The Usefulness of Personality Profiles

The more one gets involved with facilitating solutions to internal corporate problems, the more it becomes apparent how important our individual makeup is. Who we are, and how we interact with others, determines how successful we might be in building reasonable bridges & moving forward among our associates.

It should be helpful to many of us to look at how understanding this can help us respect different approaches to perception, processing, communication, conflict, consensus, and decision making. Accordingly, based on my experience with several profile tools, I will outline what they measure, the time needed, what each provides, cost, and what can be expected for output.

Before we begin, there is one extremely important point to understand: All types are equal; there is no one right or wrong profile. God made all kinds. The corollary, however, is that for a given job description, there IS an ideal profile, that embraces most effectively, the traits required. Hence the profiles are used extensively to assist with hiring, as well as to counsel and coach existing employees.

Since many, myself included, believe that our people are our most important asset, it then would follow that we should use the most effective tools we have to maximize this resource. I would go so far as to say, that if you're not using personality profiles to hire, coach, and develop your team, you're missing a great opportunity to get better, even if you're doing well now. If, on the other hand, you have high turnover, or job competency issues, this tool can really help.

Some of the tools available are, the AVA, Caliper Profile, DISC Personality Profile, Drake P3, Gallup Strengths Finder, & Myers Briggs MBTI. They all are centered around our 4 basic personality types: 1) Direct, dominant, controlling 2) Extroversion, outgoing, persuasive 3) Factual, detail, conformity 4) Judging, patience, caring. Each of these areas can be rated as high or low, and we then have 16 possibilities of high & low scores in each category.

If the decision is made to begin using personality profiles, how should you proceed, especially with this starting to look complicated? You'll want to look at things like ease of use, feedback time, cost, output you receive, & fit to your specific needs.

We'll look at these in the next post.