This article is an English translation of an interview with Marta Fabiánová, Managing Director at TCC online, conducted by Tomáš Pospíchal and originally published in Czech on HR News.
Companies today measure more than ever before—engagement, performance, potential, and employee behavior across the organization. But as Marta Fabiánová, Managing Director at TCC online, points out, data alone solves nothing. What matters is whether we actually understand it. In the HR News podcast, she discusses why even the best HR analytics are little more than a collection of numbers without critical thinking, why companies often ask the wrong questions, and how employee surveys can become a tool for real change. The discussion also touches on the changing role of managers and why simply “managing people” is no longer enough.
Why Data Alone Is Not Enough
Marta Fabiánová describes a reality familiar to anyone in HR: companies today have access to more data than ever before, yet they often do not know how to use it. Everything is measured—from employee satisfaction to detailed psychodiagnostic assessments—but often without a clear reason.
“Whatever data we are talking about, it is extremely important to ask ourselves why we are measuring it,” she says.
She adds that some companies introduce tools simply because their competitors use them. The result is a collection of numbers without context that helps neither decision-making nor company culture.
At TCC online, tools are therefore designed to be useful above all, rather than simply impressive. Whether it is an employee survey, 360° feedback, or psychodiagnostics, the key question is always what the organization needs to understand and change based on the data. Without answering that question, even a robust solution becomes just another item on the HR agenda.
Data Does Not Make Decisions. People Do
One of the most powerful ideas in the podcast is expressed quite simply: data is not an instruction. It does not tell a company what to do. It cannot explain context or account for nuance. And it certainly cannot replace critical thinking.
Marta Fabiánová points out that without the ability to interpret results, companies often latch onto their first impression or simply confirm what they already expected to find. In practice, this may mean that HR sees low scores and immediately starts looking for someone to blame instead of investigating what lies behind the numbers. Or, conversely, high scores are treated as proof that “everything is fine,” even though the reality may be much more complex.
Companies Want to Understand What Really Drives People
According to Marta Fabiánová, employee surveys are undergoing a fundamental shift. It is no longer enough to know whether people are satisfied or engaged. That is only the surface. Today, organizations want to understand the drivers—the factors that actually influence the results.
They want answers to questions such as:
- What supports innovation?
- What undermines loyalty?
- Why do people leave?
- What managerial behaviors increase engagement?
This is exactly where connecting data with context becomes essential. In the podcast, Marta Fabiánová mentions the example of a company where a survey uncovered a “blame-avoidance culture”—an environment where people were afraid of making mistakes. The issue was not the low scores themselves, but the mechanism behind them, which was preventing innovation. Only once the issue had been clearly identified could managers begin developing the specific skills needed to change the situation.
“The Reality Around Me and Within Me”
A large part of the podcast focuses on connecting the organizational perspective with the individual one. Surveys show what is happening within the company. Psychodiagnostics show how an individual operates internally. Only by combining the two does the full picture begin to make sense.
“We are all dealt a certain hand. If a manager knows they tend to stay at the big-picture level, they can consciously provide their team with more specifics. If they know someone on the team needs detail, they can provide it and reduce that person’s anxiety. And if they know their own personality differs from how they operate in their managerial role, they can work with that consciously and sustainably,” explains Marta Fabiánová.
Personality Is Not a Role. And a Role Is Not Personality
TCC online’s analyses show that the way people behave as managers typically overlaps with their underlying personality by around 60–80%. A perfect match is rare—and that is perfectly fine.
Marta Fabiánová gives the example of someone whose personality corresponds to a performance-oriented type but who, in practice, operates as a coaching leader. Not because they have denied their personality, but because they have learned to behave differently.
The important thing is that the gap should not become so large that it drains the person’s energy. This perspective is essential for both HR professionals and managers: a personality profile is not a label, but a map. It shows us where our natural strengths lie and where we may need support.
