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.