Assessment Tools - Time to Get Out of the Box!

If you’ve been in the work world for any length of time, chances are you’ve participated in at least one personality assessment.  These assessment tools, many of them based on the work of Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung, use a series of questions and psychometric indicators to provide individuals with increased awareness of their own behaviors and, ideally, better understanding of the behaviors of others.  Many organizations are now using these tools in their hiring process, to assist with team building, and in leadership development and sales training programs.

While increased self-awareness and better understanding of others generally results in improved communication and harmony, the “typing” that is inherent in many of these tools can have a negative effect. There have been many articles recently, for example, about introverts and extraverts, two types identified by Jung. Which type makes a better leader, a better employee, a better salesperson?  Reducing the complexity of the human personality into such a narrow scope can limit an individual in their own eyes and the eyes of others. It puts people in a box.

It’s time to get out of the box.

A more innovative, comprehensive and realistic approach is to focus on traits, not types.  Assessments that use this approach, such as Lumina Spark, recognize the complex contradictions that make each one of us unique. An individual may have both introvert and extravert qualities, for example.  There are multiple facets of introversion and extraversion. Those facets may be utilized more or less dependent on the present situation.  By measuring a person’s use of polar opposite traits, individuals can be seen for their unique capabilities rather than limited by typing them into a category.

Based on the latest academic research in the “Big 5” personality traits, and integrated with certain elements of Jungian theory, the Lumina framework embraces the fact that each individual possesses opposing personality traits. It’s “both and” thinking versus “either or” thinking.

Everyone possesses all five of the “Big 5” personality traits – extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience – but we each possess them to varying degrees. We are unique individuals, not types.

Individuals are complex, and should not be placed in boxes, limiting the beliefs about their effectiveness, their capabilities and their ability to develop and expand.

“He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.” – Lao Tzu

If you’d like to learn more about these assessments for you or for your organization, please contact me for your local Lumina Learning Affiliate.  You can reach me at RebeccaBales@luminalearning.com.

Lead on,

Rebecca