If you have taken an assessment, this is for you. You may have taken any of the following assessments: Myers-Briggs (MBTI), Strengthfinders, Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), DISC, Hogan, FIRO-B, Thomas-Killman Conflict Mode, Strong Interest Inventory…the list goes on.
This is a call for all owners, administrators and participants of assessments. An assessment is a process of collecting information and analyzing data with the intent of improving awareness, understanding and learning.
At some point in your life, you have probably taken an assessment individually or as part of a group experience.
If you are an assessment administrator, you might be a human resources or organizational development professional, consultant, psychologist, social worker or other practitioner.
I hope that this request reaches organizations and creators of assessments too.
My goal is to create the biggest list possible. You can help me by telling what assessments you have taken. If you want to say why you liked it or what you got out of it – that would be a bonus.
Why? I am in the process of compiling information on assessments, which will be available through a new website. I want to be able to contact the owner of any assessment that you think should be included.
The assessments you tell me about will be at the top of the list and the first to be featured.
The kind of assessments I am talking about will fall into these kinds of categories:
- Behavioral Assessments
- Psychological Assessments
- Social Assessments
- Physiological Assessments
- Personality Assessments
- Cultural Assessments
- Work/Life Assessments
- Independence Assessments
- Organizational Assessments
- Individual Assessments
- Group Assessments
- Others that you define
The assessments could be used in a variety of situations to provide measurement and feedback on:
- Communication
- Career Exploration
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Independence
- Conflict Resolution
- Selection
- Retention
- Performance
- Anything else?
Here is how you can help – please be specific with lots of details!
- List the assessments you have taken – it does not matter if someone else has said it, say it again because it tells me it is used frequently.
- Identify the kind of situation it was used for
- Contact or website information
- If you are the owner of the assessment – leave information on how to contact you directly – either on the blog or send me an email with this link.
- Most importantly, leave your information on the Elephants at Work blog comment section, even if you comment in another social media forum.
Thank you.
Lynn Dessert owns Leadership Breakthrough, improving personal communication and influence one-step at a time. Post your thoughts or email me!
Back in the early ’70s, I worked for Kodak’s industrial psychologist and administered a whole battery of assessments to employees as part of his “practice.” At that time, the service was provided almost exclusively to exempt (“professionals”) employees, either being groomed for more advanced positions or those with performance issues or psychiatric problems (e.g. severe depression, returning to work following attempted suicide.) I can’t remember all the assessments, but they included:
MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) – for more severe psychiatric evaluation
M-B (Myers-Briggs)
SII (Strong Interest Inventory)
Rorschach Ink Blots
More recently, I’m familiar with the Enneagram, frequently used within spiritual/religious settings, designed to help the individual better understand oneself and others in one’s life. Like the Myers-Briggs, I find these fascinating evaluations, but sometimes mind-boggling when trying to grasp all the variations of personality. A good resource for this is “The Enneagram,” by Helen Palmer.
Hope this helps. Any questions? Just get back to me.
1. Have experienced MANY assessments; my preference by far is the Clifton StrengthsFinder, created by The Gallup Organization.
2. With a knowledgeable consultant/facilitator/coach, this assessment can be used for many things across a company, including: individual personal growth and leadership development, strategic organizational design and restructuring, and team building within departments/groups.
3. Official website is http://www.strengthsfinder.com.
4. & 5. Please feel free to contact me at [josh] @ [joshallan] . [com] if I can be of any help!
If you would like a complimentary access to the a comprehensive and non-psychometric but powerful approach to career assessment, email me at the above address. With a user-validated, user-friendly, cartoon simulation approach, I have replicated the conversational approach used to determine client type and temperament. SkillsDNA is discovered in a shortened version of the Bolles’ autobiographical method and this is all matched to the Dept. of Labor O*NET research to funnel user options to a manageable but accurate few. When combined with HireLabs.com competency assessments, this “CareerDNA” tool can help candidates identify career directions and determine skill competency and organizations can better select as well as drive individual development plans.
I have taken both MBTI as well as the Strengths Finder and feel that they have different applications. Over the years, MBTI has been consistent for me, just as Deb experienced. Being in a very small ‘segment’, I found MBTI to be validating and helped me to understand myself and how to interact with others better – I guess it provides a holistic range of insights into one’s personality and how to allow yourself to be yourself. I realize that sounds strange, but in business, we often work hard to ‘improve’ ourselves to the point of discomfort and feeling like we’re wearing someone else’s skin.
The Strengths Finder 2.0 seems to be more applicable to careers and how to maximize one’s contributions to an organization, specifically. Many companies use this assessment to determine how to make the best use of various employees innate tendencies. I found it very valuable in terms of providing prospective employers reassurance of my ‘fit’ with the positions that I was seeking, and to provide an ‘official’ set of adjectives I could use that would otherwise sound like over-promises/self-boasting if I’d simply used them to describe myself.
I’ve also taken the DISC and Strong’s assessments but did not find them to be as useful in application.
