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Personality can be considered a descripton of your behavioural and motivational preferences and beliefs. It can be described in terms of a set of independent traits (or dimensions or scales, such as extraversion or conscientiousness). Each person's preferences lie somewhere along each dimension. It is believed that by adulthood these preferences are fairly stable over time. The preferences affect how we interpret the world and behave in different situations.
So a measure of personality gives you a language to understand your own patterns of behaviour. It can be used as part of the recruitment process, to gain a sense of 'fit'. It is particularly useful at the beginning of executive coaching.
The 'industry standard' model of personality is the 5 Factor Model. It is based on decades of research over millions of people which finds that when particpants are asked to rate themselves or others against the words typically used to describe people e.g. kind, assertive, worryer etc. the words are found to consistently group into five clusters or factors: Extraversion/Introversion, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience. The findings are fairly universal. Broadly the same personality dimensions are found across different countries and cultures around the world.
Self-insight: A personality report based on your answers provides a comprehensive view of your behavioural preferences. It should give you a clearer sense of your strongest and least strong preferences. It also provides a framework to think about your preferences and those with whom you interact.
Recruitment Selection: A personality profile is useful when hiring, as it gives a picture of the person in a standardised format, which enables comparisons with other candidates and gives a sense of the person's likely fit with a team. (Profiles for the rest of the team would make this even more beneficial).
It has to be said that personality factors should not be used as a sole selection / rejection criterion. The correlation between most factors and facets and job performance is low. The most predictive factor is Conscientiousness with a correlation of about 0.22. This compares with the predictive validity of cognitive ability tests which are around 0.4 to 0.6 and assessment centres which are around 0.3. Conscientiousness does offer incremental validity to a cognitive ability test.
A second potential objection to the use of personality questionnaires in recruitment is that, as they are self-report, the candidate could provide false answers. Our system is designed to incorporate assessment forensics to highlight inconsistent answers.
The main value of a personality questionnaire is to provide a broad picture of the person. We do provide a variant of the report which uses high and low scores to suggest interview questions.
Executive Coaching: The Self-insight Personality Questionnaire is very useful at the beginning of a coaching programme, particularly if combined with the Motivation Questionnaire and 360-degree Feedback. It helps provide the coachee with self-insight and efficiently provides the coach with a rich, deep picture upon which to build an engagement.
In addition to our core Personality Questionnaire we offer variations based on different personality models and additional drill-down questionnaires for specific aspects such as Attitude to Risk. We can also produce bespoke personality questionnaires for specific groups or job roles.
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Self-insight Limited 2021