Leadership Is Changing—and Younger Generations Are Making That Clear
Younger generations do not see management as their primary career goal. That does not mean they do not want to lead. They simply do not want to lead in a way that is associated with pressure, unclear expectations, and insufficient support.
In some areas, managers today are less satisfied than their teams—particularly when it comes to their relationship with their own manager, communication, and collaboration. According to Marta Fabiánová, this is one sign of a broader leadership crisis. It is also a signal that companies need to rethink what they expect from managers and how they support them.
Critical Thinking: A Skill HR Cannot Do Without
Critical thinking is now just as important for HR as working with data is—perhaps even more so.
At a time when technology generates enormous amounts of information, it is easy to select only what confirms our existing point of view. Critical thinking means going deeper, verifying connections, challenging our first interpretation, and asking why something does not add up.
And that is precisely the skill that will determine whether HR merely collects numbers or actually changes organizations.
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The following section is an English translation of an abridged transcript of the podcast interview. The transcript was created using automated speech-to-text technology, and the English translation was produced entirely with the assistance of AI.
Tomáš Pospíchal (TP): Hello, and welcome to the HR News podcast. My guest today is Marta Fabiánová, Managing Director at TCC online. Hello, Marta.
Marta Fabiánová (MF): Hello, Tomáš, and thank you very much for inviting me.
TP: Marta, today I’d like to talk about how HR works with data, because companies talk a lot about everything they measure. And then I’d like to ask you to do a short simulation and interpret some of my own assessment results. Shall we try it?
MF: Absolutely.
TP: What does TCC online work with on a daily basis today? Is it 360° feedback, employee surveys, or psychodiagnostics?
MF: All of it. It really is a combination of all these activities, because that is our core area of expertise. We want to provide feedback tools. These can range from company-wide surveys—both shorter and more extensive ones—to more individual tools such as 360° feedback. Our other major pillar is psychodiagnostic methods. We specialize specifically in workplace psychodiagnostics. We do not work in clinical psychology or with pathology, just to make that clear from the outset.
TP: Do companies sometimes get a little confused about what they are actually measuring and how they should work with the data afterwards? Don’t the results sometimes contradict one another?
MF: I can only speak for the area we operate in, because companies as a whole work with enormous amounts of data. For example, when we were developing a recruitment chatbot for UniCredit Bank, one of their key metrics was time to hire, or time to yes—essentially, how long it takes until the company and the candidate agree to work together. The whole goal of the project was to reduce what had previously been a lengthy process to just a few days.
TP: So that was a clear KPI?
MF: Yes. It is measurable, so in that situation we know it makes sense to measure success. That illustrates a broader point: whenever we work with any kind of data, the key question is why we are measuring it. Companies sometimes want to introduce something simply because another organization already has it. But you need to keep coming back to what you actually need it for, what problem it is supposed to solve or monitor, and what purpose it should serve. It is useful to ask “why” repeatedly. In surveys, feedback, and psychodiagnostics, the purpose is often connected with recruitment processes, where psychodiagnostics can help make selection more accurate, reduce errors, and minimize situations where a candidate does not fit the role or the company culture.
TP: You used the phrase, “We’ll measure it and then somehow that will solve the problem for us.” That sounds rather utopian.
MF: Yes. Data is simply information. It is not a decision, an instruction, or an explanation for everything. It is great to know how to read data, but at the same time it is absolutely essential to apply critical thinking and understand why you need a particular piece of data. To me, that is the goal—or the path toward using data effectively. If I do not know why I am measuring something, it will not help me make the decision either.
TP: Or you need to understand what a particular tool is actually capable of providing.
MF: Exactly. The market now offers many comprehensive solutions where a client can say, “Great, I have everything in one place and that suits me.” Or they may realize, “Out of this package of a hundred interesting features, I’ll actually use two.” In that case, it does not make sense to invest in an extremely robust solution. We try to design our products so that they genuinely target what the corporate client or organization needs without burdening them with unnecessary extras.
