In my last column, I wrote about the concept of personality metrics and how our industry and other markets are using them. 

This time, I am going to take a deeper dive into some specific personality metrics, and then next month we’ll use a sample subject (myself) to compare results.

It’s worth me remembering what we determined in my last few articles: Personality metrics are all another tool as part of an overall system to evaluate yourself. Each test is another data point in assisting an individual (or organization) to help you evaluate yourself. 

So, what are some of the different types of personality metrics out there? Here is a partial list of personality metrics that I have taken that I feel were valuable to me, and I often cite when asked about personality metrics. Included is a description of the test and my take. These are listed in my personal order of preference from highest to lowest.


Predictive Index

Description: “The Predictive Index was founded more than six decades ago, and in all that time, our mission has not changed. Their passion, inherited from our founder, is to understand people — specifically what drives their behavior at work. Their quest is to discover how to impact that behavior, ignite their enthusiasm and match each role to the right person.”

Christoph’s take: One of my personal favorites, and potentially my favorite one of all. I have been leaning on this assessment a lot, as of late. In some ways, I felt the output was a combination of the Myers-Briggs and DISC assessments, in a really good way, and covered most of my working needs.

How to Fascinate

Description: “You will discover: The exact words to sell yourself to prospects, types of tasks that perfectly fit your personal brand, how to better understand your coworkers communication patterns and more.”

Christoph’s take: When it comes to marketing or communication for business development, I can’t recommend this assessment enough, and I do recommend when I mentor folks on business development. This revolutionized the way I write and present, and also helped me come up with a personal “anthem” for my career. Perhaps slightly less applicable to some folks who don’t perform business development, but I believe there is even some value to those kinds of folks.

Myers-Briggs

Description: “The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is an introspective self-report questionnaire with the purpose of indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world around them and make decisions.”

Christoph’s take: One of the first assessments I took, and one I come back to time and time again. This is really useful in determining what my biggest stressors are, how I know I am stressed and how to overcome. Also, its provides really useful advice on how your type can interact with others.

DISC

Description: “DISC is a behavior assessment tool based on the DISC theory of psychologist William Moulton Marston, which centers on four different personality traits, which are currently dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness.”

Christoph’s take: The first assessment I took and full of solid advice. While it didn’t give me quite the same level of impact as the assessments I rated higher, it, nonetheless, did give a lot of actionable advice.

StrengthsFinder

Description: “The Clifton Strengths Finder is a powerful online assessment that helps individuals identify, understand and maximize their strengths. By exploring the ways in which you naturally think, feel and behave, Clifton StrengthsFinder can identify and build on the areas where you have infinite potential to grow and succeed.”

Christoph’s take: A great entry into personality metrics. A great way to quickly and economically build teams. There has been some literature as of late that you can overuse strengths (e.g. “The Dark Side of Strengths”), but in my opinion, starting to use strengths over trying to fix weaknesses is a better way to start for the general populace. My employer, Henderson Engineers, has every employee (more than 800 nationwide) take this test and we display the results at our respective desks!

Enneagram

Description: “The Enneagram of Personality, or simply the Enneagram, is a model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types.”

Christoph’s take: I liked it. There was some self-evaluation post-assessment due to a few of my scores being close, which I felt muddied the water a little bit, but overall, it gave some unique insights the other assessments didn’t give. I especially liked the concept of personality “wings,” and personality type at their best and worst.

Kolbe

Description: “Kolbe measures your instinctive way of doing things and the result is called your MO (method of operation). It is the only validated assessment that measures a person’s conative strengths. It gives you greater understanding of your own human nature, and allows you to begin the process of maximizing your potential”

Christoph’s take: Some solid pieces of information here, although the format of information presented was difficult for me to follow. That being said, the results mirrored many other assessments and gave some useful advice on how to improve.

Next time: I reveal how I did on all of these assessments.