Blog #9

             I am always interested in reading about and participating in different personality assessment tests.  About a few weeks ago, my department at work went through a team building training program at work.  We just recently experienced a restructuring of positions, and upper management thought that going through a team building training program would give us the opportunity to build some trust and get to know one another on a more personal level.  One of the many team-building exercises that they put us through was a personality assessment.  It was an assessment that I never saw before, and to be quite honest, I cannot even remember the name of it.

            The original focus of the team-building personality assessment was to highlight the strengths and weaknesses that we each have within ourselves, and how those strengths and weaknesses play a role within our current positions.  We then scored our personality assessments individually.  I wasn’t surprised to see that the results basically showed me that I am a realist, a people person, think very logically, and am all about creating positive relationships.  None of the results of the test were really a huge surprise to me personally.  I have taken personality assessments in which I find out things about myself that do surprise me, but that is for a different blog post.

After we evaluated our own personal results, the first thing the instructor did was have us talk about what we found out about ourselves.  The next thing she had us do was compare and contrast each one of our strengths and weaknesses of our personality, to show how we were alike and different individually, and as a group.  She then made us focus on the strengths to show everyone what positive attributes that each one of us brought to the team.  We then did some exercises to highlight how we could utilize each one of those strengths in each individual, and how we could incorporate those strengths into our daily function to help make our team more successful.  She also showed us how we can improve our weaknesses by working with a person in the team who maybe had a strength that was one of our weaknesses, and vice versa.

Essentially, the reason why I thought of this example of a personality assessment is because I thought it was a great example of how personality assessments can be utilized in many different and creative ways.  I thought that the instructor in our team-building exercise did a wonderful job at taking the results of the individual tests and applying them to our team.  I was a little annoyed about some of the results of some of the individuals in our team.  I remember thinking to myself, “how did they get this job”?  That may also be for another blog post.  I do really believe in the effectiveness of certain personality assessments and think that they are pretty amazing tools to use.  Of course, like everything else, they must be used carefully and thoughtfully.  Also, like everything else, it is extremely important to use a comprehensive approach when testing or measuring one’s personality.

Drummond, R. J. and Jones, K. (2010). Assessment Procedures for Counselors and Helping  Professionals. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.