Revisiting Predictive Personality Profiles

We held our Predictive Personality Profiles Webinar, in partnership with Adastra Talent Partners, on May 13th but for those of you who may have missed it, we wanted to do a recap. You can also view the webinar at your leisure.

Over the course of the weeks leading up to the webinar, we had gotten a lot of interest from our clients and partners to learn more about Personality Insights within the platform–so we set out to shed some light on how to use personality insights in people management.

What is Personality?

When we ask the question, “What is personality?” we must answer it with two subsequent questions:

1. Who are you?

2. What is your preferred style of interacting with the world?

Personality is not a question of, “what will I do?” These are your hobbies, your job, your passions. Personality is more a question of, “how do I do what I do?” This includes the ways you get energy, how you interact and engage with the world, and how you gather information.

Trait theories of personality have long attempted to pin down exactly how many personality traits exist. In fact , earlier theories suggested a various number of possible traits, anywhere from 3 to 4,000! However, many researchers felt some theories were too complicated, while others were too limited in scope. As a result, the five-factor theory emerged to describe the essential traits that serve as the building blocks of personality.

What is the Big 5?

The Big Five Personality Traits is a scientifically validated personality model built on five dimensions, or clusters, of personality variances. These personality dimensions represent a range between two extremes, acknowledging that most individuals lie somewhere in between the two polar ends of each dimension. And again, this model leans on preference. While one may sit comfortably as low in extraversion, that does not mean they cannot engage with people, it’s just not where they find energy.

Personality preferences are a way of classifying a person's natural tendencies. The concept of preference is similar to handwriting–most of us can write with both hands, we simply prefer to use the hand that comes naturally and easily to us. We gravitate towards what is:

• “Natural” vs “Unnatural”
• “Easy” vs “Difficult”
• “Quick” vs “Slower”
• “Comfortable” vs “Awkward”

How is Personality Measured?

Psychologists seek to measure personality through several methods, the most common of which are objective tests and projective measures. Some of the more widely used personality self-report measures are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and DISC theory.

Today, technologies leveraging artificial intelligence such as IBM’s Watson Personality Insights allow managers to understand their people even better, and how their personality preferences may change over time. These solutions possess powerful capabilities including linguistic analytics to infer individuals' personality characteristics, including Big Five, Needs, and Values, from digital communications such as email, blogs, tweets, and forum posts.

What is the Significance of Using the Big 5 in Business and Management?

Research indicates that the Big Five personality traits can correlate to job performance outcomes. Understanding who possesses traits compatible with a specific position’s roles and responsibilities enables you to build a high-performing team.

Businesses use personality tests to assess where a prospective employee's strengths and weaknesses lie, and to determine whether they would be a good cultural fit within the company. The tests are embedded in business culture, especially at top companies, with over 89% of the Fortune 100 currently using personality assessments in their day to day processes.

Utilizing personality profiles in management can be very beneficial in that it allows managers to understand what drives people individually. When you understand how to motivate each individual on your team, it has a tremendous positive effect on overall team performance.

What we’ve found at Peoplelogic is the real sweet spot—integrating personality insight data into your management style. When you understand the personality make up of your team, you can continue to drive performance even under broader world stressors. Take COVID-19 for instance, there has been a dramatic shift in how managers lead and motivate their teams. Leveraging personality insights helps managers understand how to best support their people.

How Does Peoplelogic.ai Leverage Personality Insights?

The Peoplelogic platform transforms traditional personality profile data. Instead of relying on data stored on paper or in assessment platforms, Peoplelogic seamlessly leverages insights generated from an employee’s everyday activities. Over time, these predictive personality profiles become more accurate and enable managers to practice the strengths-based leadership we eluded to earlier.

Imagine the power of understanding where your team member, Rian operates most comfortably. He’s high in openness and therefore open to new experiences while also being relatively high in conscientious–an indicator of thoughtfulness and goal-orientation. His emotional range is low, so introducing changes in process or structure will be embraced, although he may not give you much feedback due to his low extraversion.

Contrast Rian with your Engineering Team. They have a higher emotional range but are closely aligned with Rian’s openness and conscientiousness. While they may embrace change because of their openness, they may exhibit more outward feelings related to events because of their higher emotional range.

And then finally, the organizational personality view. You can see where Rian and the Engineering Team compare to the broader organization. Looking at this view, you can also identify a possible area of opportunity in adding more extraversion and conscientiousness to the team.

To understand more about the Big 5 Components and how you can leverage personality insights to be a strengths-based leader, view our Predictive Personality Profiles Webinar.