TP: Have you ever encountered a client trying to use your tool as a cover for an unpleasant decision they did not want to make themselves?
MF: I have encountered inquiries like that, but it happens very rarely. Occasionally, somebody will say, “We have a problem with this employee. This is basically the final step before we dismiss them, and we need…” Our response is that this is not the right approach. Not only because there are legal limitations, but above all because it sends a very negative message throughout the company. If you present a tool as a development tool but have previously used it to pursue some hidden and unpleasant agenda, people will no longer trust it. So our response is that we will not do that. It represents a reputational risk both for us and for the client, and it would not solve the underlying problem anyway.
TP: What trends have you been seeing in employee surveys and engagement in recent years?
MF: For many years now, the trend has been to move away from simple polls that merely describe a situation, collect data, and produce some final scores.
There has always been an effort to ensure that the methodology itself is well thought out. We help clients with this by building on a large body of research, including Gallup studies. From those studies, for example, we know that companies in the top quartile not only achieve better business results but can also have around 60% lower sickness absence and absenteeism. So we know why we ask these questions—because the issues they measure have an impact on how companies operate.
TP: Can we make that more specific?
MF: One trend is flexibility—starting with something proven but also allowing it to be customized. Another major trend is that simply having results is no longer enough. You want to know whether there are any drivers, something that is influencing those results. For example, you may know that employees are satisfied with the feedback their managers give them, but you also want to see whether that particular skill and situation strengthen their engagement, increase their willingness to bring forward innovations, or increase their loyalty to the employer. You need to uncover the mechanisms behind the results. That is the main thing clients need. They do not simply want to find out whether people are more or less satisfied. They need to prevent people from leaving, make sure there are no blind spots, and prepare their organizations to remain genuinely flexible. The paradigm is shifting significantly.
TP: Can you see that in the results?
MF: Yes. There is a strong focus on ensuring that engagement—which we define as the willingness to contribute ideas, do the work, and even go the extra mile when necessary—is ideally present not only among management but throughout the organization. The difficult question is: what strengthens it? You can influence the quality of food relatively easily by changing the catering provider or doing something similar. But how do you shift employee engagement when it is fundamentally an attitude? That is extremely difficult. And that is exactly the recent trend: data should help answer how you can influence even those things that would otherwise be very difficult to grasp.
TP: In one of your articles, you write about “the reality around me and within me.” What did you mean by that in the context of surveys and 360° feedback?
MF: It ties into our overall philosophy behind the tools. Surveys are excellent at mapping what is happening around me. They give you a big-picture view of what is happening in the organization as a whole, and from there you can drill down into the smallest details. But then it is extremely important to know how to work with yourself as well. I always say that we are each dealt a certain hand. That is simply human nature. If I understand the hand I have been dealt, it becomes much easier to play it well. If I know that my team needs more transparent information about where the company is heading, while I also know that I personally tend to remain at the big-picture level, I may communicate in terms that are too general. My task is then to translate that into more concrete terms for the team. Similarly, if I have a psychodiagnostic map of my team, I can see that some people are much more detail-oriented. I know what may cause them more stress—somebody with a very strong need for detail can become anxious if they do not have enough of it. So I know I need to provide them with more detail.
TP: Where does your work with clients end, or what does it connect to? What happens next?
MF: The ideal situation is when everything comes together in a comprehensive project. We try to position ourselves as a psycho-socio-technological company. We work with partners such as consultants and coaches—companies that really know how to address company culture and implement change. We equip them with the tools, but the partners then guide the client through the process because it often takes place over a much longer period. Our ambition is not necessarily to be the guide throughout that entire journey. With one client, for example, our survey revealed a major fear of making mistakes—they described it very aptly as a “blame-avoidance culture.” We could see that engagement scores were lower, and we told them: this is your issue. This is what is preventing innovation. Suddenly, the way people worked with mistakes became a concrete topic. The next step was helping managers learn how to deal with it. They could then move into specific activities such as 360° feedback, where we focused directly on that particular issue—how they delegate tasks, how they respond when something goes wrong, and so on. That is a subtopic a survey cannot explore in that level of detail. At that point, we know that managers have specific skills they need to develop, and that can then be translated into training.
