The Use of Personality Assessment in Team Decisions

[Govind Girish]

Our team does this exact test (the 16 personalities test) every year just for fun. I am the team captain, and I do associate team members with their personalities. It has helped me communicate better and understand where team members are coming from. The key word here is helped. Its mainly a personal fascination and not something the entire team spends a lot of time thinking about.

It is creepy how accurate the personalities are.

I am an ESFJ.

Most of the members on my team are INTPs, which is the exact opposite of me.

[crazyrobochick]

We use the personality test as just one facet our drive team selection. Team leaders decide which personalities would handle each task well as well as how students will work together. We also use an interview process and test on how well the students know the rules. All together these work for us but I don't think it would be wise to decide solely on this test.

[Karibou]

ISFP-T, from that assessment, similar to Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne, and Michael Jackson (maybe I chose the wrong profession...).

I think that I get different results every time I do one of these, and I can never remember my results, let alone what the letters stand for anyways. They always have seemed to provide an accurate description of what I feel like my personality is at the time, though.

I did a DiSC assessment/"training" through work and I've found that much more useful for me when assessing others. I don't think it's as specific as a Myers-Briggs test, but I personally think it's easier to use when assessing a group - four categories are easier than 16, especially when you don't know the people you're working with well.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by dubiousSwain

ENTP-T

It changes every time I take the test, so i wouldn't put too much stock in it

I have the same issue and always have.
One is asking subjective opinion about themselves.

When I was younger I was frequently considered introverted but now I am considered extroverted. Question one should be asking: what was the social situation you were in that made it easier to be introverted than risk being extroverted?

On several occasions I was passed by on job interviews where these sorts of metrics were used.
Given the trajectory of my career any time an HR person rolls out this and a Google search to fit a job:
I start to question why I am using HR to hurt myself and my business

It has been said elsewhere the questions themselves are introspectively valuable to get you to ask what kind of person you want to be, you think you are currently and maybe where you came from. I think if you want to be consistent you will be subconsciously consistent on this test but if you are honest it will drift.

https://www.quora.com/Can-a-persons-...ty-type-change

I have found this to be a valuable management tool: in breaking conflicts in which both parties express themselves poorly.
Sit them down and have them take the test then share with each other so you let them walk a mile in the other person's life experience. Just don't judge as the manager but use it as a guide. A person that doesn't mind hurting another person's very sensitive emotions is still a person themselves but perhaps all parties need to understand the team impact.

[Edxu]

Somehow I get the feeling that the distribution of tests will show that CD is highly skewed towards INTP/similar...

[GeeTwo]

Dan,
Do you plan to use the assessment as a tool in selecting members to the drive team (which seems to be what you're saying in the title of the thread), or just to help manage communications and motivation once you've selected drive team members? If the former, which personality types would you align to which of the drive team roles, and why? (The four common drive team roles seem to be Coach, Driver, Operator/Gunner/Navigator/Copilot, and Human Player).

[MysterE]

I don't think that I would use it as a primary form of choice but rather as another tool to help inform decisions. Really, I'm more interested to see how the students react to their own scores in terms of themselves as drivers.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Govind Girish

Our team does this exact test (the 16 personalities test) every year just for fun. I am the team captain, and I do associate team members with their personalities. It has helped me communicate better and understand where team members are coming from. The key word here is helped. Its mainly a personal fascination and not something the entire team spends a lot of time thinking about.

It is creepy how accurate the personalities are.

I am an ESFJ.

Most of the members on my team are INTPs, which is the exact opposite of me.

Funny how I noticed all of the people who said they were ESFJ, were team leaders.

[Ari423]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Funny how I noticed all of the people who said they were ESFJ, were team leaders.

...but not all of the team leaders are ESFJ. I am my team's captain and I'm very much ISTJ. Introverts can be good leaders too, we just lead differently.

[Ali Ahmed]

Last year Team 4 the personality test as a guide for our Big Gear, Little Gear program. We would have each student take the test then paired upperclassmen with compatible lowerclassmen. It worked similar to a Big Brother/Sister Little Brother/Sister program. It worked out pretty well except for the fact that we had way more lowerclassmen than upperclassmen so each Big Gear had 2-4 Little Gears. That ratio is not conducive to a mentoring relationship. This year we plan on having more of a one-on-one relationship.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by carpedav000

ENTP type for me. My favorite actor (Rowan Atkinson) is an ENTP, which is pretty cool. Would you mind explaining what team roles best suit each type?

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

Which brings a tangential question; what is the breakdown of team roles by personality type (ie drive team, pit crew, PR, scouting, leadership, etc)?

I'm depositing these questions from a separate thread here. As you were.

[Jack_O]

To respond to Abishek's question, I am an ISFJ. I usually take the test once or twice a year just for the fun of it. However, I do find that ISFJ is about 97% accurate at describing me.
I've been involved with FIRST for about seven years now. For six of those years I was in charge of scouting. I just found it fascinating, and loved trying to figure the best way to find the optimum combination for an alliance.

[Jessica Boucher]

ENTP here.

Maybe not for the students, but I would also recommend the Appreciation at Work assessment (http://www.appreciationatwork.com/). You have to pay for the work-focused assessment, but you can take its sister assessment, The 5 Love Languages, for free: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/.

I use both of these to share with people who work with me (or that I'm seeing) so they don't have to guess as to how to make me feel appreciated.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by Jack_O

To respond to Abishek's question, I am an ISFJ. I usually take the test once or twice a year just for the fun of it. However, I do find that ISFJ is about 97% accurate at describing me.
I've been involved with FIRST for about seven years now. For six of those years I was in charge of scouting. I just found it fascinating, and loved trying to figure the best way to find the optimum combination for an alliance.

Interesting. I always loved scouting as well, and I'm an ENFP.

Maybe I'll make some kind of Google form and collect data on personality vs team role (unless some fellow CD'er wants to do that already).

[josephus]

Personality tests, even ones published by psychologists and widely used in business, are notorious for being at worst scams and at best generic and unreliable. Especially if you are using it for drive team selection and your team knows this, the test will simply turn into a competition for who can best mimic the answers of your desired candidates. If you use the test results for general assessment you may find unnecessary grouping that may contribute to the division along test results of your team. Personality test results are often no more than fortune cookies handed to you by someone in a lab coat. I would recommend a look at Forer's Fallacy of Personal Validation. I would recommend against the use of personality tests on your team.