Coffee talk: Personality assessments. What are your favorites and what's your personality type?

As some of you know, the Community Forum sits on the Scaled Success team at Asana. We are one branch of the Customer Success team and we’re responsible for building scalable learning and success resources for Asana customers. As people-people, we’re interested in learning more about each other so we can heighten our creative collaboration and also what we’re able to give you as customers. One way we do that is through personality assessments!

Last year the Customer Success team did a DiSC assessment as a group. The Scaled team is about to do the Strengths Finder. Many of us have done Myers-Briggs. And the Enneagram has been recommended to us, as well.

Which personality tests have you and your teams found to be valuable? What is your personality type and what have you learned from that as you do solo work and collaborate with your team?

As for me? If you’re curious…

  • DiSC - I’m an “i” but toward the middle.
  • Myers-Briggs - ENFJ.
  • Enneagram - Achiever.
  • StrengthsFinder - last I took it I was Context, Achiever, Communication, Context, Individualization, Learner.
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I love this topic, @Alexis! I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram, and I find the enneagram so much more valuable because it not only tells you about your personality, but what you at your best and you at your worst might look like, which is so helpful for self-criticism and growth. Knowing what signs to watch out for helps me course correct.
I also find helpful knowing what enneagram types my teammates are so I can know how they process information, how they tend to think, etc. It helps when collaborating.
With the enneagram, I find myself using it more in daily life, thinking about it more frequently and going back to re-read things, rather than a test-once-and-forget type of approach.

I’m an INFJ in the Myers-Briggs and a 1 (reformer) in the enneagram. :slight_smile:

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StrenthFinder- Responsibility, Relator, Belief, Ideation, Input

Myers-Briggs-ENTJ-Extraversion-Intuition-Thinking-Judging

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Myers-Briggs: INTP

StrengthsFinder: Ideation Strategic Deliberative Intellection Adaptability

Social Style: Expressive / Driver

:smiley:

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Am about to do the Myers Briggs one again, for an up coming Team Day. Will post the latest result.
Jason.

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crystalknows.com is a great tool to look at DISC types base off scraped public info.

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THIS IS THE GREATEST TOPIC EVER @Alexis!!!

We HIGHLY value personality science here at Precision Sport Science LLC because the nature of what we do requires it! At PRECISION we use:

VALIDITY & RELIABILITY are the real issues as obviously none of them are perfect.

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Sam, always bringing a jolt of energy to a conversation! Sounds like you use a lot of these personality assessments at your company. How do you make sense of all the different results and find ways to take action on them, without getting overwhelmed in all the data? That’s something I think we’ll need to be mindful of here.

@Jennifer_Orr - I’m so glad to hear you love this topic! Interesting notes about the enneagram, I’ll have to look further into the details. I think there’s much more to offer with the enneagram than I realized. Very cool!

And all others, I love seeing your thoughts on this. The interest in this thread also tells me that information about who we are as productive humans and how we work could be very interesting topics to explore together. We speak so much about workflows, which are essential and critical to success with Asana and productivity in general, and I think there’s further room to explore how personalities impact productivity and workflows, as well.

Well @Alexis, it’s aaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllll about WHY one chooses to use these models in the first place. There’s really nothing to get overwhelmed by at all if you know what you’re looking for and you have an intent when using the data.

This is a DEEPLY scientific/logical discussion because without a solid “why” or intent you end up confused and/or not having any practical application. We have a 22 page chapter in our staff manual that details our why and intent in using these things in-house but I imagine it’s not different than other businesses use:

  • recruiting (and associated myths)
  • self awareness (it’s strikingly odd how many people DON’T know themselves or various aspects of themselves until it’s pointed out to them)
  • self optimization
  • humility
  • understanding and acceptance of other people’s hardwiring (and associated myths)

If you guys have me over for lunch downtown I’ll give you a copy of our manual chapter!!! :slight_smile: #JustSaying #ImOnly10minAwayFromYouGuys. In the meantime have you seen these super practical tools on this website - Premium Guides & Tests | 16Personalities ? It’s a good starting point.