TP: How is 360° feedback used? It can sometimes be quite unpopular with employees.
MF: You know, I’ve just realized that we do not actually have feedback on how participants perceive it before they go through the process. But we do have insight into how they perceive it once they start working with the results. We are often present during the consultations, and the reactions are usually very positive. Sometimes people are concerned that it will turn into “anonymous mudslinging.” In reality, people are often surprised by how much positive feedback they receive. The process explicitly encourages people to show appreciation and suggest what else someone might try. It is not about saying, “You’re doing this wrong,” but rather, “You could also try this.” That is where 360° feedback can be enormously beneficial.
TP: The new version of the ITIL methodology, which previously approached project management in a fairly technocratic way, now puts more emphasis on soft skills and the human factor in management. In that context, how do psychodiagnostic assessments evaluate personality and suitability for managerial roles—in other words, how do they connect technical capabilities with soft skills?
MF: What is required from managers varies enormously depending on what you actually want to measure. Some clients need a tool for production supervisors, where the line manager must apply standards and guidelines very carefully and consistently. Then you might have a completely different assignment for someone who needs to manage an entire region, improve morale, and align management styles. That is an entirely different role. The best approach is to map the predispositions each person has for the role. The Multifactor Personality Profile, for example, does this very well. For a regional manager, you may look for people who tend to see situations from a broader perspective, perceive opportunities rather than risks, and are comfortable making independent decisions because nobody is going to give them a detailed guideline. For a production supervisor, you would look at different scales. No personality profile is inherently good or bad. It always depends on the context and the role. The next thing is to map how the person actually behaves in practice. Personality is the hand you have been dealt, but the way you exercise leadership can develop and change. Our Managerial Style Questionnaire maps this very well because it focuses on how an individual actually behaves as a manager. The current trend is to connect these different types of data. If you complete a personality questionnaire and then the managerial questionnaire, you can see whether your managerial behavior corresponds to your underlying personality. Our analyses show that for most people, the overlap is relatively high—around 75% on average. In other words, the way you are wired as a person is reflected to a large extent in how you behave as a manager. When we looked at the real outliers, the very lowest overlap was still above 45%, at around 49%, while the maximum was somewhere between 95 and 96%. So nobody has a 100% overlap, but most people fall somewhere between 60 and 80%. And that is very much a current leadership topic. When we look for managers and leaders, we can see where they are capable of stepping beyond their natural personality tendencies. We can use your example, because I think it illustrates this nicely and it is something we commonly see in profiles: somebody who is very assertive and prefers to do things their own way may learn, in their managerial role, to involve their direct reports more and share decision-making with the team.
TP: You mentioned the example of a client with an entire production hall full of supervisors who have to follow processes, while the company also needs to move forward. What do you do when technology and generations are changing and the existing management style may no longer work for new employees?
MF: It is up to the client to decide what they need from management. I would not try to force everyone into some universal profile of the “manager of the future.” That would not work. There is no universal profile. It always depends enormously on the context and the situation. There are, however, some clear leadership trends. In innovative, front-line companies, the role of the manager is changing. Managers are no longer there to provide all the answers. They need to ask excellent questions and guide development. Technological knowledge will be essential, along with excellent critical thinking so that managers do not blindly jump on every trend, and the ability to create psychological safety. By that I mean creating an environment where people can make controlled mistakes, learn from them, and contribute innovations from every level of the organization. That does not change the fact that in a production environment where a machine can tear someone’s arm off, there is no room for debate. You need someone who can enforce safety requirements and will not sweep issues under the rug. Different management styles are legitimate precisely because they are appropriate for different situations.
