personal core values is just curiosity — asking questions, challenging my own beliefs. And it’s not easy to do, but once it’s practiced enough, it almost becomes fun. It’s like I see something that makes me feel uneasy, and now it’s almost instinct. When I feel that uneasiness, I go, what’s going on? And it’s just a much richer way to live than being afraid of it and pushing it away.
And it’s particularly relevant with the entrance of AI. It’s particularly relevant in the political world we live in. It spans all areas of life — just being curious, what am I missing that’s making me feel this way?
And I think AI can help with that too, because it’s objective data. Right. If I’m like, hey, I’m thinking this about this candidate — blah, blah, blah — and our agents could be like, oh, well, that’s because your attribute is here and hers is here. And so you’re misfiring. But maybe this is a good thing. And I’m going to read that objective data and go, oh, okay. Versus, you know, Doug, if you told me I’m an idiot, I’d be like, I’m not listening to you.
Right. Right.
Closing Thoughts
Well, great. Well, Jason, this has been fascinating, my friend. What is the best way for people to get in touch with you?
Don’t search just my name, because Jason Carroll will get you, like, a CNN anchor, a country music artist, some sort of felon in Florida, and some others. So if you add my middle initial — P — Jason P Carroll — you’ll find me. LinkedIn is the easiest place to track me down. But also just jason@aptivindex.com. I really don’t even check LinkedIn anymore these days — it’s becoming an AI slop fest, I don’t know if you’ve noticed. So yeah, the website, the email, LinkedIn would be third.
Okay. Well, folks, as always, we’re going to have those links available on the show notes. So check that out if you’re interested in learning more about Aptiv Index and Jason’s work there. Jason, one last time, thank you for sitting in.
This has been good.
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on.
Well, all right, everybody, we’re going to bring this to a wrap. I do like to remind you that we’ve got a video version of this show on YouTube channel by the same name — Leadership Powered by Common Sense. Check us out there. Look at all our episodes. We’re coming up on number 500 — not far away. We’ll figure out a little bit of a celebration to have for that milestone. But I think that’s it for today. We’re going to wrap up, say goodbye, and go out there and make it a great day.
Meet Our Guest
Jason P. Carroll is a serial entrepreneur building Aptive Index, the next generation of behavioral assessment tools that merge AI with decision‑making science to transform how companies hire, build teams, and develop leaders. He’s started and sold multiple companies, and is a Brené Brown-certified TEDx speaker who operates where data meets human vulnerability—calling out uncomfortable truths like the fact that 90% of leaders think they’re self-aware, but only 10-15% actually are.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonpcarroll
https://www.linkedin.com/company/aptiveindex
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