Lynn
You may find the Buros Centre for testings website very useful as they have similar lists dating back to as early as 1940.
http://www.unl.edu/buros/
Similarly Pfeifer also publishes a wide range of tests and instruments as does DDI etc.
At work we use The Rembrandt Advantage for IT positions. For the most part we find the information valid and helpful. My main gripe with it is that when I take it I don’t match up with my job (Human Resources Manager) very well – which I know I am good at and well suited for.
http://www.rembrandtadvantage.com/
I have taken the Myers-Briggs assessments twice, once while I worked for Kodak and once at the Career Resource Center after I worked at Kodak. Both were near or at the end of my Kodak career. In my 28 years there, I had 14 separate, individual jobs, many totally unrelated. I did everything from product engineering, product and process development, shift supervision, Department Management, and both supervisory and quality training at both the corporate and department levels. If I say so myself, I was pretty good at all of them, especially training. I did NOT enjoy all of them equally, however.
My MBTI assessments were both at the end of my time at Kodak. They were an attempt to figure out what I wanted to be when I “grew up.” All the tests did for me was to cause confusion in my mind. I as an ESTJ, I think, which was cool, but not helpful at the time.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I first thought about getting another job and had several interviews. Yuck! Then I heard about Rochester Professional Consultants Network (RPCN) and decided that if I could do supervisory and quality training for Kodak, I could do it for others outside of Kodak. The personality type ESTJ seemed to fit with that, so I went ahead with consulting.
I believe that the personality assessments are only as good as the amount they are used to analyze the skills needed for a particular job (or whatever). In other words, if someone had helped me to relate the individual traits to the skills needed to do a particular job, it would have helped immensely. No one did. The assessment forms went in my files never to be seen again.
As usual, the key to assessments is follow-up. Otherwise, forget it. I would love to counsel people on how to use the assessments to make career choices. The normal person who takes the tests simply doesn’t know how to do that.
Steve….I am so very sympathetic to your experience with the MBTI. Not only is the instrument less than perfect in giving the user a clear and accurate reading of their type and temperament but the competence and knowledge of most practitioners is so uneven and superficial as to make the drill an exercise in frustration rather than a turning point in the self-awareness of the user. I have used the MBTI since 1976 but discontinued use and developed my own online tool because the power of type and temperament in its insight and usefulness in the personal and career lives of people. There are definitive relationships between type and impassioned skills that I have noted over the years in working with the 1700+ clients I have counseled. By tying type and temperament to the skills people are the most excited about using at work the user has a powerful and dynamic way of seeing the relationship between type and job and career fulfillment.
Hi. Left a brief comment via Linked in too. I’ve taken MBTI twice and found it reasonably useful, but can be very complex if you don’t make a real effort to use it afterwards. Belbin, more times than I can count. It’s OK, but again, unless someone interprets it and helps you to use it effectively, it can be a waste of time. Hogan was interesting but very complex and I would be careful about the types of organisations and job roles I would recommend it for. KAI was moderately interesting and has a specific application, Firo B ditto. All can be useful but it really depends on the skill of the person giving feedback and helping the individual to understand their results and also how much effort the person puts into making use of the information back at work
I have personally experienced and use several assessment in my coaching coaching practice.
The most common ones being DISC, PIAV or Business Motivators, Reiss DEsires Profile, MBTI, TKI, Learning Styles Inventory, iWAM (from the institute of Work Attitude and Motivation), Harrison Assessment, The InsightMiirror360, Attributes Index, Strengths Finder and several others.
The objective is to help an individual get a fair assessment of themselves from different perspectives as each instrument bring it’s unique output to the fore.
I would like to thank everyone for sharing their assessment experiences. I am in the process of formulating a post that recaps what has been said on here and other forums.
We use the NEO PI-R for our executive Team to help us understand each other. This is perhaps one of the best tools I have used.
Snapshot from Web Site:
NEO PI-R is a concise measure of the five major domains of personality, as well as the six traits or facets that define each domain. Taken together, the five domain scales and 30 facet scales of the NEO PI-R, including the scales for the Agreeableness and the Conscientiousness domains, facilitate a comprehensive and detailed assessment of normal adult personality.
I have also used the Managerial Assessment of Proficiency to gauge leadership capabilities. This is a very in-depth program that takes two days to properly administer. I prefer to use it as a tool to determine the skill level of supervision, prior to developing training and development strategies to close the gap.
Snapshot from Web Site:
MAP/Excel provides managers and supervisors with a comprehensive turn-key development solution in 12 fundamental competencies grouped in four primary clusters:
Cognitive Competencies
Supervisory Competencies
Administrative Competencies
Communication Competencies
I do caution all potential test administrators to review the validity of the tools they may be interested in using. Especially f it is a tool you are using as part of a pre employment assessment. The Buros Institute should be consulted prior to using the tool, I have found many tools do not meet the criteria they should when researched through The Buros Institute.
I have created a separate mailing list for anyone who wants to be notified of the new assessment website debut. You can subscribe on the upper right hand side of this page or through this link: http://www.feedblitz.com/f?Sub&publisher=19155825