Hack:
What Marks an Intelligent Assessment?

Rather than kill efforts, stomp on incentives and diminish talents, so that we prevent new initiatives, it's time for a new set of testing standards. It's time to align evaluation criteria, to innovative growth desired, and to the trust people require to develop and use talents. The MITA brainpowered approach offers innovative change possibilities- and this hack is intended as triggers to begin discussions about how reviews impact brainpower for innovative growth.

These 25 marks of intelligent assessments – are intended merely as talking points to design intelligence-fair reviews, with a few jolts from brain sciences: 

1. Design reviews that lead to refreshing solutions for stubborn work problems. Support people who offer innovative alternatives to ruts at work. Brain fact: Boredom is more a habit formed in brains, and shaped by daily choices against change, then stored in brain as a reality.

2. Ensure evaluations are clearly stated and easy to access.  Brain fact: Environments influence brainpower, and a brain-compatible review process inspires people to transform problems into solutions.

3. Thank fellow workers for all personal or team accomplishments reviewed.  Brain fact: Well being comes partially from and is fueled and extended by serotonin chemical hormones.

4. Give workers the gift of generosity, allow for incremental growth, and let go of a mean spirited grading. Brain fact: Anger, fear, and frustration  are fueled and extended by cortisol chemical hormones, that diminish innovation.

5.  Propose alternatives to an observed weakness.  Brain fact: Venting through low ratings without suggested improvements, is bad for the brain and creates new neuron pathways to more of the same weakness rated down.

6. Act from the viewpoint of the person you rate, and offer the same helps you’d enjoy. Brain fact: Dendrite brain cells use the outside world and  take shape, or grow based on what you do (or how you rate others’ efforts).

7. Vary background sounds and add music with more motivation cadence during evaluations. Brain fact: Music changes brain wave speeds in ways that impact moods and alter productivity – so people think clearly and see more possibilities in others’ offerings.

8. Stir curiosity and engage others by showing what you value and by asking what if ….  Brain fact: Telling others how to improve works against listener brains and benefits speaker intelligence only. When we neglect to engage workers’ insights in the review, we miss growth opportunities that curiosity adds.

9. Shift approaches to reviews so that you review in a variety of ways that align with behaviors being reviewed. Brain fact: Hebbian workers rewire their brains to kill incentives, limit focus or even shrink their brains with sameness. Reviews that merely throw grades or negative comments at others, encourages Hebbian workers to avoid taking risks for growth.

10. Include differences as assets and allow for people to test new insights.  Brain fact: Diversity training and reviews, for instance, commonly fail people mentally  by treating inclusion as a deficit model – rather than as assets. Invite people’s novel suggestions for engaging differences through integration, for example.

11. Balance reflection and action items rated in order to promote quality performances with both at work. Brain fact: Brain waves can bring either sleep or peak performance, based on how you activate, reflect and manage them.

12. Research and open mentally to new and different assessment types that double as tools for innovative risk-taking.  Brain fact: Hook assessments onto things people know and are learning so that growth increases in less time.

13. Change assessment approaches on regular basis, so that people focus on skill growth rather than on doing assessments well.  Brain fact: Your brain’s basal ganglia stores old facts and creates ruts, while working memory holds few new facts and leads change.

14. Survey and engage more strengths than you focus on weaker areas. Brain fact: Multiple intelligences are common to all, used by few, and can be cultivated constantly with regular use of intelligent-fair assessment tools. Intelligence-fair refers to aligning assessment approach to practice, so that if you assess for skills – look for evidence quality outcomes of that skill.

15. Create rather than criticize, so assessments offer insights, ideas and possibilities, rather than act as sticks and demerits. Brain fact: Cynical or critical mindsets literally block creativity, limit talent in you or others, and stomp out innovation.

16. List key facts on assessments as guides and reminders consistently, to foster improvements ahead of tests.  Brain fact: Memory can be outsourced to help people remember more of what is expected. To offer precise guidelines that double as assessments is to free workers’ minds for  focus on daily growth.

17. Inspire novel young ideas that reach beyond any one test, through showing examples of what is possible. Brain fact: Plasticity enables people of all ages and backgrounds to rewire the human brain in ways that innovate brilliance at any age. Tests can motivate takers to attempt new possibilities, rather than shut down what they already attempted.

19. Encourage risk-taking often, through suggesting its value in step-by-step growth opportunities. Offer partial values, for instance, where an innovation failed, and ask questions that foster future attempts.  Brain fact: Encouragement changes the chemistry of a brain through raised serotonin, and ratchets up tone for improved performance.

19. Communicate growth areas with care, openness and honesty. Brain fact: Meta messages destroy relationships through implications different from message spoken. Assessments should be written and communicated in a language that expects people to do well, and then supports even partial improvements.

20. Integrate items that are drawn from diverse ideas and people across many fields.  Brain fact: It often takes an integration of  hard and soft skills to solve problems with the brain in mind.

21. Relax people who take being reviewed, by showing how practice fosters further growth and letting worries go, jumpstarts brainpower to improve.  Brain fact:  Stress literally shrinks the brain, and tone in communication acts as a silent killer.

22. Seek genuine and lasting team relationships for innovative inventions,  by offering group assessments. Brain fact: People develop higher interpersonal intelligence when given thoughtful opportunities to work together for a common endpoint.

23. Risk learning new facts at the same time reviews are communicated.  Brain fact: Inspire creativity and invention through inviting novel alternatives to all requirements. Have respondents teach others at the same time they are being reviewed, and retention rises.

24. Collaborate to propose solutions. Brain fact: Create new neuron pathways collectively and add  solutions to workplace  problems  encountered.

25. Celebrate rather than diminish those with different approaches, by offering more latitude in how practices are rated against a shared set of standards. Brain fact: Women’s and men’s brain differ biologically and intellectually, for instance,  in ways that few assessments optimize.