What is a personality assessment, and when does it work?

Employee personality testing has become ubiquitous in organizations. You’ve likely taken at least one or two personality assessments in the workplace as part of applying for a job, organizational training, or a leadership development program and have a collection of letters, numbers, or colors that claim to describe who you are. At least one employee personality assessment may have resonated with you, while others may have seemed more like horoscopes (and those are just the ones you remember). Have you ever wondered what a “workplace personality assessment” actually tells you, how such assessments are best used, or the “right” way to take personality assessments in the workplace? This post will explain what personality testing for employees aims to do, how such assessments are useful, and when they can be valuable tools for individual and team development.

What is personality?

First, what exactly do these psychological personality assessments in the workplace claim to measure? Personality is defined in many ways. One of the more comprehensive definitions is provided by Randy Larsen and David M. Buss: “the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring, and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments.” (p. 4). This seemingly complex definition illustrates how personality is more complicated than the typical list of traits or types that we usually associate with the term. For example, personality is more than just whether you are an extrovert or an introvert. In fact, most people are not only one or the other, but some of both in varying degrees. The overarching concept of personality reflects relatively stable individual differences in how people think and behave in similar situations.

The often overlooked part of the definition is that personality isn’t just about observable behaviors; it also includes patterns of thinking that influence how people understand the world around them. For example, two people could walk away from the same interaction with a completely different understanding of what happened. Objectively, they had a conversation about potential ways to approach a new project they are working on together. However, the more result-oriented person leaves the interaction energized by a lively debate and satisfied that they decided on a better idea than they could have come up with individually. The other is more people-oriented and is worried about how that “fight” could impact the working relationship.

For people who have taken a popular employee personality assessment, the experience might have made them think these examples represent different “types” of people. The person who cares more about the product is the type [insert letter/number/color/animal]. The person who cares more about human interaction is the type [insert different letter/number/color/animal]. However, most research does not support the existence of distinct “types” of people. A continuum better represents personality traits. People are not “an extravert” or “an introvert,” for example. They fall somewhere between those two extremes. So why do so many people talk about personality types? Understanding that others have consistently different preferences than our own, referred to as a theory of mind, is crucial for everyday social interactions. Personality types are useful for developing a theory of mind and more respectful exchanges, but they can be detrimental if you use them to define people.

How is personality measured?

Typically, personality assessments in the workplace ask how well a list of adjectives (e.g., adventurous, anxious, outgoing) or statements (e.g., “I like to be the life of the party”) describes you. Although you are probably most familiar with these types of self-report questionnaires, there are several ways to assess the personality of candidates and/or employees in your company. There is also a range of types of personality tests for employment.

Unlike self-reported questionnaires, 360-type questionnaires ask the same questions to observers who know the individual they are assessing. Why ask others instead of the individual? Personality data provided by observers have a stronger relationship with job performance and thus lead to better insights than similar self-reported data. However, collecting responses from several other individuals isn’t always feasible.

Many approaches to personality measurement don’t rely on questionnaires. One is collecting test data or placing professionals in a standardized situation and evaluating their response. For example, you could assess someone’s patience by placing them in a position where they have to interact with someone who might not seem to understand the task at hand (someone you have instructed to act oblivious). Another type of personality assessment is to use physiological indicators such as fMRI results or eye movement. There are even those who examine social media posts as a means to shed light on various dispositional elements.

A variety of different self-report measures of personality exist. Among them are the typical adjective checklists (check which is like you) and Likert ratings (e.g., select strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree), and there are psychology-based methods designed to decrease bias in self-report. For example, forced-choice assessments require respondents to share which of a set of words/statements is most like them instead of letting them rate each statement separately. For example, are you more realistic or inventive? The forced-choice method keeps respondents from indicating high levels across all socially desirable personality traits. Another self-report format is the conditional reasoning test. This method presents “logical reasoning problems” (meaning respondents are not told it measures personality) and asks respondents to choose one of four responses. Two responses are intentionally nonsensical, one reflects the measured personality trait (e.g., aggression), and the other is for people who are low on that trait. Yet another type of self-report method is rapid response measurement. This method incorporates how quickly people associate adjectives as accurate descriptors of themselves to determine the attribute’s importance and reduce conscious faking.

