The end of the year is often a time to review the progress of your yearly goals and to set new goals for the next year. These goals may include improving your professional and personal development. There are many different ways to assess your personality for your profession and over the decades I participated in both employer-sponsored assessments and personal improvement assessments. Some of these have included Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®), the Facet 5 Personality Profile, NERIS Type Explorer®, and StandOut® strengths assessment.  This StandOut® assessment was part of the onboarding process a year ago and is also available by my employer to repeat at no cost. This different opportunity from other assessments I have undertaken has enabled me to re-assess my strengths as I review this year and reflect on goals for next year. 
 
Your StandOut® assessment lists the top two roles which “are the focal point of all your talents and skills. They represent your instinctive way of making a difference in the world.”. You also see a ranking of the remaining seven roles, which was most helpful the second time when my results were slightly different, however, the top three roles were overall consistent.

Right now, you can take this StandOut® assessment for free. ⁽¹⁾

During this time I also found online audio descriptions of my original top two roles, these being Creator and Teacher. What I liked about this audio addition was a different description of the written report. While I do not wish to repeat the information you can find online of these two roles or the roles that may best match your strengths, I found both the written summary and audio to be a precise reflection of who I am and “are the focal point of all your talents and skills. They represent your instinctive way of making a difference in the world.”. Here is a summary of my top two roles:

Creator

• “Creators make sense of the world, pulling it apart, seeing a better configuration, and creating it.” 
• “As a creator, the first question you ask in any situation is what do I understand? When you look out at the world,  you don’t jump right in and leap to conclusions, instead, you stop, you take a step back, and try to look thru the superficial details at the surface, and get underneath to the causes of the effect we see on the surface”. (audio intro translation)

Teacher

• “Teachers are thrilled by the potential they see in each person. Their power comes from learning how to unleash it.”
• “As a teacher the first question you ask in any situation is what can I learn? What can (s)he learn?  You take your own development very seriously, your inquisitive, you read, you want to grow, you want to develop, and you see your life as a constant journey of development for yourself… and you also take other peoples development seriously. You see little increments of growth in others and you get a kick out of these”. (audio intro translation)

While information from assessments can be an affirmation.  Sometimes a key point can be completely wrong.  This happened with my Facet 5 report from several years ago, where one line really stuck out. “Having to spend too much time on the following elements has been shown to be demotivating …Being asked to be creative”. I could not find that line to be any further from the truth. My creativeness extends from the professional outlook in problem-solving to the numerous personal activities I undertake, from creating a children’s card and board game, writing a self-published infants board book and creating new products without plans from 100% recycled wood to name a few.  I am glad that the StandOut® description for creator included  “put things in a more creative configuration”.  This was a pleasing correction.

No assessment is perfect, however they can help reaffirm your strengths and can also offer insights into areas of improvement you may wish to incorporate into your future goals.

⁽¹⁾ *This is not an endorsement or promotion as an employee.*

Re-posted on LinkedIn