What You Need to Know About Psychometric Profiling

In this article, we’ll be looking at what Psychometric Profiling is and why it’s important for you. We’ll also give a few examples of what it could look like.

In recent years we have decoded the human DNA sequence, which makes us the species we are, but this isn’t the whole truth of what makes us uniquely ‘us’.

Psychometric profiling seeks to quantify our unique ways of being and operating, which influence how we choose to live in this world and contribute to what makes us unique. The profiles produced from technology-based personality tests use a variety of different descriptive tools to talk about the inherent differences and similarities between people, their approaches to life or personal styles.

It’s important to acknowledge that our specific personality traits are intertwined with our character, culture, education, training, values, nurtured environment and many other factors. However, psychological preferences are observable and measurable.

In addition, knowing this information about ourselves, and what to do with it, can have a powerful impact on our working and personal lives.

“Know thyself”  Delphi's Temple of Apollo inscription, Ancient Greece

Personality theory can also help us understand how others are different from us. For example, what personally gives us life and energy, is different to what gives others life and energy. This assessment can reveal and confirm aspects of life that come naturally to us and also things that are harder work, giving us room to grow and practice those skills.

Want to find out more about the History of Psychometric Profiling? Head to our blog!

Why is Psychometric Profiling important?

Psychometric profiling applies to anyone over the age of 14+ and can be of benefit to almost anyone in any organisation and industry. That’s a pretty broad audience.

Within working and learning environments, when properly applied, it can be a powerful tool in the following areas:

• Talent recruitment and development
• Choosing a job path
• Personal growth in self-awareness
• High-performance training
• Change management
• Management training
• People and team development
• Resilience training and stress management
• Communication training – verbal, written and body language
• Sales training
• Building healthy culture in a team or organisation
• One-to-one coaching

Let’s take just one of these for a moment; Communication Training let's say,  and look at how Psychometric Profiling can have a significant impact:

In 2018 The Economist Intelligence Unit published a report on the Communication barriers in the modern workplace, where their respondents state that “communication barriers are leading to a delay or failure to complete projects (44%), low morale (31%), missed performance goals (25%) and even lost sales (18%)—some worth hundreds of thousands of dollars... The most frequently cited cause of communication barriers is fundamentally human: different communication styles.”

Our communication style is significantly impacted by our personality types. There is great potential for psychometric profiling tools to help us and our teams understand and appreciate our own communication styles, and importantly, the different communication styles of others at work; including those we work in a team with, we work for and we manage.

For example, those with a psychometric profile that leans towards what some tools call ‘red’ or ‘extroverted’ are people who are happy to lead from the front, make decisions quickly, value short and to-the point communication. They will need to understand how to adapt their communication style in order to successfully communicate with someone who is of an opposite ‘psychological type’ to them (see image below), such as those leaning towards a ‘green’ or ‘reflective’ style and who lead primarily with their feelings, value time to make decisions and certainly not put on the spot. As this Economist report shows, the impact of this knowledge in our day-to-day working environment could significantly impact morale, performance goals and thousands' worth of sales targets.

The Jungian Model of Psychological Types

Carl Jung is one of the most significant developers of psychometric profiling and most modern tools are based upon his model.

Head to our blog to read more about the development of psychometric profiling.

Pros and Cons of Psychometric Profiling:

Depending on the tool you choose to use, some systems can:

Pros

• Assist with career development
• Support business development – sales, leadership and management, talent, culture and resilience
• Help individuals understand differences
• Develop self-awareness in many contexts
• Give a language to talk about different ways of working
• Celebrate personality diversity

Cons

• Put people ‘in a box’ – giving them a label that feels limiting
• Create stereotypes, which people then feel pressure to conform to
• Lead to unfair assumptions around job or role capabilities, instead of personal ‘preferences’ of seeing and approaching life
• Value certain personality types above others, even if unconsciously
• Create a deterministic mindset, which undermines behavioural change

How can C-me Colour Profiling help you?

Some psychometric personality tests use binary categories, such as numbers and letters to define personal differences, which can feel prescriptive and limiting. They’re also hard to remember when you’re working day-to-day. So instead, C-me Colour Profiling uses a blended and non-binary model based on colours. This is in order to give a unique read-out for every person instead of a category.

We give people room to be many things at once and understand that we flex and adapt between these colours when needed.

At C-me Colour Profiling we have learned from the best and combined it with the latest technology to create a tool that is very accessible, quick and easy to use without any compromise on accuracy. It only takes 10 minutes to take our test online! We commonly score at over 90% accuracy and we continually work to increase this.

We work across a wide variety of industries and sectors, from FTSE 100 companies to Not-For-Profit organisations and schools.