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The X-Ray Vision for People: How Good Judgment Transforms Your Life
Ever wished you could see right through people? Not their physical bodies, but their true character-the real person behind the facade they present to the world. This "X-ray vision" isn't science fiction; it's what psychologists call perceptivity, and it might be the most undervalued skill in today's digital world. While emotional intelligence has dominated leadership discourse for decades, Richard Davis argues in his groundbreaking work that EQ is largely overblown. Endorsed by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver as "essential reading for anyone in a leadership position," and celebrated by business leaders for its practical wisdom, "Good Judgment" has quickly become a staple on CEOs' bookshelves since its 2024 release. Davis, who has assessed executives at companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Nike, offers something more valuable than fleeting emotional awareness-a framework for understanding the stable personality traits that truly predict how people will behave over time.
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Why Personality Trumps Emotional Intelligence
Frank, a successful software entrepreneur, faced a critical decision that would determine his company's future: who should lead his core business division while he focused on broader growth? With three strong candidates-a brilliant strategist he'd mentored, a talented young executive already at the company, and an industry veteran known for exceptional decision-making-the stakes were enormous.
Our ability to judge people profoundly impacts our lives, determining how well we choose partners in work and life, manage relationships, and navigate our own path. While emotional intelligence has been promoted as the critical factor for success-with NYC Mayor Eric Adams declaring it his "#1 criteria" for administration appointments-emotional intelligence as popularly conceived is largely ineffective.
The popular conception of EQ lacks scientific validity. While scattered references appeared in the 1970s-80s, psychologists Salovey and Mayer first seriously examined emotional intelligence in 1990. Daniel Goleman, a New York Times science reporter, popularized EQ through his 1995 bestseller, making sensational claims that emotional intelligence could be "more powerful than IQ" and essential for success. This sparked an industry of books, tests, and training programs.
Today, EQ is ubiquitous in workplaces, with 42% of companies offering emotional intelligence training to senior leaders. However, many psychologists, including the original researchers, criticize the popular conception as "largely bunk." Salovey and Mayer themselves noted that "the apparent size of the field dwarfs what we regard as relevant scientific research."
The fundamental problem is that Goleman corrupted the original concept, transforming EQ from a set of skills into a hodgepodge mixing abilities with personality traits like empathy and sociability. While abilities can be developed, personality traits are largely fixed characteristics beyond our power to cultivate.
What truly matters is perceptivity-the ability to understand personality traits, recognize them in others, infer how traits affect behavior, and make decisions accordingly. This concept of discerning personality isn't new-philosophers have theorized about character since antiquity-but modern psychology has brought scientific rigor to personality study.
Recent research confirms that some people are naturally better at judging character than others. The ability to accurately judge personality significantly impacts performance in organizations, allowing managers to hire effectively, provide resonant feedback, and make better decisions about collaboration and trust.
We can cultivate perceptivity regardless of our natural tendencies by learning about personality traits, developing nuanced vocabulary for character description, practicing real-time behavioral observation, and examining our own traits. Like an X-ray machine, perceptivity doesn't provide a perfect picture but offers sufficient detail to be practically useful.
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The Blueprint for Understanding Others
The author opens with a personal anecdote about his high school romance with Eva, which began at a friend's party and eventually led to marriage. Through this story, he illustrates the "Too Much Data problem"-the overwhelming challenge of quickly assessing someone's character from the flood of social information in initial encounters. While getting to know Eva over time allowed for deeper understanding, professional contexts often demand quick, accurate judgments about others.
The scientific origins of personality assessment began with the lexical approach that analyzed language to identify key character traits. Early pioneers like Gordon Allport found nearly 18,000 personality-describing words in English. After personality traits fell from academic favor in the 1960s-70s, researchers in the 1980s revived Louis Thurstone's five-factor concept, culminating in Costa and McCrae's seminal 1996 work that established the "Big Five" personality dimensions: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN)-now considered the fundamental scientific framework for understanding personality.