TP: Shall we try the simulation now? I completed the assessments, and my results showed strong assertiveness, extraversion, independence, and rational decision-making. In the personas, I came out as a Natural Leader, Independent Logician, and Pure Optimist. In Managerial Style, I came out as a Coaching Leader. It sounds like an amazing LinkedIn profile. What caught your attention when you looked at results like these, based on what you see with clients?
MF: I am always pleased when a profile is clearly defined. We begin every consultation by explaining that there is no right or wrong profile. No personality is better or worse than another. It may simply be better suited to a particular situation. It is useful to know where you have exceptional strengths compared with the rest of the population, because we use the population as a benchmark. The fact that you score at the 99th percentile for assertiveness does not mean that you kick doors down and behave aggressively. We give these scales single-word labels, but the important information lies in what sits behind those labels. Assertiveness in this context means that you enjoy competition and tend to want to influence things. Cooperation, by contrast, is associated with responsiveness and supporting others. Your score simply tells us that your answers were oriented more strongly toward assertiveness than those of 99% of the population.
TP: At the beginning of the results, there is also a tendency toward response stylization. Mine was low. What would be a typical score?
MF: We usually see lower values. The critical threshold is only around the 85th percentile. Some degree of stylization is normal. People occasionally answer in a socially desirable way. The validity scale is designed to identify a repeated tendency to present oneself in an excessively favorable light, based on statements such as “I have never lied.” Everyone has lied at some point, and if someone answers too perfectly, the scale will flag it. Any questionnaire-based data collection carries some risk of distortion. That is the beauty of intelligence tests: you cannot consciously make yourself more intelligent because, without the necessary ability, you simply cannot come up with the correct answers. With personality questionnaires, however, the risk of stylization exists. If someone claims it does not, I would become cautious, because that is basic psychometrics. Validity scales help detect this distortion. You cannot change the questionnaire result retroactively, but you can conduct a retest. From practice, we know that people usually do not stylize across the entire questionnaire. They tend to focus on one particular characteristic they know others criticize them for. When they retake the assessment after becoming aware that the system detected distortion, only one or two scales typically change rather than the entire profile. We also formulate our items so that respondents choose between four similarly positive or similarly negative characteristics, which means they have to select the one that genuinely describes them best. Your response consistency was very high and your stylization was low, so your results can be considered reliable.
TP: I also came out as a Coaching Leader. What does that mean?
MF: But that result comes from your Managerial Style, not from your personality. If we look at your personality—big-picture thinking, seeing the whole and focusing on opportunities, pragmatism, rationality, and a preference for autonomous decision-making—we would expect something different. If we simply translated your personality into how you would operate as a manager and leader, you would come out as a Performance-Oriented Leader. That means somebody who takes a big-picture perspective and approaches results very clearly and pragmatically. But you described beautifully that when you focused on how you actually behave as a manager, you came out as a Coaching Leader. And that demonstrates very clearly that personality and management style are not the same thing. I do not know exactly how much overlap there is in your case, but I would guess it is over 60%, perhaps considerably more. You can see that your experience as a manager has shaped you. You have reduced some of the pressure on performance and control and strengthened your coaching approach instead. That means you involve people in finding solutions while still maintaining a broader perspective. You are a leader who tends to set positively framed goals and supports people in achieving them through coaching.
TP: When I first saw the results, I thought they seemed contradictory.
MF: Yes, they are. There is a contradiction between your personality predispositions and how you function as a manager. Based on your personality profile, we would expect more of a Performance-Oriented Leader. In your actual management practice, however, you have moved toward a coaching leadership style. And that is perfectly fine. Our personality predispositions do not mean that we are incapable of behaving differently. What matters is that the gap between our personality and our role is not too great. If it were, it would require a lot of energy and would not be comfortable or sustainable in the long term. Similarly, very few people work in an environment that matches their personality 100%. All of us have to adapt to some extent to established processes, systems, or ways of organizing work. The purpose of personality profiles is therefore not to give us excuses for why we cannot do something. They are meant to help us understand what requires more energy from us, where we need support, and what comes naturally.
