This is the first of a pair of blogs to help coaches make sense of the world of psychometric profiling/personality testing. It is as comprehensive as is needed for coaches, without covering the thousands of articles, books and research about the topic.
A note about the terms psychometric tools and personality profiling. These two terms are used interchangeably by academics and lay people. Psychometrics are more structured processes and instruments that originated from work by Darwin, followed by Weber. They tend to be rigorous, analytical and academic. Personality profiling tools tend to come from the work of Jung, followed by Allport. They tend to be more user friendly and accessible. But – often personality profiling tools are called psychometric instruments, to add to the confusion! For the sake of clarity here, we are focussing on the more user-friendly branch of this area, i.e. the personality profiling tools.
This links closely to a wider question about how much psychological knowledge coaches actually need, and I’ve written a blog post on whether coaches need to be experts in human behaviour that explores it.
History and overview of psychometrics
Greek history of 4 humours
In western society, the Greeks and Romans were the first to consider different aspects of a person’s personality or character. It was closely related to their medical model. They subdivided people according to “humours”, to help to explain their behaviours. The four humours are:
- Black bile
- Melancholia
- Phlegmatic
- Sanguine
Both medicine and philosophy at the time considered that these four aspects should be in harmony for a person to be well balanced.
The humours approach underpinned much of Western thought about temperament (with some notable additions, until the 20th century)
Woolworths!
The first modern personality test was the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, which was first used in 1919. It was designed to help the United States Army screen out recruits who might be susceptible to shell shock.
Jung and psychological types
The writer and psychoanalyst Carl Jung is often referred to as the father of modern personality testing. His paper Psychological Types (1921), was the first to bring out important concepts, including:
- Extraversion and introversion as aspects of character
- Thinking and feeling as opposing sets of behaviours
- Sensing and intuition as complementary behaviours to thinking and feeling
From this theoretical framework many, many personality profiling tools have been developed. The most well-known is the Myers Briggs Types Indicator MBTI (1940). This tool – outlined below – took the three pairs of behaviours outlined above, and added a fourth one: judging/perceiving. This was implicit in Jung’s writings but not explicit.
Allport and personality
As a slight departure from Jung’s work, Gordon Allport and followers attempted to distil the core ingredients of personality by identifying key words. Their first iteration, in 1936, ran to 4,500 adjectives!
Further distillation by Raymond Cattell and others in the 1940’s brought the number down to 171 and eventually to 16.
The main model that has been developed from this is known as 16PF (16 personality factors). Each of these factors is measured with a positive/negative on a scaling model, i.e. to what extent do we have these aspects to our personality.
Slightly confusingly, the number of different profiles in MBTI is also 16, but that is arrived at by multiplying the different combinations of the four opposites.
From 16 to the big 5
The 16 personality factors was the starting point for Fiske and others to categorise them even further. There have been various iterations of these, but the core one has reduced the number to 5. Often referred to as the 5 factors or Big 5 personality types. Again, these can be measured with a profiling tool to see to what extent these aspects are present or absent. By the time we reached the 1980s, the prototypes were well developed, and Big 5 tools became the academic’s model of choice.
DISC is an offshoot of big 5 types. Developed by the psychologist William Moulton Marston; it centres on four different personality traits: dominance (D), influence (I), steadiness (S), and conscientiousness (C). The DISC tool is commonly used in recruitment.
Specific aspects of character
A recent development has been to measure only aspects of personality, character or other areas, rather than to focus on the whole person. Some examples of these include:
Strengths. There are a number of tools that measure our strengths. These include Strengthscope, Strength Finder, Strength Deployment Index
Intelligences. Work by Howard Gardner and colleagues extended the idea of our intelligence away from IQ, towards his theory of multiple intelligence. There are at least 8 different intelligences that he has identified, that can be measured with a profiling tool
Emotional sensitivity. Simon Baron-Cohen developed a model to measure this aspect, known as the EQSQ test
Learning styles. The VAK (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic) approach has been largely discredited. But a descriptive measure of how we focus on our learning is still relevant. The most well know is Honey and Mumford (sounds like a band or a cereal!). Their four learning styles are: activist, reflector, pragmatist, theorist
“Okness”. Transactional Analysis is a major player in this area. Based on the writings of Eric Berne, a personality profiling tool measures to what extent we operate in a Parent/Adult/Child approach
Positive psychology. Martin Seligman and colleagues have developed a range of tools to measure aspects that help us become happy and live an authentic life. These are always free for the user!
Negative traits. Some of the personality assessment tools are measuring the negative behaviours that people manifest. These are an extension of the negative aspect of neutral traits, and measure the behaviours that emerge when we are under pressure, such as becoming volatile, sceptical, or overly bold. Hogan dark side is the best known of these tools.