Finally, there are unstructured and projective measures that rely on an expert to score vague responses and identify their meaning. The most well-known example of a projective measurement is the Rorschach test. A trained evaluator shows the respondent several images and asks them to describe what they see. The evaluator uses these descriptors to determine personality traits.

Each method of measurement has pros and cons. Utilizing multiple measurement methods can provide a more accurate assessment by finding traits that are supported by more than one measure. Ultimately the types of personality tests for employment depend on the purpose of the assessment and the time and resources available.

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How to take a personality test?

You might have ended up on this page because your employer or potential employer requires you to take a personality assessment test for employment, and you are looking for the “right” answer. If you are wondering “how to take a personality test, ” you are asking the wrong question. None of the methods to measure personality described in the previous section are tests, despite some that are labeled “tests.” They are actually “assessments,” and the difference is more than just a matter of one’s preferred word. Tests determine the degree of comprehension/understanding for a variety of domains (e.g., calculus, business terminology, or geologic formations) while assessments are ways to quantify characteristics like perceived organizational support or engagement that can’t be measured in a physical sense like height or mass.

When measuring someone’s height, we don’t turn to an answer key for the “right” response — we acknowledge that we could give an incorrect value for their height, and we acknowledge that someone could say a different number than their true height, but the point is that the only “right” answer is the true height of the person. This is similar to personality assessment, in that the only “right” answer that a person can give is the truthful one; it is dissimilar to a test of knowledge of calculus, as in that case the “right” answer is independent of the test taker. In personality assessment particularly, it is of great importance that the respondent provides (and is supported in providing and encouraged to provide) a truthful answer to the questions being posed, as only this way can we help individuals understand their own and others’ personalities. Immense gains can be achieved via understanding one’s own personality and the personalities present in one’s coworkers/managers/subordinates–this is why Tilt365 published assessments such as the True Tilt Personality Profile™ (TTP), the Positive Influence Predictor™ (PIP), and the Team Climate Profile™ (which will soon be replaced by the Team Agility Predictor™). Please see the end of this blog for more information on these assessments.

The best way to complete a personality assessment for employees is to follow the instructions, respond to the assessment as honestly as possible, and choose responses that reflect traits that have been relatively stable for you over time and across most contexts (as opposed to the unusual way that you may be feeling or thinking on a particular day that you’re taking the assessment). An alternative way to think about this is to strive to answer personality assessment items in such a way that your responses reflect dominant personality themes over the course of your life.

What if the personality test for employers is used in the hiring or promotion process? Are there answers that will make you more likely to be hired or promoted? Possibly, but you should still respond honestly. Many commercial assessments intended for decision-making are either designed to prevent faking or have “lie scales” that indicate how much people inflate their scores. If you get caught faking, you probably won’t be hired. Even if you can successfully fake your response to look good without getting caught, there are downsides:

In an ethical and valid selection system, a thorough work analysis determines which personality traits to measure with an employee personality assessment. Those traits are essential to complete that job successfully, so even if you lie effectively enough to have someone hire you, you will likely perform poorly in that job or dislike the work. You may know you can complete the job tasks, but ultimately the context is not a great fit, or the work becomes tedious, leading to the desire to leave as quickly as possible. If there is not an alignment between your personality and the ideal personality for a given position, it will likely become apparent to management, and the final outcome could be worse than if you had not been hired for the position in the first place.

Why conduct a workplace personality test?

Employee personality testing can be useful for organizations if appropriately used. One can utilize psychological tests for employees in many parts of an integrated human resource system: selection or promotions, and individual, leadership, or team development. Employee personality assessment can also be useful for individuals who are motivated to increase their self-awareness to make more informed decisions or interact more effectively.

Although the implementation of a personality assessment test for employment is debated, a work personality test can be a useful tool as part of a comprehensive selection process that includes other assessments such as work samples and structured interviews. Employee personality tests are not the strongest predictors of performance (e.g., cognitive ability and work samples are stronger predictors), but several traits have consistently significant positive relationships with job performance. Most personality assessments tend to have small subgroup differences (e.g., race, sex) and less adverse impact than cognitive assessments. Adding a personality assessment to a cognitively loaded selection system can help reduce the system’s adverse impact and increase diversity.

