Many coaches bring in personality assessments in their practice. They are typically a self-report inventory (questionnaire) or other standardized instrument designed to reveal aspects of an individual’s character or psychological makeup. In short, they are a way of digging a bit deeper into self-understanding. Corporations, the military, and government use them to understand different leadership styles and the dynamics of working in groups.
Do they work?
That depends. There are a myriad of assessments available which all offer many things to many people. Assessments based on the self-report inventory depend on how you answer or respond to questions or items in a survey. I believe the more honest we are in our answers, the more likely the accuracy.
Personality assessments have been used since the 1800’s. The modern version dates back to psychologist Carl Jung – arguably the grand-daddy of personality testing. Since then many academics have developed variations on Jung’s work.
In my career, I have done at least 8 different assessments and at face value the results are similar. They tell me I am a big picture thinker, motivator, spontaneous and a people-person. All good information to know. But what many don’t do is give me my underlying motivations and how to use my strengths and understand my gaps.
For my practice I went on a hunt. I wanted to find the personality assessment that would be of greatest value to my clients. I wanted one that doesn’t put us in a box.
In his blog, Peter J. Smyth, PhD explains that Lumina Spark and Leader “incorporate the ostensibly opposing aspects of personality and behaviour in a way that challenges conventional wisdom regarding the dichotomous nature of the person (either one is outcome focused or people focused, flexible or structured, imaginative or evidence-based – never truly both).”
Lumina Learning offers our personalized portrait through 3 unique yet integrated views (personas): underlying, everyday and overextended self. Each of us has our preferred behavior – our underlying persona. These are qualities that feel natural to us. Our everyday behaviors are the ones we make a conscious effort to use, especially when we take perceived expectations into account. And we all have those times when we are stressed and we start to use too much of a quality. This is when we are overextended. In short, Lumina provides a spectrum of qualities – some opposing such as competitive and collaborative – that are true for each of us.
What I find most compelling is how we function in our 3 personas and how we can use that to understand ourselves better in different environments and under different circumstances. The self-awareness I have gained through Lumina has enabled me to pull out my most authentic self and draw on my most appropriate strengths when I become overextended.
Lumina Leader takes this one step further as it aligns our qualities with leadership competencies. This enables us to see where are strengths are and more importantly, our gaps. We can’t all be great at all things, but we can learn to draw on what we have to shore up our competencies.
My choice for my clients is Lumina Learning. In upcoming blogs I will introduce further benefits and aspects of Lumina as they pertain to issues we come up against