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Michael Sage

IT, Digital & Culture

Personality Profiles

During my time in the public and private sector I have been subject to a number of personality profiling exercises. In general these sessions normally end up descending into a humourous look at yourself and co-workers, is there any real value of these in a functional team? I would argue not. It might cement some understanding but nothing actually changes.  In a dysfunctional team the answer might be different, but my argument would be, if a team is dysfunctional it is up to you as the manager to change things. The most common personality profile tools used at the moment are the Myers-Briggs Type indicator where you a put into 1 of 16 “families” depending on how you answer questions in the four principal functions; Sensation, intuition, feeling and thinking. You then combine the output to find your grouping.


Kinda useful I guess… Do I need to know this about my team, does it offer any value? 

The second and newer kid on the block is the Facet 5, the most modern and advanced measure of personality available today, a bold statement.  Similar in it’s approach you answer a number of questions, you are then given an individual profile and placed into one of 17 “families”. Facet 5 does give you a personal profile and teamscape report with your engagement and I have just run through this with my current management team, it was a fun afternoon. There weren’t really any surprises and we continue to perform well as a team. The Facet 5 families

 

And for those of you who are curious… ENTJ & Promoter… My final thought, my management philosophy (and title of my as yet unwritten management book) is “don’t be a cunt”, this has served me much better than any personality profiling.