Personality assessment for employees can also help grow self-awareness and be an impactful part of employee training or development. Feedback from an employee personality assessment can help people understand their patterns of behavior and inner motivations. Understanding why you do the things you do is an essential first step in breaking negative habits and establishing good ones. Knowing and using your strengths can also be beneficial. It can be an indicator to help you choose tasks and skills where you excel, which provides a positive experience and could motivate you to address behaviors that may challenge you more.

Employee development programs are an excellent place to use results from type-based personality assessments to help individuals, leaders, and teams understand others in their company better. One benefit or success of simple personality testing for employees is that people can quickly understand the results and find ways to apply them to everyday interactions. People can avoid unnecessary conflicts when they understand what their coworkers want or prefer. One teammate may expect perfection at all costs, whereas another teammate values speed over perfection, and another cares more about the social nature of the interaction. The knowledge that other people have different and equally valid perspectives is key to effective and respectful exchanges.

Should I use employee personality testing?

If you are considering using personality assessments in the workplace, it is best practice to ensure the assessment you select is appropriate for your use-case purpose and aligns with your organization’s goals. Only specific assessments are designed for selection and hiring. For this purpose, it is best to have a legally defensible and reliable assessment with appropriate validity evidence.

Reliability is often synonymous with the consistency of a measure, but the technical definition of reliability is freedom from error. It is usually measured with test-retest reliability (the correlation between two separate test administrations) and internal consistency (the relationship of items within the same scale). The rule of thumb for both of these types of reliability (and you should look for both) is that the value reported (correlation for test-retest and typically Cronbach’s alpha for internal consistency) should be greater than or equal to .70.

The term for an assessment’s appropriateness for drawing certain inferences is “validity.” Validity is not an inherent property of an assessment, which means an assessment can be valid for one purpose and not for another. Validity is also a continuum rather than a dichotomy of “valid” or “not valid.” There are many validity evidence types, but the most relevant for selection is evidence that shows it is appropriate for predicting behaviors in a specific job. This evidence is most directly assessed by correlating scores on the assessment with actual job performance.

To be legally defensible, the use of an assessment should be in line with a thorough work analysis. If an assessment is not proven job-related, then it should never be used for selection. It is also essential for hiring to consider the potential for adverse impact and follow the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures.

Assessments used for development should also have acceptable reliability and validity evidence (different types of validity evidence may be more relevant in this use case). Still, usefulness in your development program is more salient than considering legal defensibility. Developmental assessments should be easy to understand and apply and offer straightforward directions for growth. When choosing an employee personality assessment for development, consider how long it will take, how easy it is to understand, and how easy it is to implement. You should also be sure that your training program emphasizes that there is no “right” personality. Understanding yourself and others should be seen as a step toward respectful interpersonal interactions with people similar to and different from you.

Looking for more work and less drama in your teams? Click here to learn about the steps to a drama-free team.

Closing

Personality assessment for employees can be valuable when appropriately used in the workplace. Such assessments measure persistent differences in how people perceive and interact across situations. Personality is related to job performance and can be one of several assessments used in an effective and legally defensible selection process. Personality assessments can also be useful tools in leadership development and team development. The feedback can help individuals understand themselves and others and offer strategies to engage in productive and respectful interactions. Ultimately, the utility of personality assessments depends on matching the organization’s goals with an assessment to help meet those goals.

How can you actually use this?

Tilt365 understands the business value of assessing and understanding personality. In addition to certifying coaches and conducting various workshops, Tilt’s services include a battery of assessments that enable insights into oneself and the individuals with whom one works. We recommend our True Tilt Personality Profile™ (TTP) if only one individual is involved, and we recommend the Positive Influence Predictor™ (PIP) if an individual’s team members, subordinates, and/or managers are available to complete an assessment with the initial individual as the target (the PIP is also known as a 360-degree feedback assessment due to the fact that it potentially involves people above, below, and alongside the target). Finally, we have recently finished making our Team Agility Predictor™ (TAP), which is now available and enables valuable insights into team dynamics.

If you are interested in using any of these personality assessments for your team, click here for more information or to purchase and access these assessments. You can also email us with any questions at sean@tilt365.com.

The Tilted Edge

Ideas, stories, and advice for creating a culture where people love to work.

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