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  • Hello! And welcome to "Personally Testing in the Workplace"

  • My name is Richard and I am

  • the Chief Systems Developer for Online Talent Manager,

  • a psychological test distributor based in the Netherlands.

  • Today I'm going to talk to you about personality. What is it?

  • And why is it important for you in your business.

  • Let's start off with a definition:

  • "What is personality?" Look in the dictionary:

  • "its the combination of characteristics or qualities

  • that form an individual's distinctive character"

  • In other words, its all the stuff that makes you, YOU.

  • It's your emotions and attitudes, behaviors, values, and motivations.

  • Think about it this way:

  • You just naturally put labels on people

  • You think of them as being "friendly" or "driven"

  • or "sullen", or "generally nice".

  • or "enthusiastic". Those labels

  • are personality traits.

  • When we are talking about personality, we're talking about

  • the things that make you, You.

  • Now the things that make you, You

  • might not be totally visible to the people around you,

  • so for this we look at something that Freud said.

  • He said that "the mind is like an iceberg, it floats with 1 7th of its bulk

  • hidden below the water." Now he was talking about

  • "Consciousness" versus "Unconsciousness"

  • But that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is:

  • there's a little bit of you that's visible to the people around you,

  • your behaviors. But all the things that lie

  • under the water that are not readily visible to the people around.

  • Your motivations and values

  • influence how you behave but they're not visible to people around you

  • that's the important thing that Freud came up with, he also came up with the

  • concept of using a model

  • to describe a person's behavior and it was taken over by

  • several different people who came along and developed personality models.

  • Now you've got a person. You have to figure out some way to describe them.

  • People are complex, so let's think of a simpler model to describe

  • this very complex indvidual

  • and, so over time, there've been a lot of models developed to do so.

  • The Big Five personality model, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

  • Quinn's "Competing Values Framework"

  • Eysenck's "Dimensions of Personality" The NEO, which is really the Big 5 model

  • with a lot of extra personality traits in it.

  • All of these are ways of describing somebody and

  • the problem with this is that most test distributors really focus in on one test

  • as being the end all be all of personality.

  • This is simply not true, each of these tests

  • is seeing only a piece of a person.

  • What we do here at OTM is that we use several models together

  • and combine the results, We think that gives us a

  • much better overview a person's true personality.

  • When talking about personality

  • you're also talking a little bit about intelligence.

  • Intelligence is more than just a single number

  • you're probably familiar with the IQ number

  • But that is not really realistic

  • intelligence also comes in a lot of different levels and types.

  • You've got kinesthetic intelligence; how you move.

  • You've got verbal intelligence and linguistic intelligence; how quickly you

  • can learn language, your facility with languages,

  • Your facility with numbers

  • Quite frankly, all this stuff cannot be tested on a computer

  • so here at OTM, we focus

  • on the kinds of intelligence.

  • That we can reliably test for

  • on a computer. Now, why is personality testing important in the workplace?

  • It's very important

  • because of one simple number: fifty percent.

  • Deloitte did a study back 2010 and they were asking American workers,

  • "Are you satisfied with your job?"

  • Fifty percent of respondents said,

  • "NO", and that is a tragedy.

  • Think about it yourself, when you're happy in your job

  • your enthusiastic, you show up on time,

  • you're productive, you really enjoy being with your team.

  • You are a delight to your coworkers and boss.

  • And when you hate your job, you are stressed you, show up late, you are less productive

  • you just don't care. And all of that carries forward into your interactions

  • with customers. So it's important that

  • you want people who are happy on the job.

  • The big question is, "Can you tell the difference?"

  • I have to tell you, that if you are a mind reader

  • if you've never made a bad hiring decision

  • if your employees are 100 percent satisfied

  • if no one ever quits your company and you have created a paradise on earth.

  • Then personality testing is not for you,

  • but for the other ninety-nine point nine percent of us,

  • If you know why people work.

  • If you know what motivates them. If you know what's important to them.

  • If you know how they enjoy working. If you know how they like to communicate.

  • Then that just makes for better,

  • happier, more productive employees.

  • That's super important for getting improving job satisfaction.

  • You get higher productivity, you get lower turnover.

  • You get more buy-in from your employees into the mission of the company

  • and the vision of your company.

  • You'll get higher engagement levels and less risk of burnout.

  • All these benefits have been borne out in research.

  • When a person's personality fits the job,

  • the culture, and the team, these benefits are realized.

  • In the next video I will be describing the Competing Values Framework

  • which OTM uses as the foundation for all of our products

  • it really is the best way to measure describe and understand

  • personality in the workplace. Thank you for listening.

Hello! And welcome to "Personally Testing in the Workplace"

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