Rensis was born in 1903 in Wyoming. He started college thinking he would become an engineer like his father. However, a professor influenced him to pursue degrees in economics and sociology. Eventually, he would earn a PhD in Psychology at Columbia.
His career focus was on measuring people’s thinking about experiences they had. His first job after his PhD was to evaluate different supervisory approaches at a life insurance company, and this also led to an interest in management styles.
As the Roosevelt administration implemented a number of programs to confront the Great Depression, Rensis was asked to survey opinions for the Department of Agriculture, the Office of War Information, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board, and others.
As the U.S. became aware of the threat of German and Japanese military ambitions, he was asked to do surveys of citizen opinion regarding America’s entry into combat. These surveys became instrumental in how the Roosevelt administration communicated the looming threats to U.S. citizens.
Rensis was a pioneer in the use of open-ended interviews. Up until that time, interviews were limited to choosing among a series of statements. He invented the funneling technique, which gave those being interviewed an opportunity for free response, but with guidance from the interviewer to focus on specific areas of interest.
At the midpoint in his career, Rensis returned to his interests in supervisory styles. From this work, he pioneered the theory of participative management. The team environment, which is common in nearly every organization today, grew out of the theory he developed.
Rensis’ pioneering work would be little remembered today if not for an approach he developed as part of his PhD dissertation. It is probable that every adult has been asked to assess performance on a 7-point scale that goes from Highly Dissatisfied to Highly Satisfied. That scale was developed by Rensis Likert.
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☐ Strongly Disagree ☐ Disagree ☐ Neutral ☐ Agree ☐ Strongly Agree