While the Big Five represents a major psychological breakthrough used by thousands of consultants for organizational decision-making, the author argues these tests don't fully capture human complexity. He contrasts scientifically valid Big Five assessments with popular but invalid tests like Myers-Briggs, DiSC, and outdated methods like handwriting analysis.
Rather than just using the Big Five for testing, the author proposes employing it as a qualitative framework for observing real-life behavior. This approach helps solve the "Too Much Data" problem by providing a mental template to organize information during interactions. He illustrates this through a chance encounter with "Irene," a talkative seatmate on a flight whose behaviors clearly revealed high extraversion, low conscientiousness, and high neuroticism.
Finding the Big Five scientifically valid yet insufficient, the author developed his own "Personality Blueprint" framework to better serve practical decision-making. His modified framework maintains the scientific foundation of the Big Five while using more accessible language and incorporating additional dimensions. The Personality Blueprint consists of five areas: Intellect (how people think), Emotionality (how people express emotions), Sociability (how people engage with others), Drive (why people do what they do), and Diligence (how people get stuff done).
Beyond the five core dimensions, the author emphasizes that personality traits aren't inherently good or bad-their value depends on context. Using Elon Musk as an example, he demonstrates how traits beneficial in engineering contexts (PayPal, Tesla) proved problematic in the people-oriented environment of Twitter/X. The "sixth box" represents self-mastery-whether someone possesses the self-awareness and discipline to moderate their natural tendencies when situations demand it.
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Revealing Conversations: The Gateway to Character
In 2017, I witnessed Under Armour's billionaire founder Kevin Plank transform a drab executive meeting by leaping onto the boardroom table to model the company's products, demonstrating his magnetic personality and strategic empathy. Most people don't display their personalities so transparently-they hide behind superficialities or project traits they think others want to see. Our conversations have suffered in recent decades due to technology distractions, making it harder to gather vital social information. To truly judge personality, we need psychologically-driven strategies incorporating the Personality Blueprint that elicit meaningful data without making interactions feel clinical.
To draw out true personality, you must establish trust so people speak openly. Start conversations naturally by finding points of connection-mention mutual acquaintances or shared interests. Support this verbal rapport with friendly body language: smiling, making eye contact, and turning toward the person. Share small bits about yourself to establish a precedent for self-disclosure, but focus primarily on keeping the other person talking. Show genuine curiosity without seeming like an investigative journalist-convey that you're just trying to know them better, without power dynamics at play.
Once you've got someone talking, steer the conversation toward their personal story to reveal their true personality. Our identities form in adolescence and adapt over time-we're shaped by our experiences and the decisions we've made. By hearing someone's life story, you learn not just who they think they are but how their personality developed. Even in brief conversations, you can gain valuable insights by asking simple questions like "How did you get here?" or "Did you grow up here?" followed by deeper inquiries.
For maximum insight in limited time, rely on four "power questions" that consistently reveal personality traits. The first asks someone to identify a major influence in their life (usually a parent) and explain how they're similar and different from that person. The second power question asks about their inner circle of friends: "What recurring themes do you notice?" or conversely, "What are your friend 'turnoffs'?" The third power question follows a personal story they've shared: "If you think about your story objectively, how would you characterize the main character?" The fourth power question asks them to imagine what someone else from their past would say about them-like an ex-boss or partner.
While conversing, don't just collect information but actively interpret it within the Personality Blueprint framework. Rather than letting insights remain loose and uncategorized, mentally slot details into the five blueprint boxes. For formal interviews, divide paper into five sections to organize observations. Each statement someone makes potentially reveals personality traits-like when "Lisa" mentioned leaving a well-paying accounting job for a creative marketing position paying "peanuts," suggesting creativity motivates her more than money (Drive).
Beyond verbal exchanges, rely on five supplementary data sources to calibrate personality hypotheses: observe general presentation (dress, posture, energy level); examine their environment when possible; pay attention to your own visceral reactions; consider your own biases; and directly share your observations with the person to gauge their reaction.