Holistic personality. A recent addition, very popular with coaches, is Enneagram of Personality.
Linking to spirituality. Spiral dynamics, developed by Dr Clare Graves (sorry, yet another man!), explores our spiritual aspect, levels of existence, motivation and values
2-3 new personality profiling tools are developed each week, so it is hard to keep up! Some are re-hashing of existing tools; others are looking for new niches or as yet unexplored aspects. Some are highly data driven and have extensive research behind them. Others are more coffee table/magazine/informal.
How do personality testing tools work?
Typically, personality tests are self-scoring quizzes, that the individual completes on their own. Once completed, the results are analysed, and a report is generated. This report will either give us an overview of our personality (types), or a report on a list of characteristics (traits).
Report options
Narrative description. We may have a description of our character type, with examples of behaviours that we may show. Sometimes we are given archetypes to compare with “a typical person with your personality type is Harrison Ford/Abraham Lincoln/Madonna…!)”
0-10 scaling. For each aspect, we are measured on how well we score on it. 16PF describes both ends of the scale (i.e. warmth can be from impersonal to easy going) and we are told where we fit on the scale
Measuring from the middle. A few tools (notably Lumina Spark) measures from the middle. Rather than having a scale, from introvert to extrovert, there is a mid-point, and we are measured in both directions. We can be x% introvert and y% extrovert
Benefits and risks. The report may share ideas on what is useful about having these traits, and what are the risks of them being absent. There is also some writing about when we have a strength that we overuse. Too kind, too detailed, too generous – it can be helpful to identify the risks
Everyday vs exceptional days. Another useful area for measuring is when we are having a bad day. What happens to our characteristics on those occasions?
Generally, reports come with a combination of text, graphs and images. Sometimes they are accessible, and sometimes not!
Talking a coachee through a report of this kind takes some care, and I’ve written a blog post on how to debrief 360 feedback in a coaching style that covers many of the same pitfalls.
Reliability, validity, overseeing
Of course, anyone can put together a questionnaire with a list of traits, produce a glossy report and decide they have measured an important aspect of what it is to be a human!
To be accepted as bona fide, personality profiling tools need to demonstrate both validity and reliability. Validity is measured by the detail in the research that has been carried out. Reliability is measured in the consistency of the results that are produced by hundreds or thousands of tests. It’s not absolute proof, but it helps!
To separate out the well-researched from the made up!, the British Psychological Association keeps a register of profiling tools that passes its rigorous criteria for reliability and validity. Currently there are 160 tools on the register.
To see which are in, follow this link https://ptc.bps.org.uk/test-registration-test-reviews/search-test-reviews
Traits vs types
Essentially, there are two approaches to personality profiling Types. Based on Jung’s work, a detailed profile of a person is established, based on a combination of the aspects of their personality that they show. In MBTI it is expressed as a series of 4 letters to show how we are categorised on each of the 4 different categories. The combination of the characteristics gives a rich and interesting description which many people find that they recognise themselves in.
Traits. Based on Allport’s work and his successors, this differs from the types approach. It doesn’t attempt to describe the “whole person”. Instead, it focusses on the list of individual characteristics, and presents a report that outlines our strengths and weaknesses, based on how we score on the characteristics.
Advocates of the types approach argue that it is more comprehensive, rounded and focusses on the whole person, with the interplay between characteristics. Critics of this approach say that it is not evidence based, but a theory developed by one person.
Advocates of the traits approach argue that it is based on solid research, that the items being measured have been “proven” to be core traits. Critics of it say that many of the models are of the “either/or” approach, i.e. we are either an extrovert or introvert, as opposed to a bit of both!
Also, criticism of trait theory is that it doesn’t explore where the behaviours come from, nor can it reliably predict future behaviour.
Whichever approach appeals, the tool sits alongside your coaching rather than replacing it, and you can read this blog post I wrote on coaching models to see how that structure works in a session.
Final thoughts
There are further documents to read about these tools, to help inform our coaching practice, and to make a decision about which one (if any!) to be accredited in. For the moment, this is a starting point to help understand the history and some important aspects.
You can happily look up on Google Images to get a flavour of some of these mentioned above. You can also do free versions of many of the main tool questionnaires. See the document psychometrics for free and other background reading in Dropbox (to be uploaded after our webinars on this topic)
Most importantly, spend some time thinking about how useful these tools may or may not be for you as a coach, and for your coachees.
Personality profiling tools are only as good as the coaching around them. If you want to build the underlying skills first, take a look at our coach training and ILM coaching qualifications and see which level fits where you are now.