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Thanks heaps @Sam_Leahey, my eldest son is in his last year of a sport science degrees and is very interested in this…

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Sounds like your kid get’s it @Jason_Woods!!! :wink:

#SportScienceForLife
#MakingMoves
#LoveIt

We actually are a reseller for WorkTraits, which is great at looking at your working relationships and how teams as a whole work together and how compatible they are. It pulls unique reports for you and another person to determine how to keep compatibility or resolve conflict pulling your two profiles together.

Great to see what others use as we love assessments here!

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Enneagram: Peacemaker/Individualist (equally) followed closely by Helper

Meyers-Brigg: INFJ (-A/-T) Role: Diplomat Strategy: Constant Improvement

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I love the idea of personality assessments where they start conversations about fitting people into roles and responsibilities better suited to them. Rather than trying to assess people against “ideals.”

Folks here seem to be interested in Myers-Briggs. Don’t want to burst your bubble, but you know it’s bunk, right?

I’ve tested both as an INFP and ENTP, so who knows! But something like that - even when the science behind it is suspect (!) - is still useful to start a conversation so people can form ideas of who they are or how they present themselves to others.

I met someone who considered himself a “Field Marshal” ENTJ - and he really lived up to it! He led a community of millions of software users, and took the responsibility seriously. I think having this ideal helped him express that he believed he had natural leadership skills. It’s a nice way to get to know someone, but other than that, I think it shouldn’t be used in work situations at all.

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Okay so it wasn’t Myers Briggs it was the Gallup Strengths Finder.
Seems mine are.
Adaptability
Relator
Harmony
Arranger
Included

Now to read what that all means again…

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Well said @heather3!!! As I mentioned above validity and reliability are the real issues. What we’ve found through our own research is that most of the debunking itself is done with averages. For example MBTI is horribly unreliable**. . . . FOR MOST PEOPLE / AVERAGE PEOPLE.** For example, if you’re introversion and extroversion trait changes (I vs E) based on your mood when taking the test and a billion other reasons it’s probably because the magnitude of your “E’ness” and “I’ness” is in the middle part of a normal distribution curve or in the middle percentiles. However, if one’s personality trait/behavior is at the extreme end of the continuum, say for example 95th percentile for extroversion, they will ALWAYS score “E” NO MATTER their mood when taking the test etc. In this way the MBTI is extremely reliable for outlier/extreme personalities. Validity on the other hand is another discussion any way I like the Neris Type Explorer better than the MBTI even though it kept the convention of the letters for popularity/marketing sake. They’ve posted their in-house research here - Reliability and Validity | 16Personalities

The article you posted is a good one and I made our small team read in twice this past year as a way of demonstrating the issues with personality typing mostly from a reliability standpoint. The author seems sympathetic towards the HEXECO model which I also really enjoy!

All that said, if I’m recruiting specifically for an extreme personality trait the MBTI is very good to help with that SCREEN (not exact) because it will only work for far end outliers anyway who are indeed the people I’m looking for :wink: There is also the point to make that these things are simply RELATIVE tendencies and not ABSOLUTE abilities. But yeah, at this point I’m just rambling haha. There’s just so many fun intellectual discussions to have when it comes to using psychology science in business settings! :slight_smile:

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The Enneagram is the best. My site is down for updates but check out Enneagram Life. Its more fun and pop culture, but you can see the Enneagram best when looking at leaders or celebs the best. Briggs about 75-85% on point but the Enneagram is all about deep motivation and the why. 1-9 types. Highly recommend learning.

StrengthsFinder was created by a friend of mine. There are sites and Enneagram masters I recommend more then others. I did interview the late Don Risso, who was brilliant. Helen Palmer is great, an in Business Ingrid Stab and Ginger Lapid-Bogda

ESFJ, 6x5 with a heavy 7