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Finding the Right People for the Right Roles
Bill and Carol Murphy's experience going into business with Mark and Roseanne Gorman illustrates how crucial understanding personality truly is. Despite initial impressions that Mark seemed like "a great guy"-polite, interesting though quiet-Bill soon discovered problematic traits: Mark consistently overpromised and underdelivered on renovation projects, avoided communicating problems until exploding in anger, and demonstrated poor planning abilities. This partnership story highlights why superficial personality assessments fail us.
While some scientifically valid personality tests exist and can be useful components in selection assessments, they only extract basic traits, not how those traits are expressed. This severely limits our ability to judge someone's fit for a role. People are complex beings that cannot be reduced to mere test scores or credentials. The winning formula combines psychometrically sound tests with personality-based interviewing techniques.
Every selection process must begin with context-understanding the unique business environment where the candidate will operate. The same personality trait might be beneficial in one setting but detrimental in another. Companies vary by industry, geography, historical context, products, competitive challenges, and strategies, making generic benchmarks for dispositional requirements inadequate. Research across 9,000 leaders identified some 300 contextual challenges facing leaders, confirming that a leader's suitability to specific contextual tasks is the most important success factor.
Rather than listing generic traits, create a Success Profile as criteria for evaluating candidates. Start by defining outcomes and repeatedly ask what the person needs to accomplish and do to be successful. Consider the broader cultural context, organizational values (beyond platitudes), and future strategic goals. Microsoft's leadership transition illustrates this principle: Steve Ballmer's conventional finance background led to Microsoft's "lost decade" while missing opportunities in search, mobile, and social media. By contrast, Satya Nadella's empathetic, innovative, and humble temperament enabled him to transform Microsoft's culture, partner with former competitors, and make visionary acquisitions like OpenAI.
After creating your Success Profile, conduct deep-dive interviews that explore candidates' life stories, transitions, relationships with authority figures, and future goals. Always meet candidates in person if possible-videoconferencing loses crucial nonverbal cues and subtle communication signals. After the interview, reflect on your notes and compare the person's Personality Blueprint with your Success Profile. This methodical approach to personality assessment can be adapted for any selection process-from hiring employees to choosing political candidates.
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Building Relationships That Last
In 2015, a private equity firm sought help managing their relationship with Danielle, the brilliant but difficult founder of Platinum Jewelers, a high-growth business they were acquiring. Despite the company's innovative model and talented executive team, the partners worried about working effectively with Danielle to achieve their investment goals. Assessment revealed Danielle as a classic entrepreneur-intelligent, shrewd, ambitious, and independent. She possessed strong "street smarts" rather than "book smarts," with exceptional intuition and strategic thinking. Extremely hardworking and openly ambitious about becoming a billionaire, she thrived on freedom and making impulsive, gut-driven decisions.
Creating a user's manual for relationships involves developing guidelines based on personality insights to navigate interactions effectively. The process starts with analyzing key personality traits using the Personality Blueprint, then formulating specific behaviors to adopt or avoid. Key questions to consider include: what actions might please or irritate the person; how to motivate them; how to read their moods; how to provide constructive feedback; what they need from the relationship; how they behave under stress; what circumstances might derail them; how trustworthy they are; and what personality clashes might arise.
When assessing a team's collective personality-which often reflects its culture-the goal is to understand what the team needs to improve. Whether it's a group of shy analytical thinkers or small-town hardworking leaders, creating a team charter with specific norms and aspirational behaviors helps raise performance. For analytical teams, this might mean scheduling social time together and making room for creative brainstorming. For less formal teams, it could involve adopting structured management rhythms and formal professional development.
