Have you ever taken a personality assessment? If so, how have you integrated the results into your business model or your career path?
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Today we are talking all about personality assessments, and how you can use them as you are growing in your business and navigating your career.
Affective Personality Tests
We’ve been talking specifically about three parts of the brain. Last episode we spoke about the conative portion, which is the “doing” part of the brain. Today we’re going to look at the affective part and how that plays into your business or team.
The affective part of your brain is the feeling center. This is shown in your personality traits, characteristics, preferences, and your values. You can see why knowing this about yourself, your client, or your team could be valuable. Ultimately we want high performing teams.
“Before you declare who you want to work with, make sure you’re aware of your own self”.
These affective tests or assessments are extremely beneficial but make sure you’re aware of your own results before dreaming or demanding a certain criteria.
Personality tests are so fun and widely taken, however there is lots to know before using them, much less relying on them.
They Are Objective
The result is as good as the info they receive. They work much like a quiz. Be aware that the results are how the person sees themselves rather than how the world sees them. For that reason, there is some bias. For example, if someone sees themselves as extroverted, or wants to be perceived as so, they may answer questions in a way to get that result. The reliability of the tests isn’t always strong.
Your Personality Changes
Your personality is not static. Who you were at 20 is not who you are at 40. Make sure the test is current so you’re getting accurate responses.
Practical Application
If you’re expanding your team and in the hiring phase, you can ask for these results but you cannot disqualify someone for a personality result. Instead, use them for information gathering that helps to tell the story of them. You wouldn’t want to have the result disqualify someone from a role altogether, but you could leverage the information in the interview portion of the process.
These results are very helpful when looking at strengths and weaknesses, or opportunities for your team. Oftentimes knowing these results allows a manager to customize growth and development, and even delegate appropriate projects or tasks.
Personality Tests We Have Used
CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthFinders)
CliftonStrengths helps participants focus on developing their strengths rather than weaknesses. As they put it, “what’s right with you.”
“Once you know your strengths, you can create actionable plans and relationships to build upon your talents.”
And through this you get a glimpse into where you may need help from others.
This one hour assessment is taken online and the result of this paid test will give you a rating on the 34 themes that Gallup has put extensive work into identifying. Each of these tests fall under one of 4 domains: strategic, relationship building, influencing, and executing.
I leverage this once I’ve hired someone rather than in the hiring process. It helps me to see where I can play on strengths for delegating project ownership.
Enneagram
The Enneagram is a system of personality typing that describes patterns in how people interpret the world and manage their emotions. This core belief drives your deepest motivations and fears. It fundamentally shapes a person’s worldview and the perspective through which they see the world and the people around them. In other words, it identifies your basic personality type. There are 9 types personality types and while there’s a primary, we likely see at least a tiny bit of ourselves in each.
Understanding a person’s Enneagram type helps us to see why they behave the way they do, what motivates them, how they make decisions.
The Enneagram also helps us understand how people react to stress. The Enneagram shows opportunities for personal development and provides a foundation for the understanding of others. Because of that it’s a very useful tool in business relationships and team development.
There are short form quizzes that will give you a result but their intension is to start you down the path of discovery. Be careful not to rely solely on the quiz because you may misclassify yourself.
Myers Briggs or 16 Personalities
This test is designed to identify a person’s personality type, strengths, and preferences. People are identified as having one of 16 personality types. The goal of the MBTI is to allow respondents to further explore and understand their own personalities including their likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, possible career preferences, and compatibility with other people.
There are 4 scales within the Myers Briggs:
- introversion and extroversion
- sensing and intuition
- thinking and feeling
- judging and perceiving
This is the most common tool used however, studies have shown that 40% of respondents have different results the second time they take it.
I’ve personally found the Myers Briggs Index to be so misunderstood because people associate a person with a type. It’s important to know that this is an affective result so it’s looking at personality, not the way someone does their job. On the other hand, it can be helpful on the hiring side because many roles have preferred qualities and these can be uncovered by the Myers Briggs.
There are loads of other assessments that fall under the affective category, but these are the three we use most often. One of my pet peeves is when someone comes to me and says, “I don’t want this particular type.” I warn you to not look for yourself.
“If you grow or build a team that is exactly like you, you’ll run up against the things that bother you most.”
As we wrap up this series on using various tests and assessments, both affective and conative, know that my preference is to use both. Being aware and informed of each of these can contribute to better team dynamics, greater productivity, morale and engagement, as well as functionality of your business. I’ve personally found that these have given me support when I needed answers
“Being aware of who you are and the results that you have are so helpful in navigating your own personal growth and development.“
Don’t forget to sign up for Discover the DOO info session on October 19th, where you will learn all about our certification program, how its unique, who its for, what you do as a DOO, if you are ready, and what is included in this signature program.
Weekly Ops Activity
Retake the Myers Briggs by using 16personalities.com. Come on over to the Facebook group and share your result and let us know if it’s different than the previous one you’ve taken.
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