Understanding true personality strengths and weaknesses is vital for your career, business, and personal life success. It can save you an enormous amount of time and money if you get it right, yet misinterpreting personality can ruin you.
Myers-Briggs
Although I believe psychological self-tests such as Myers-Briggs can help determine social inclination, or even be a somewhat useful part of a pre-employment evaluation program, for example, everybody knows you’re on your best behavior while taking self-tests.
It’s impossible to acquire an adequately defined view of abilities and potential personality problem areas exclusively from self-tests, even if they are “psychologist approved.” The self-tests can be gamed.
Enneagram
The Enneagram (or Ennegram) personality typing system is another popular method, relying on only nine categories, including “The Reformer,” “The Helper,” “The Achiever,” “The Individualist,” “The Investigator,” “the Loyalist,” “The Enthusiast,” “The Challenger,” and “The Peacemaker.
Essentially, in using such a method, you’re observing a person’s behavior for a period of time, sometimes a very brief period of time, and selecting one of the nine categories, or perhaps more than one.
Let’s see, this person appears (never mind that it could very well be her business persona, and not her real personality) to be rational, people-pleasing, driven and success-oriented, responsible and engaging, versatile and spontaneous, and willful and self-confident.
The above listed traits are specifically from six of the nine Enneagram categories, so that makes her a “Reformer—Helper—Achiever—Loyalist—Enthusiast—Challenger.”
Wait a minute, someone identified her the next day as a “Peacemaker” (agreeable, receptive, reassuring), because “She is so nice; we clicked so well!”
Well, why not just place her and everyone else in all nine categories?
Are you starting to see a problem with this sort of assessment?
Considering some of the negative personality traits from seven of the nine categories, the following are created: the “perfectionistic Reformer,” “possessive Helper,” “self-absorbed and temperamental Individualist,” “secretive and isolated Investigator,” “anxious and suspicious Loyalist,” “scattered Enthusiast,” and “confrontational Challenger.”
Unfortunately, it’s entirely possible someone might possess none of those negative personality traits, or alternatively, even several from multiple categories.
Regrettably, you’re only going to be scratching the surface of authentic personality if you lack an objective system of analysis. In other words, without set standards of interpretation that disallow partiality, guessing at someone’s “type” won’t give you accurate results, and you certainly can’t rely entirely on fill-in-the blank and multiple choice self-tests to delineate true personality.
Instead of oversimplified assessment methods that can’t identify distinct individual strengths and challenges, you need a more comprehensive (and objective) method such as handwriting analysis that can accurately delineate specific personality red flags and talents.
Included below are five common personality analysis mistakes:
- Making the erroneous assumption that the complex human personality can be crammed into only one or a few personality types. Expecting consistently accurate character and compatibility analyses with subjective personality typing systems is like expecting to become an overnight millionaire through Internet marketing (less than 5% of all Internet marketers succeed, and far fewer have become millionaires).
- Attempting to identify your “blind spots” or strengths through subjective analysis such as with a personality typing system—you need someone outside yourself and a more objective system.
- Making the false assumption you can simply look for “cues,” “particular language,” or “specific behaviors” in other people to type them and assess their character accurately (unless you have them under a microscope for hours, including high-stress situations, and you’re a trained psychologist, it’s impossible for the average person to do this, even with “Internet guru advice”).
- Erroneously (and astonishingly mindlessly) believing you can predict another person’s future behavior while under pressure exclusively with subjective and self-test personality typing systems.
- Mistakenly thinking you can discern subconscious motivations and compatibility from mere subjective and self-test personality typing systems.
I strongly recommend the use of a range of evaluations, including handwriting analysis, in conjunction with other psychological testing methods to determine authentic personality and, or if a person’s abilities match the demands of the job.
Handwriting analysis, in conjunction with comprehensive astrology and numerology, is invaluable to reduce your risk because it can’t be manipulated and absolutely assesses actual personality–subconscious character—well beyond the persona when an individual is at their best, such as when they know they are being scrutinized.
Copyright © 2012 Scott Petullo