When two senior executives at a healthcare company-Gerry the general counsel and Charles the CFO-were locked in conflict, the author discovered their personalities were fundamentally different. Gerry was sharp and analytical but excessively logical, aggressive and blunt with no filter, having grown up in tough Brooklyn and worked in competitive investment banking. Charles was equally intelligent but gentler, with Midwestern roots that led him to hold back emotions and adopt passive-aggressive behaviors when frustrated. To resolve their conflict, the author facilitated sessions to create a "partnership road map"-essentially a jointly created user's manual for their relationship.
Building meaningful relationships requires more than respect and communication-it demands truly understanding how others tick. When Frank hired Sonia as his new COO, an assessment revealed her shocking childhood trauma: abuse by her stepfather and abandonment to boarding school at age eight. This trauma shaped her personality in fundamental ways: her emphasis on fairness, her calm detachment, her compartmentalization of emotions, her boldness in speaking truth to power, and her structured work style. Understanding this hidden history allowed Frank to adjust his naturally emotional, entrepreneurial approach to accommodate Sonia's need for autonomy, fairness, and transparency.
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Mastering Your Own Personality
Is your personality impeding your success? The author explores this through the story of Tanya, an executive at a marketing agency who struggled with her quiet, passive nature while co-leading with the charismatic Samantha. Through coaching, Tanya learned to understand her personality traits and modify her behaviors-speaking more assertively, using techniques like "speaking in threes," and projecting executive authority. This work paid off as Tanya gained mastery over expressing her personality, effectively dealt with Samantha (who eventually left), and positioned herself for higher leadership.
How can we identify areas of our personality to improve performance? While some approaches like CliftonStrengths suggest focusing solely on strengths, this isn't sufficient. We can't ignore our weaknesses-like a tennis player with a weak backhand who never improves it. The author uses the scientifically-validated Hogan Development Survey to help clients understand their "derailers"-patterns of interpersonal behavior that emerge under stress and can disrupt relationships and success.
These eleven derailers are subclinical versions of personality disorders that can derail your success: (1) Being too excitable-becoming easily frustrated and moody; (2) Being too skeptical-becoming cynical and mistrusting; (3) Being too cautious-fearing failure and criticism; (4) Being too reserved-appearing aloof and unconcerned; (5) Being too bold-becoming overconfident and arrogant; (6) Being too willing to test limits-behaving impulsively and irresponsibly; (7) Being too engaging-becoming distractible and attention-seeking; (8) Being too diligent-becoming perfectionistic and inflexible; (9) Being too agreeable-becoming a sycophant; (10) Being too much of an oddball-becoming eccentric and lacking social skills; and (11) Being too passive-aggressive-appearing to respect others' wishes while doing things your way.
Dave "Hoppy" Hopkinson exemplifies how understanding personality can improve performance. Starting as a ticket salesman for the Toronto Argonauts football team, Hoppy rose through Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment over twenty years to oversee all ticket sales and marketing partnerships. He was a master salesman with street smarts, sociability, passion, and ambition. However, his assessment revealed key growth areas: he was too excitable (letting emotions get the best of him) and too engaging (directing too much attention to himself). We worked together to help him appear more measured, gain operational fluency, and implement predictable management systems. As others began seeing him as a seasoned, strategic leader, his career catapulted.
With Hoppy's story as inspiration, examine Hogan's derailers and identify which ones describe you on your worst days. Reflect on your childhood and career failures-how did these patterns contribute? Ask people close to you for feedback about your behavior. The goal is to see beyond your habitual blind spots. Observe yourself throughout your day, especially when stressed or tired. Link your derailers to your personality's origins. Select two or three derailers to work on and list specific behaviors that hurt you most.
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The Art of Influence Through Personality Insights
You can use insights about character to favorably influence others in high-pressure situations, even with limited data. Consider how hostage negotiators approach criminals with antisocial personality disorder-they avoid challenging egos, appearing uncertain, or expecting empathy to develop. Similarly, government leaders benefit from understanding the personalities of foreign counterparts, as demonstrated by Jimmy Carter's successful handling of the 1978 Camp David negotiations between Israel's Begin and Egypt's Sadat based on CIA personality profiles.
