Factor Model

Introduction

A factor model helps position a phenomenon along continuums represented by lines extending from one end to the other in two opposite directions. It helps answer questions about how the phenomenon will develop along the continuums. For instance, with localisation of a person on a map: how does one go from A to B or away from B. Or temperature: how does temperature increase or decrease? With skills: how can this person develop or lose that skill?

In the behavioral domain, the factor model addresses questions about how people behave, how they adapt, and the resources required to do so. When adequately designed, it applies at multiple levels, not only the individual one but also the job, team, company, and industry levels. This helps understand how individuals relate to their environment, how they adapt to it, and, vice versa, how environments relate and adapt to people.

Representation

A factor model can best be represented on a two-dimensional map, where an object or person can be located using two axes. As shown on the right, the latitude and longitude will help locate the red dot at the center of Union Square in San Francisco. A third factor, altitude, would help locate the object in other maps in space. Another factor, time, would add a fourth dimension to their location.

As with geolocation, social behaviors may be characterized by a limited set of factors. Using factor analysis, words and expressions depicting social behavior can be grouped into four clusters. Each cluster contains a latent hidden factor that can be represented by a continuum, like the longitude and latitude.

A person’s factors can then be located on four continuums, using a standard deviation scale, as shown in the illustration below. Like latitude, longitude, altitude, and time, which can locate an object on a map, the four factors add nuance to one another to describe a person’s social behavior. An individual’s specific behavior will be located by combining the four factors and analyzing them together.

A unique profile can be created by connecting the four factors with lines, as shown below. This presentation of the four factors side by side helps illustrate their relative intensities and mutual influence. The visual characteristic of the profile, its shape, instantly combines the four factors, and, once learned, can gather the full meaning of the combinations. One can then use the profiles and continue learning from them and the people they represent.

The relevance of the profiles spans across various individual and organizational levels. As we do with the adaptive profiles at GRI, three profiles like the above combine: one representing a person’s natural behavior that is expressed most spontaneously; a second that represents the adaptation of the person to the environment, and a third profile that combines the two into the effective behaviors: the behavior most probably observed by others.

The profiles can be used to represent the behaviors expected in a job, from a team, and from a company, or to describe behaviors at an industry and societal level. At all these levels, the words and expressions used to describe behaviors can be regrouped into the same clusters, as for people, and represented using the same four factors. When designed this way, the measures and representations from the assessment technique help analyze differences in social behavior across levels, to understand the efforts required for adaptation, and to envision how the adaptation will unfold.

The above representation of the four factors together has been adopted, with minor variations, by several techniques since the 1950s. Some evolved with the representation of types and traits, keeping the factor model under the hood. Others, like GRI, both measure and use factor representations, bringing the power and precision of the profiles closer to strategic decision-making.

Measure

A factor is measured on a continuum represented by a horizontal line and two poles, or more precisely, vectors that run in opposite directions, which can locate various expressions of a phenomenon that are close, distant, at opposite ends to each other, and at different levels of intensity. The two extremities are opposite and extreme expressions of the phenomenon, with a neutral value between them, represented by a triangle.

For instance, how hot or cold it is can be represented on a continuum, as illustrated below. The following adjectives: glacial, freezing, chilly, cool, lukewarm, tepid, torrid, steaming, roasting, boiling, etc, could locate the temperature on the continuum at different levels of intensity. When estimating room temperature, the neutral value may be close to the body temperature, while cold and hot may be moderately, very, or extremely distant from it. The red dot in the illustration indicates where a temperature measurement or best estimate may be.

The scale used by an instrument may be similar to the one above, which duplicates the standard deviation scale we use at GRI for behaviors. Interval scales are also often used in personality assessments to measure behavioral intensity. As discussed below, most individual and group characteristics used in organizations, such as competencies, skills, abilities, and experience, have generally been measured as traits and types. However, social behaviors and emotions, like locating a place on a map, can be more precisely defined by factors.

Factors’ Measurement and Use

Factors have typically been measured using adjective lists, whose analysis was at the origin of their discovery, and through open scenarios in which participants decide whether certain adjectives are part of their life experiences. Other techniques use questionnaires with forced-choice scenarios, a technique more common in trait assessments.

In any case, these techniques enable the positioning of the four factors of an individual’s behavior along each of their continua. They have also allowed for measuring and representing an individual's behavior in their past, current, and immediate contexts, as well as how they engage within their environment.

The use of the factor model includes trait and type models in recruitment, coaching, and team building (see below). It helps to take the analysis to jobs, refining the behaviors expected in them, and bringing greater rigor to understanding how a person will fit the job or how the job needs to adjust to them. The factor model offers greater sophistication and precision in representing behaviors than the trait and type models, enabling its use in organizational development by combining and analyzing multiple profiles across different levels of the individual, job, team, company, and industry.

The factor model is the one among the three that offers the greatest capacity for developing people. As discussed below, our brain and senses generally first use the type and trait models. Those two easily preempt what might otherwise come from a factor model, until it’s learned and used.

Adaptation Efforts

On a 2-dimensional map, the factor model indicates where one is situated and where one needs to go, as well as the effort required to get from one location to the other. Similarly, for behaviors, when acting from A to B, the four factors, together within the profile, will inform what the behaviors are at the beginning and end, as well as the energy required to do so. Since the measures are behavioral, they will also indicate how this will happen.

By comparison, the trait model can only indicate how close one is to the target location, but only imprecisely in its surroundings. And the type model only indicates whether one is within the target location's region. Additionally, the two models cannot determine the effort required to go from A to B, nor how that journey will unfold.