How Personality Assessment Can Help You Be A Better Leader

“This is why I’m not married anymore,” said a participant in a recent leadership training class.   She was partly kidding, but it was obvious that the results of her personality assessment, which were being used to launch the leadership training series we were conducting for her company, had struck a cord.

Her personality assessment showed that she was a highly dominant, take charge, get it done kind of person.  These characteristics had served her well in her role in finance with the organization, but she realized that maybe her personality had impacted the success of her marriage.

In another conversation with the director of a college career center, concerns were expressed about students’ ability to know themselves- their strengths and areas for development- and take this knowledge into the workplace in order to succeed.  In designing a leadership workshop for them, our first approach was to implement a personality assessment to help these student leaders with the self-awareness they seem to so desperately need.

As we’ve often said, self-awareness is the first step in establishing yourself as a leader.   Although it isn’t the only way, personality assessment can help with this self-awareness and then provide a framework for building interpersonal relationships, providing feedback, delegating and a host of other leadership issues.

Here are some assessment tools/vendors we use based on client needs (Note: It’s important to know which personality assessment is right to use based on your organization’s needs.   You should define the needs first- are you wanting to facilitate teambuilding, leadership coaching or training, make better hiring decisions, etc.- then pick the best assessment, not the other way around.):

Hogan Assessments

DiSC Assessments

Tools from Assessment Associates International

Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

How as a personality assessment helped you at work or in your personal life?