When dealing with strangers in everyday situations, we can perform a "Character Quick Take"-quickly identifying which personality traits are most dominant in someone, then adjusting our approach accordingly. While not as accurate as deeper analysis, this dramatically increases our chances of handling spontaneous situations productively.
Like Jason Bourne's hyperawareness in The Bourne Identity, we should maintain "situation awareness" by attending to how people speak, act, and present themselves. Professional poker players and expert negotiators do this constantly, reading verbal and nonverbal cues to understand others' states.
While emotional intelligence focuses on recognizing fleeting emotions, perceptivity seeks to identify core personality traits. This distinction matters significantly-if someone resists a nuanced point, is it momentary frustration or habitual black-and-white thinking? If a customer seems enthusiastic, is it genuine interest or just their typical interactive style? Knowledge about personality often provides better guidance than mere awareness of emotions.
To quickly assess personality dimensions, use a "personality cheat sheet." For Intelligence (Box #1), examine language, vocabulary, grammar, and career indicators. For Emotionality (Box #2), note tone of voice, people-focus versus idea-focus, facial expressiveness, and physical signs of anxiety. For Sociability (Box #3), observe eye contact, speaking volume, smiling frequency, and physical proximity. For Drive (Box #4), watch for competitive behaviors, flashy appearance, or religious indicators. For Diligence (Box #5), assess neatness, timeliness, attention to detail, and organization.
After forming your initial impression, consider your practical options: engage or disengage. If engaging, use your personality insights strategically. Psychological mirroring often works well-projecting familiar dimensions of personality to build rapport.
Strategic small talk isn't just friendly-it's tactical information gathering. Daniel Negreanu, a professional poker player, exemplifies this approach with his chatty demeanor at the table while others hide behind sunglasses and hoodies. His sociability helps him gather crucial information about opponents.
Perceptivity works best in person-Zoom, phone, or text lose too many behavioral subtleties. When meeting NBA Commissioner David Stern, the author quickly recognized his direct, charismatic questioning style required equal confidence in return. When Stern challenged him about his university credentials, he responded with matching wit: "That's a bit like asking LeBron 'What's the deal with the Cavs?'" This response won him over immediately, leading to years of meaningful work.
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The Perceptive Life: A Better Way to Live
When people jokingly ask if I'm analyzing them upon learning I'm a psychologist, the truth is-I am. I notice my father's obsession with whether a picture frame is perfectly aligned (his eye for detail), a friend's concern about my recent distraction (his empathy), or my children's musical talents (their creativity and expressiveness).
Good judgment isn't something we deploy only when needed; it's a skill we must cultivate constantly until it becomes second nature. The Five Boxes, interviewing strategies, Partnership Road Map, and Character Quick Take must live with us, becoming habits through insatiable curiosity about people and rigorous interpretation of behavior.
Developing perceptivity as a practice yields benefits beyond better people decisions. Your character-the sum of your people decisions-improves as you become wiser, more understanding of your biases, and more empathetic. You'll feel more grounded in an uncertain world, able to cut through noise and focus on meaningful signals. This clarity brings confidence and control, ultimately leading to greater wisdom about people, not just through experience but by making more of every interaction.
Instead of burying ourselves in phones or focusing solely on technology, we should lean further into understanding those around us. When cultivated as a habit, observing people becomes not just a tool to get ahead, but a profound, empowering, and enriching way to live.
The most successful people aren't just technically skilled or emotionally aware-they're perceptive. They understand themselves and others at a fundamental level, recognizing the stable traits that drive behavior across situations and time. They use this knowledge not to manipulate but to connect more authentically, to build lasting relationships, and to create environments where everyone can thrive.
In a world increasingly mediated by screens and algorithms, the human ability to truly see one another remains our most precious skill. By developing your perceptivity-your X-ray vision for people-you gain not just a competitive advantage but a more meaningful way to navigate our complex social world.
