Discovering Personalities

How personality tests can give you insight into yourself and your team

Apr 13, 2023

For a long time, I didn’t like answering the question, “Tell me a bit about yourself.” Back then, my default response was to talk about my job, the product area I was responsible for, and, just maybe, a bit about my life outside work (“I’m a mom of two”). Every time I rattled off those canned answers, I would cringe. I didn’t like the way my response tied my identity to my job. The answers I provided always gave a strong overview of my work, but they offered very little about who I am as a person, or what I enjoy doing.

Now, however, whenever someone asks me about myself, I have a better response. These days, when someone asks me to tell them about myself, I start my answer with, “I’m an orchestrator, an inspirer, and a coach.” As an orchestrator, I excel at bringing people together and mobilizing groups to achieve goals, especially in complex situations. As an inspirer, I lead by motivating people to get behind a big vision and bring out the best in the team. As a coach, I’m motivated by personal development and learning, not only for myself, but for everyone I interact with.

Orchestrator, inspirer, coach. Those three words say more about who I am—from my youth to my mid-career, in my professional and personal lives—than any job descriptions possibly could. In fact, nowadays, I often get the question, “How are you always able to describe yourself so well?”

For today’s Whisper, I want to let you in on a secret: I didn’t come up with that description on my own. I got it from the Principles You assessment by Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and professor in management and psychology at the Wharton School. It’s my secret weapon in job interviews, meetings, networking events, social gatherings, and more.

How can personality tests help you as a PM?

I first discovered personality assessments through different leadership training classes I attended over the years. I have taken most of the popular ones out there, and personality tests were one of the most useful tools they equipped me with.

As Product Managers, understanding our own personalities allows us to identify our natural tendencies, preferences, and biases. For example, knowing that I excel at working in teams prompts me to raise my hand when a team needs someone who can lead work that spans multiple orgs, or to turn down opportunities that would require me to sit in a corner and think by myself. Furthermore, because I know I’m an orchestrator, inspirer, and coach, I can purposefully seek out people who are the opposite of me in order to avoid blind spots and make better decisions. Case in point: according to the PrinciplesYou assessment, my husband would be considered a critic and thinker. 😀He likes to think independently and has no problem challenging my visions and plans. For this reason, I run most of my big decisions by him to make sure I’m seeing the whole picture.

Understanding the language of personalities has given me an opportunity to better understand people I work with, be more empathetic with them, and help them navigate our complex work environment. I once worked with a Tech Lead who was excellent at coming up with strong roadmaps. However, she also had a lot of conflicts with partner teams. I knew that she had good intentions, but she was somehow rubbing people the wrong way. I asked her if she would be interested in taking the PrinciplesYou test.

Sure enough, the results showed that she was a commander and a planner. No wonder she had such a strong personal drive for excellence, and pushed people to deliver the best for the organization. Her personality type led her to not worry so much about offending others. With this in mind, I was able to help her realize that in order to achieve a bigger goal, she could not alienate people—especially those whose support she needed. I ended up pairing her with someone who was more diplomatic in order to help her navigate the negotiations and make her opinion heard in a constructive way.

Personality tests can be incredibly helpful—not just for Product Managers, but for anyone—because they help us understand ourselves better. We may think we know ourselves pretty well, but assessments can provide a level of objectivity that helps us improve our ability to collaborate with others.

Which personality tests are best for Product Managers?

Whether you think a personality assessment would help you as a PM or you’re simply curious which archetype you are, by now you’re probably wondering which test you should use. I have taken most of the assessments out there, including:

Each of these assessments measure different aspects of your personality, and each has its own strengths and limitations. StrengthsFinder, for example, is focused on identifying individual strengths, while DISC is more focused on communication style. The MBTI and the Big Five assessments are both broad measures of personality, featuring a few common measurements such as extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness. The Hogan Leadership Assessment focuses more on leadership potential in the workplace.

The test that resonates with me the most is PrinciplesYou. I found the archetype description to be an “ah-ha moment” that helped me tie all of my experiences and stories together. Better yet, the full version is free, so I can ask my team members and my friends to take it without worrying about the cost. That said, while it works for many people I know, some of my friends have found that it didn’t provide completely accurate results—usually because they didn’t fit neatly into one of the archetypes provided. Human beings are complex and multifaceted, and it can be difficult to capture the full range of a person's personality within a few categories, especially when we take cultural influence into account.

My second favorite personality test is the Hogan Leadership Assessment. It cost a few hundred dollars, but the assessment was very thorough. The Hogan assessment is designed to provide insights into an individual's leadership potential by evaluating three main areas: their bright side (normal or positive personality traits), their dark side (personality traits that appear when they react under stress, which can lead to problems or conflicts), and their values and motivations. This assessment is helpful because it provides insights into both strengths and development areas, especially blind spots that don’t appear very often but that can derail someone’s performance in a leadership setting.

If you’re interested in taking a personality assessment, I would recommend starting with PrinciplesYou, followed by the Hogan Leadership Assessment if you feel you need more insight or are curious to learn more.

Personality tests can be game changers

Once I started using personality assessments, I immediately noticed a difference in the ways I would describe myself to others. Instead of struggling to find an honest and accurate word to sum up personality during job interviews, I could now refer to myself using categories that were much more encompassing of my traits and work style. This has proven to be a huge benefit, in job interviews and beyond. It also allowed me to better understand my own style of working and communicating.

Personality tests are an invaluable tool for getting in touch with what makes you tick, and I would recommend them to anyone—PM or otherwise—who struggles to define themselves in simple terms.

Have you taken any of these tests? What archetypes are you? Are you surprised at the results? Let me know in the comments!