TP: Let’s make that very practical. If I were a recruiter and our listeners were shown an example of my results from an assessment like this, what could they learn from them?
MF: The main purpose of the reports is to point you in the right direction. They show you what to build on and what to watch out for. And the “what to watch out for” part is extremely important because it can be translated very effectively into interview questions. For example, if the profile flags a tendency to become scattered or to take up too much space and give less space to others, you can ask targeted questions about that. What did that look like in practice? When was the last time you involved other people in finding a solution? And so on. You do not have unlimited time during an interview, so personality questionnaires help narrow down the areas you need to explore and show you where to direct your questions. The report also typically includes development recommendations, which can be very useful during onboarding. For example, if we know someone needs more structure, that information can also be passed on to their future manager so appropriate support can be put in place.
TP: What could those results mean for my future manager?
MF: Essentially, they are a kind of “user manual” for you.
TP: Do your clients know how to read the reports, or do you help them with that?
MF: We help in several ways. Above all, we try to make our reports as clear and easy to understand as possible. We also have a platform where we explain how to read them and educate users about how psychodiagnostics works and how these results should be used. We also offer consultations and train our partners so that they can interpret and use the service correctly themselves. Generally speaking, it is very important to us that the reports are understandable and that the risk of misinterpretation is minimized.
TP: How can different management styles coexist within one company? What does it mean for top management when a team includes many different personalities and approaches, and how do you make sure everyone is “pulling in the same direction”?
MF: The starting point is, once again, to ask why we are doing it. To some extent, the goal may sometimes be to align company culture and management styles—but that does not mean everyone should be the same. Rather, it means there are certain principles that apply across the entire organization without question, from the CEO down to line management. For example, how we deal with mistakes, or what fundamental principles we share. Those need to be clearly established. At the same time, management styles will always differ. And that is fine. The key is to be able to align them through shared frameworks rather than force everyone into the same style. Situational leadership plays a major role here. You work differently with a very junior team. There, you need a more hands-on approach, more guidance, and more working through things together, because people may not yet know exactly what they need to do. With senior teams or managers of managers, you are more likely to expect a broader perspective and greater independence. Management styles are also often aligned through specific skills or topics where people can reach practical agreement. Working with company values can also help—provided those values are not just vague clichés but are translated into concrete behaviors and genuinely lived. If they are then cascaded across different levels of the organization, they can become a practical tool for alignment. So the goal is not for all managers to lead in exactly the same way. It is to create a shared framework within which they can operate differently depending on their team and the situation.
TP: Company culture is often perceived as something fairly abstract, but in reality it can be very concrete. Critical thinking is similar—we hear the term increasingly often in HR and management, particularly in an era of powerful technologies, and it is beginning to take on a more tangible meaning. What does critical thinking mean to you as a sociologist?
MF: For me, it is a topic that makes me genuinely excited if you feel it is beginning to resonate, because I keep waiting for the moment when it really does resonate.
TP: Well, people are certainly talking about it a lot.
MF: That is good. Critical thinking has been with me for a long time. Whenever I hear the term, I think back to Masaryk University in Brno, where, as sociology students, we discussed what sociologists could actually contribute when software was already capable of handling most statistical calculations. My colleague Ivo Bystřičan even initiated a discussion at the time that almost turned into a petition. The department’s response surprised us. Instead of criticizing us, they invited us to a discussion and said they were pleased we were asking that question, because their goal was not merely to teach us technical skills but, above all, to develop critical thinking. That was why we were given essays and assignments requiring us to connect different authors and perspectives. That was when I realized that critical thinking has value even though it may not look like a conventional workplace skill. It is really a life skill. And today, I think it is more important than ever—for schools as well as for managers—alongside psychological safety, technical skills, and the ability to work with data. There is an enormous amount of data, and people naturally tend to select only what confirms their existing view. Critical thinking means going deeper, verifying sources, exploring connections, and asking why something does not fit. You actually demonstrated that yourself when the Performance-Oriented Leader and Coaching Leader results did not seem to match. I was recently at the Trends of Work 2026 summit, where data from Deloitte was presented: only 5% of Millennials and 9% of Gen Z see management as their primary career goal.
