I’ve always been fascinated with the workings of my own mind, and by human nature in general. With a background doing undergraduate work in Psychology, and graduate work in Social and Critical Theory, I’ve spent long hours contemplating individual motivations as well as group dynamics and the potential for (the much sought after, but often elusive) collective intelligence.If we want to determine what it takes to better function as groups, both in physical proximity and across distributed environments, I think it’s important to understand our own internal landscapes and how our strengths are best amplified in the presence of others with complimentary talents.

Below is a list of online assessments that are useful in becoming more aware of one’s strengths, gifts and temperaments. I’ve pasted excerpts of my own results below, to give a sense of how the assessments are formatted.

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1. Strengthsfinder 2.0

Developed by Gallup, this book + online assessment combo helps people uncover their top talents and provides strategies for applying their strengths.

my top 5 results:

ADAPTABILITY

You live in the moment. you don’t see the future as a fixed destination. instead, you see it as a place that you create out of the choices that you make right now. This theme of Adaptability does enable you to respond willingly to the demands of the moment even if they pull you away from your plans. You are, at heart, a very flexible person who can stay productive when the demands of work are pulling you in many different directions at once.

INTELLECTION

You like to think. You like mental activity. You like exercising the “muscles” of your brain, stretching them in multiple directions. You are the kind of person who enjoys your time alone because it is your time for musing and reflection. You are introspective. In a sense you are your own best companion, as you pose yourself questions and try out answers on yourself to see how they sound.

LEARNER

You love to learn. The subject matter that interests you most will be determined by your other themes and experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning. The process, more than the content or the result, is especially exciting for you. You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. The thrill of the first few facts, the early efforts to recite or practice what you have learned, the growing confidence of a skill mastered – this is the process that entices you.

IDEATION

You are fascinated by ideas. You are delighted when you discover beneath the complex surface an elegantly simple concept to explain why things are the way they are. An idea is a connection. Yours is the kind of mind that is always looking for connections, as so you are intrigued when seemingly disparate phenomena can be linked by an obscure connection. You revel in taking the world we all know and turning it around so we can view it from a strange but strangely enlightening angle. You love all these ideas because they are profound, because they are novel, because they are clarifying, because they are contrary, because they are bizarre.

INPUT

You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information – words, facts, books, and quotations – or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity.

2. Gabriel Institute Role-Based Assessment

“TGI Role-Based Assessment™ is a completely new online behavioral assessment for hiring, workforce planning, coaching, and team-building.

Individual strengths can lead to a personal triumph, but a team is greater than the sum of its parts. RBA identifies behaviors that impact quality of team interaction and ‘fit’ to job responsibilities: the ‘who fits where’ and the ‘why’ of winning teams.”

my results:

In Coherent Human Infrastructure terms, you are a Communicator.

As the team’s Communicator, your focus in all that you do is, of course, on communication with others. You will accomplish this in any way necessary, in both written and spoken messages. It is very important to you to establish and maintain good relations with people. You are going to be determined to get important information across and may be extremely frustrated until you know that it has been received. The power of the Communicator lies in the value of the
information that you pass on.

You may also fill the role of Founder.

With your ability to fill the Role of Founder, you may have created, or at least thought about creating, many organizations based on your Vision of what they should accomplish.  It is the Founder’s ongoing job to bind Vision and Action together and to act like an orchestra conductor to achieve the proper balance between them to nurture the enterprise.  A good Founder will provide inspiration to the rest of the people. You would be the one who sets the Vision, the goals that are to be achieved. To qualify as Vision for the future, the goals set by a Founder must be far reaching, and must eventually improve the quality of people’s lives. A true Vision inspires everyone to come together and accomplish something worthwhile that is greater than they could ever do by themselves.

3. MAPP Assessment

The Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential is a self-discovery tool used in career exploration.

my results:

Venessa is conscious of existence, meaning, purpose, potential and destiny of humankind, people, and self. She is motivated by a self-felt, self-accepted calling to the cause of good, growth, and gain in the lives of others. Influential communication of ideas is a primary way of achieving those objectives. Perception and thinking tend to be holistic and conceptual; i.e., seeing the big picture. This is a major trait in cultural, intellectual, academic, and creative activities. It includes ideas, concepts, theory, ethics, and values.

Venessa is most likely benevolent, voluntarily giving of self to help others, especially regarding current pain, hurts, stress, needs, and problems. This means empathetic, sympathetic, intentional, personal involvement in the personal lives of others to give help, sacrificially if necessary, and to subjectively gain personal satisfaction from providing personal service.

