1. Dr. Presser - first of all, tell us a bit about yourself! What led you to HR studies?
I never actually studied HR, although I did run a couple of HR departments in the past. I’m a behavioral scientist by trade, and from my early days I was interested in one big question: what really happens when people team together? I got to do a lot of observation in the various jobs I had, from being an advanced practice psych nurse to president of a sheet metal manufacturing company. Then, in the mid-80s I was very lucky to meet Dr. Jack Gerber, another behavioral scientist with an interest in applying hard science to the study of team interaction. We spent years looking at every kind of assessment and measure we could find, and every statistical method too. There was nothing wrong with them, but breaking human behavior down to parts and pieces just didn’t tell us what we were after.
