Coaching and Personnality Tests

14 July 2014

Are you familiar with Personality Tests? These tools are increasingly being used in many countries, in large government or private organizations,  to assess managers and employees, individuals, teams, or groups.

Some of them have been in widespread use for decades. Others are more recent, or more country-specific.  The most popular include TTI success Insights®, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) ®, SDI (Strengh Deployment Inventory) ®, and the Transactional Analysis « Drivers ». But there are many more.

Such questionnaires are by no means the kinds of tests an individual or a group would take with a “pass” or “fail” outcome. Indeed, personality profile assessments contain no judgements, and that is precisely what makes them so interesting and useful.

Profile assessments are just tools. The coach will make use of them for dedicated purposes.  Having answered the questionnaire, the person shall receive a report, a few pages long, that is all about them. There will be no mention of whether their values, their beliefs, their behaviours, and their attitudes are deemed good or bad. The person shall simply have a chance to put words on issues, to clarify feelings that may be either pleasant or unpleasant, and more importantly, to understand how their behaviour fits in a professional environment, what part of it may be retained, what part of it is helpful, and what they wish to improve.

A typical example for using such tools is team coaching. What are the respective attitudes and values of each one? How to put them to use? How can conflicts, tensions, frustrations be turned into constructive energy?

Another example is with people experiencing a career transition. While seeking a new position, what values drive them? How can they make the best use of the strongest aspects of their personality  to succeed in job interviews, and later, to fit in the position and in the organization in the long run?

Coaches and experts assessing personality profiles must be trained and certified in using the considered test. Some coaches hold certifications for several tests.

Interested? Feel free to ask, and let’s talk about it.