The Essential Guide to Personality Tests (Myers Briggs, Big Five, True Colors + DiSC)

Which Personality Test is the Right One For You?

As explored in my previous blog Personality Tests: Can They Help our Productivity at Work? there are various personality tests and they’re suited to different circumstances. If you’re curious about adopting personality tests into your recruitment or working culture, these are the four you need to know about.

• MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)
• Big Five
• True Colours
• DISC

All these tests are self-reporting, which means an individual must fill the test out themselves. These tests are based on Carl Jung’s theory of personality types or the Big Five model which distills personality into five fundamental traits.

There are distinct differences between type and trait personality tests. A type assessment examines an individual as one who can fall into a single category. As an example, an individual will either be assessed as an extrovert or an introvert. A trait assessment determines that a personality will fall on a spectrum.

1. Myers Briggs Personality Type Explained

This is not to be confused with MBTI 16 personality test, which uses a similar labeling system, but it is not the same test. Aligning personalities into one of sixteen categories, this test was originally developed to help individuals find a career that would fit their personality. It’s now most commonly used in work settings to vet suitable candidates.

You may commonly see this appearing as INTJ, INFP, ENFJ, or another combination of letters. These classifications indicate which of the sixteen categories you fit into. Individuals who take the test will lean more toward one of these dichotomies:

Introvert or extrovert:

• Introverts are more private, observant, and contemplative.
• Extroverts are more outgoing, think out loud, and can use their charisma to steer conversations.

Sensing or intuitive:

• Sensing individuals are often practical, factual, and led by a literal interpretation of life.
• Those who are Intuitive are more conceptual, creative, and speculative.

Thinking or feeling:

• Those who sit beneath the thinking category are more likely to value logic in their decision-making. They are heavily analytical and cognitive.
• Feeling individuals place more value on empathy. Their decision-making is driven by emotional connection and feelings.

Judging or perceiving:

• Judging individuals often strategize their actions and are keen followers of instructions and rules.
• Those who are perceiving often live more spontaneously and are flexible around instructions and rules.

The results of these tests leave little room for nuance. Instead, they categorize you (based on your answers) into one of sixteen different personality categories.

2. Big Five Personality Assessment Explained

The Big Five personality test categorizes you based on a scale of how highly you scored in each trait category. Compared to Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, this test focuses more on categorizing individuals on a spectrum (rather than in specific groups).

Those who take the test will fall within a spectrum following five core traits:

• Openness examines how open an individual is to experiences, ideas, adventure, and creativity. Those who score low on the spectrum of this category would not be open to these experiences.
• Conscientious measures how organized an individual is, how closely they pay attention to detail, and how considerate they are of others. Typically, those who score low may mean they are less organized and structured, make careless mistakes, and are more spontaneous).
• Extraversion explores the spectrum of if you’re open and outgoing versus isolated and reserved. Scoring highly may mean an individual is expressive and charismatic, whereas those who score low may be introverted and quiet.
• Agreeableness examines how people like to work. Those who score highly will show a keen interest in collaborating with their peers, on the other hand, those who score low will prefer to work alone and don’t concern themselves with others.
• Finally, Neuroticism will measure stress, anxiety, and emotional intelligence. Those who score highly will show signs of struggling under pressure, whereas those who score low will embody emotional intelligence and have the tools to handle stress.

3. True Colors Personality Assessment Explained

This test stems from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, but the results don’t fall into types. This personality test reveals how much of an individual fits into one personality type or another, determining which category is more dominant in any given person’s psychology.

This test offers slightly more nuance in that individuals are not one or the other, but a percentage of each category — each of which are defined by a specific color often associated with a certain set of traits. This approach is often used in marketing, but can still be at risk of being too generic — often failing to consider the breadth and depth of the human experience.

• Orange is associated with action, spontaneity, boldness, and optimism.
• Blue encompasses a different set of qualities, instead favoring emotional intelligence, adaptability, and nurturing behaviors.
• Gold often represents stability, organization, punctuality and structure.
• Green is associated with those identifying as logical, curious, future-focused behaviors.

Based on color psychology, True Colors uses color preferences to determine personality and motivation.

4. DiSC Personality Assessment Explained

This personality test is most often used in a professional environment to investigate an employee’s behavior, motivation, work/leadership styles, and moreover, to investigate how to create more collaborative working relationships between colleagues.

Based on William Moulton Marston’s behavioral model, this particular model of personality test was developed to understand more about a person’s self-perception in relation to their environment. It can be split into four categories:

• Dominance, which can be classified as active, results-oriented, and competitive.
• Influence, which examines how an individual interacts with others, observing how friendly, optimistic, convincing, and persuasive a person may be.
• Submission, which is classified as someone who dislikes sudden change. Someone who scores highly in this category will need a consistent and predictable work environment.
• Compliance, which explores how one manages responsibilities. The test measures if the individual is cautious, accurate, and whether or not they prefer structure and systems to chaos.

Similar to the Myers-Briggs personality test, an individual will be measured across all four categories, earning a percentage in each. These percentages will calculate, out of fifteen different categories, which you fall into. These categories are known as The Achiever, The Coach, The Counselor, The Creator, The Enthusiast, The Evaluator, The Individualist, The Inspirational, The Investigator, The Objective Thinker, The Perfectionist, The Persuader, The Practitioner, The Results-Oriented, and The Specialist.

Each of these fifteen profiles is used to inform a business on how an individual is working and how they will perform best in any given work setting.

Conclusion

Ultimately, each of these tests has useful qualities and drawbacks. When considering which tests are right for you, it’s important to start by recognizing, whether they are your colleagues, recruitment candidates, or under your management, your people are human beings that bring complex life experiences and personality traits with them.

Understanding first and foremost, that while these tests can be useful indicators when deciding who is right for a team or where someone is best placed within a business, empathy-led problem solving is best practice when analyzing the results of these personality tests.

If you’d like to know more about how coaching can facilitate tackling the distinct challenges you may be facing, book a consultation today.

This article was originally published on reworksessions.com.

The Rework Sessions offers Professional Transformation Coaching to help you and your team map your innate professional skills and strengths and improve the quality of your working style and culture. To learn more about how The Rework Session can help you or your team, send an email to info@reworksessions.com or book a call here.