Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals on your team is a sure way to boost efficiency and harmony as a whole. Depending on the size of your team, or the length of time you’ve been working together, this is potentially a difficult task. This is where many leaders will turn to personality testing. Getting a succinct summary of each of your team members’ personalities and working styles is one way to get a head start, but how accurate are these personality tests, and are they reflective enough of the individual to contribute to the success of your team as a whole?
By asking members of your team to complete a personality test, you encourage them to self-reflect, and consider how they may be perceived by others in the workplace. This inward analysis can help team members’ awareness of their own strengths, weaknesses and preferences. With such results, you may be in a better position to assess and improve team dynamics.
Personality tests also provide a somewhat structured way for team leaders to analyse complex human behaviours. Complexities are broken down and simplified in a way that allows for easier interpretation and categorisation. Understanding the gist of someone’s personality type or preferred way of working is useful for a manager heading a new team of unfamiliar people.
In an early instance such as this, a personality test is one understandable method of getting to know the team members you manage. However, a common drawback of personality tests is their tendency to over-simplify individuals, and in the workplace especially this can lead to a feeling of depersonalisation and detachment. Often, the static results they provide also fail to take into account situational behaviour, and the fact that people will behave differently in different and complex contexts. As an initial starting point, personality tests can provide basic insights. Their use as a long term solution may read as neglectful to the very real complexities of those you lead.
These complexities already begin to reveal themselves during the test-taking process. While personality tests encourage self awareness, they also open up the risk of self-reporting bias– especially when personality tests are being completed within a workplace environment and there is an increased desire to be perceived in positive ways.
There are some tests out there that have recognised the drawbacks of traditional personality tests and tried to overcome them. Those at C-me, for instance, felt that the personality test should analyse observable behaviours instead, and do away with boxes and labels to provide a more tangible, useful set of results for team coaches and members to work with. Addressing both conscious and unconscious preferences, and using colour to make results more personal, C-me claims to address previously mentioned concerns.
While the ‘personality’ test has been a corporate go-to for many years, increasingly their drawbacks are being recognised. The C-me test and others of its kind are working to overcome these issues, while at no stage claiming to be the be-all-and-end-all. Behavioural tests are useful, but should be used holistically alongside reviews, observations and feedback to gain a more accurate and personal view of an individual over time.
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