Personality assessments can serve as a powerful addition to your coaching toolkit provided that you know how to use them effectively. While there are over a dozen personality assessments available today, the five most popular instruments include the DISC Assessment, the Myers-Briggs Test, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, the Benzinger Personality Assessment Model and the Five Factor Personality Indicator.
The DISC Assessment has become considered the gold standard when it comes to personality assessments for the professional workplace. Developed by psychologist John Grier, this assessment classifies an individual’s motivations across four specific quadrants, including:
- Dominance – Tendency toward assertiveness, power and control
- Influence – Communicates effectively in social interactions
- Steadiness – Tendency toward reliability, patience and persistence
- Conscientiousness – Preference for organization and structure
While most personality tests generate from 4 to 16 different personality types, the DISC assessment’s nuanced approach generates 384 different graph types and provides subjects with dozens of pages of detailed analysis. Organizations, trainers and professional coaches use a person’s motivations and values amongst these four quadrants to integrate team members and improve communication.
Many businesses also implement DISC assessments as part of their pre-employment screening in order to ensure that a promising applicant will be a good fit for their company. Individuals themselves can use the results of their DISC assessment to get a more object perspective of how they are viewed by others and use this information to communicate more effectively with different personality types.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Although there are plenty of life coaches who also use DISC assessments in their practice, many life coaches also use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI, when it comes to helping clients work towards goals in their personal lives. The MBTI consists of a lengthy questionnaire that examines how a person makes decisions and perceives the world around them. Similar to the DISC assessment, the MBTI categorizes an individual’s behavioral tendencies across four specific dichotomies, including:
- Extroversion vs. Introversion – Preference to turn outward or inward
- Sensing vs. Intuition – Information gathering functions
- Thinking vs. Feeling – Decision making functions
- Judgement vs. Perception – Perception of the outside world
There are 16 possible MBTI ranging from ESTJ to INFP that are generated depending on how an individual’s behavior is rated across each of these spectrums. A considerable body of knowledge is available that coaches and clients can refer to develop strategies on how they can reach their goals based on their personal approach to life and problem solving.
Much like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter uses a questionnaire consisting of 70 questions to identify which an individual’s preference amongst four different temperaments, resulting in 16 possibly personality types. While the MBTI and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter appear similar on the surface, they are differ in some very fundamental ways. This personality assessment divides the 16 personality types into four different temperaments, which are in turn divided into two roles, each of which have two distinct role variants.
- Artisans – Seeking to make an impact as either directive Operators (Crafters and Promoters) or informative Entertainers (Composers and Performers)
- Guardians – Seeking belonging and concerned with duty as directive Administrators (Inspectors and Supervisors) or informative Conservators (Protectors and Providers)
- Idealists – Seeking meaning and concerned with personal growth as directive Mentors (Counselors and Teachers) or informative Advocates (Healers and Champions)
- Rationals – Seeking mastery and concerned with their own knowledge as directive Coordinators (Masterminds and Fieldmarshalls) and informative Engineers (Architects and Inventors)
Professional life and business coaches often use a combination of both the MBTI and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter to provide themselves and their clients with an accurate illustration of how their inner motivations and convictions affect their behavior in the outer world. When used together, these two assessments have proven to be an effective means of gaining a detailed understanding of an individual’s personality that can be very helpful when discussing a client’s ambitions, circumstances and strategies.
Benzinger Thinking Style Assessment
While DISC assessments and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicators are geared toward the motivations and values that affect how affect how we want to behave, the Benzinger Thinking Style Assessment, or BTSA, is designed to measure how we actually respond to situations in the real world. The BTSA is based on the Carl Jung’s work in the field of typology and provides a detailed analysis of an individuals “brain type” based on four different hypothetical hemispheres of the brain, including:
- Frontal Left – Mathematical, logical reasoning and structural analysis
- Frontal Right – Internal imaging, imagination and expressiveness
- Basal Left – Sequential routines, procedures, order and habit
- Basal Right – Nostalgia, spirituality, rhythm and feeling
The BTSA is a fee based service and can only be administered by a professional representative who has been licensed by the owners of the BTSA model, the KBA Human Resource Technology Group. Results of this assessment are typically used in a professional environment to increase productivity, improve team creativity and decision making skills, reduce conflicts and lower turnover.
Five Factor Personality Inventory
If you are interested in getting a general picture of a client’s overall personality and want to use an assessment instrument that is less involved than the tests discussed above, The Five Factor Personality Inventory might be just the coaching tool you need. This personality test is based on the Big Five theory, also known as the Five Factor Model (FFM). Participants can complete the Five Factor Personality Indicator test in less than ten minutes and will be provided with results indicating their placement along the spectrum of the five OCEAN factors:
- Openness to New Experiences and Ideas
- Conscientiousness Toward Others
- Extraversion and Pronounced Engagement with the External World
- Agreeableness with Friends and Colleagues
- Neuroticism and Emotional Instability
While the results of the Five Factor Personality Inventory are not nearly as detailed as the DISC assessment or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, this instrument is an effective method of scratching the surface of how a client’s emotional intelligence and general perspectives effects his or her behavior. This tool is particularly useful when you have a limited amount of time with a client and need a general personality assessment as soon as possible.