We'll let you into a secret; we don't like personality profiling! Ok, so now that's out in the open, let's explain what we mean and what relation it has to putting people into boxes.

Personality profiling first began in 1917 with Wordworths Personal Data Sheet*, and according to authors of "A history of the early days of personality testing in American industry: an obsession with adjustment", like many practices from that time, it was about "efficiencies of human capability based on the need to have overall health at optimum performance and eliminate those who may be a weak link and not 100% fit."

With life expectancy at the time being around 49 years of age, the working years were marred with ill health and short lived. So the need to identify those workers without  "workplace maladjustments" was far greater than in today's world. Where we are today is starkly different, with life expectancy at approximately 72 years of age, our general health and workplace practices are unrecognisable to those of 1917, yet we still apply the principles in personality profiling that seek out those who are not strong. 

It seems we defy logic by trying to find weaknesses rather than strengths. Surely it's better to have multiple options when selecting candidates as an example, because we want capability not incapability.  And the same applies for teams: if a team player is underperforming, there are multiple reasons for why. Identifying a perceived weakness in a team member simply puts them in a box that's labelled "requires extra managing" and in today's busy world that "extra management" is onerous and judgemental.  But equally where a profile identifies how someone manages stress it only assesses in an under test conditions situation, and takes no account of those with neurodiversity who don't process in the same way as neurotypicals and is far from a real life stressful situation. Humans in their various forms, can be incredibly tenacious and resilient when tested and stressed, a personality profile will not identify those attributes. Further to this, where an employee is struggling with performance or well-being, we now have robust legal and health care provisions to provide for those situations. So why are we identifying individual characteristics which simply don't need to be assessed?

Corporate for corporates sake...

Like many things from the corporate world, we all follow blindly and personality profiling is no exception.  What we can be sure of is that the models for personality profiling have in their mind the survival of the fittest principles; a pushy hard nosed approach to people.  But many organisations, and especially the SMEs of this world don't want to use corporate mechanisms; they're onerous, time consuming and imply a need for more red tape.  Plus many of the tests available change depending on the setting, time of day or other factors in the moment. Yet that snapshot of time is used to identify and "box" that persons skills and personality.  So what if a profile could show you exactly what skills a person does have? 

The same is true of profiling used in this way with teams. What are you asking? Are you looking to find a way to label people or do you want to see how an individuals skills and abilities grow? What are you testing for? Be clear on what you want to get from this process and what the process you use identifies.  What we want from a team at its optimum is diversity of skills and background to ensure that their outputs are reaching all corners of the client audiences. If a profile tells you what they can't do so well, or how they manage stress, it's somewhat deflecting from the goal.

Understanding stress is important in understanding individuals, teams and leaders, but it most definitely shouldn't be seen as a weakness.  We all face stress in our daily lives frequently; from the school run, the missed deadline or the poorly dog, the way we manage stress will vary according to our own life experiences. Our role as manager or colleague is to signpost colleagues to support for those challenges, where required. But if, in a personality profile, we identify someone's stress levels as an issue we are, without recognising it creating a culture that says "No stress here please" and that's simply unrealistic.

So what does work?

We've been using Strengths for years.  It differs enormously from personality profiles because its foundations come from the positive psychology research (see Martin Seligman) allowing you to focus on what you do well, how you interact with others and what areas are for your own development.  Used for individuals, teams or leaders, it has a truly uplifting impact when you see your own strengths in this way.  It gives individuals the opportunity to play to what they do well and creates team connections because you are all working symbiotically on what you do well. An example is that where one is great at big picture thinking, ideas and creativity, another may be fantastic at organising, detail and connections - working together this team will deliver because they are not working at cross purposes.  Further to that, it reduces the level of micro aggressions in teams which means you have more time to do the good stuff and less time dealing with the energy drains. One client recently told us "this work has simply brought our teams to life and given them a whole new sense of purpose". What's not to love!

If you want more information on how we do this then drop us an email and get in touch at info@freshseed.co.uk

"A history of the early days of personality testing in American industry: an obsession with adjustment".  by Robert E Gibby Michael J Zickar