The preferences in Venessa’s mind tend to be oriented toward systems engineering: identifying, analyzing, and solving challenges and/or problems by collecting data, establishing facts, connecting abstract and concrete variables, drawing valid conclusions, determining appropriate actions, and devising strategies and systems to achieve objectives.

Venessa is motivated and perhaps even mentally equipped for troubleshooting: to recognize or otherwise identify problems or developing problems in familiar operational or procedural areas; to tackle problems with intent to solve the problems and restore function to former levels or better.

4. DiSC Assessment

DiSC® is a personal assessment tool used to improve work productivity, teamwork, and communication.

(haven’t taken this one yet)

5. Keirsey Temperament Sorter

“The Keirsey Temperament Sorter®-II (KTS®-II) is the most widely used personality instrument in the world. It is a powerful 70 question personality instrument that helps individuals discover their personality type. The KTS-II is based on Keirsey Temperament Theory™, published in the best selling books, Please Understand Me® and Please Understand Me II, by Dr. David Keirsey.”

my results:

“Idealists, as a temperament, are passionately concerned with personal growth and development. Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self — always this quest for self-knowledge and self-improvement drives their imagination. And they want to help others make the journey. Idealists are naturally drawn to working with people, and whether in education or counseling, in social services or personnel work, in journalism or the ministry, they are gifted at helping others find their way in life, often inspiring them to grow as individuals and to fulfill their potentials.”

6. Institute for Health & Human Potential – Emotional Intelligence Assessment Emotional Intelligence, or EI, describes an ability or capacity to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, and of others.  Our EQ, or Emotional Quotient, is how one measures Emotional Intelligence.Emotions have the potential to get in the way of our most important business and personal relationships. According to John Kotter of Harvard Business School: “Because of the furious pace of change in business today, difficult to manage relationships sabotage more business than anything else – it is not a question of strategy that gets us into trouble; it is a question of emotions.”

my results:

You work in a Sanctuary – a place that welcomes your soul. Congratulations on your exceptional EQ!

7. Human Metrics Jung Typology Test Carl Jung’s topology, classifying people into the following criteria:

– Extraversion – Introversion
– Sensing – Intuition
– Thinking – Feeling
– Judging – Perceiving

my results:

Your Type is INFP

Introverted 33%
Intuitive 88%
Feeling 25%
Perceiving 33%

INFP type description by D. Keirsey:

Healers present a calm and serene face to the world, and can seem shy, even distant around others. But inside they’re anything but serene, having a capacity for personal caring rarely found in the other types. Healers care deeply about the inner life of a few special persons, or about a favorite cause in the world at large. And their great passion is to heal the conflicts that trouble individuals, or that divide groups, and thus to bring wholeness, or health, to themselves, their loved ones, and their community.

At work, Healers are adaptable, welcome new ideas and new information, are patient with complicated situations, but impatient with routine details. Healers are keenly aware of people and their feelings, and relate well with most others. Because of their deep-seated reserve, however, they can work quite happily alone. When making decisions, Healers follow their heart not their head, which means they can make errors of fact, but seldom of feeling. They have a natural interest in scholarly activities and demonstrate, like the other Idealists, a remarkable facility with language. They have a gift for interpreting stories, as well as for creating them, and thus often write in lyric, poetic fashion. Frequently they hear a call to go forth into the world and help others, a call they seem ready to answer, even if they must sacrifice their own comfort.

8. Enneagram

“The Enneagram Institute is dedicated to the Work of human liberation and transformation. For thousands of years, spiritual teachers from many different traditions have reminded us of the richness of the human soul and its spiritual gifts. But without real self-knowledge, it is not possible to awaken to the deeper truths of the soul or to sustain whatever degree of realization we have attained.”

my results:

Type Five

The perceptive, cerebral type. Fives are alert, insightful, and curious. They are able to concentrate and focus on developing complex ideas and skills. Independent, innovative, and inventive, they can also become preoccupied with their thoughts and imaginary constructs. They become detached, yet high-strung and intense. They typically have problems with eccentricity, nihilism, and isolation. At their Best: visionary pioneers, often ahead of their time, and able to see the world in an entirely new way.

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Fun!

My next step is to pull out the general patterns from the various assessments and rethink how these attributes play out in the context of collaboration and co-creation.

On with the creative process..