TP: So they don’t want to become managers? Am I understanding that correctly?
MF: Exactly—and that is the right question. I had already started writing a LinkedIn post about how young people do not want to lead.
TP: An opportunity for the Boomers.
MF: Exactly. But then I read the study and realized I had skipped over a very important word. The question asked whether a management role was their primary career goal. And that word “primary” is crucial. Because when respondents were then asked whether they would consider a management role at all, more than 60% said yes. So there will still be plenty of people available for the leadership pipeline. And it actually makes sense. Most people would probably say their main career goal is to enjoy their work, find it meaningful, and work with good people. Management? Sure, why not. And that is precisely where critical thinking stopped me from staying at the surface level. The study was also focused exclusively on younger generations, so I do not have a comparison with older generations. It is entirely possible that the results would be similar and there is no reason to panic. But that does not mean nothing is happening. In our surveys, we are seeing a new phenomenon: in certain areas, people who manage others are less satisfied than people who do not. That was not previously the case. Managers as a population are still more engaged, more loyal, and more satisfied overall. But specifically in areas such as their relationship with their own manager, communication, or collaboration, managers are now less satisfied. In my view, that is part of the leadership crisis, because frustrated managers cannot lead people in a way that allows them to thrive.
TP: Where do you see the limitations of assessments and data? What would you personally not use them for?
MF: I would turn that question around. Instead of defining where the boundaries are, I would say: use methods where they make sense. Use them consciously, for a good reason, and with sensitivity. That is why, for example, we do not let AI into the psychodiagnostic methodology itself. A psychodiagnostic method has fixed rules. Constructing any such tool involves more than a hundred steps that need to be followed in order for it to measure what it is supposed to measure and to be valid and reliable. You cannot simply take half the questions, mix a few things around, and claim that the tool still works. You would break it. The interpretation of results is also professionally defined. And we deliberately do not use AI to assess whether somebody is suitable for a particular position, even though I know some organizations do. Nobody can prevent you from running a report through AI. But we do not do that, and we know why. The AI Act clearly classifies this type of use as high-risk because it influences decisions about people during recruitment. We use AI for intelligent summaries, but strictly within the boundaries of our own knowledge base. No hallucinations. No invented information.
TP: Can you tell when a client is genuinely working with your reports?
MF: We have clients who are genuinely highly knowledgeable professionals in this area. But naturally, an end user may receive a report, read it, think, “Interesting,” and put it in a drawer because they have another fifty things waiting to be done. There is an enormous difference when they have someone to guide them through it. I experience this myself. We are currently going through a development program that includes some of our own methods. And even though I know myself well and have completed the assessments many times, when someone sits down with me and asks the right questions, I suddenly have lots of “wow” moments and think, “I’m going to try doing this differently.” Asking good questions is itself a wonderful critical-thinking skill. So it depends on whether the person has the right conditions to truly absorb the results. And having a guide—whether that is an HR professional, a coach, a manager, or a colleague—makes an enormous difference.
TP: What direction do you want to take TCC online in, and what are you working on right now?
MF: We want to stay the course and continue providing clients with genuinely useful tools, whether feedback-based or psychodiagnostic, and give them answers, not just data. We have reached a point where there is so much data that clients can struggle to navigate it. So we are now focusing heavily on making the enormous amount of quality behind all that data visible in a clear, simple, and user-friendly way. And, of course, we are innovating significantly with the help of AI as well. People who reject AI today are in the same position as people who said ten years ago that they did not need an online store. Good luck. So yes, we work with AI—consciously and responsibly.
