How to Master Personality Questionnaires The Essential Guide Mark Parkinson Kogan Page Limited How to Master Personality Questionnaires 2 How to Master Personality Questions ‘A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.’ Mark Twain What is Personality? 3 How to Master Personality Questionnaires The Essential Guide Mark Parkinson 4 How to Master Personality Questions YOURS TO HAVE AND TO HOLD BUT NOT TO COPY The publication you are reading is protected by copyright law. This means that the publisher could take you and your employer to court and claim heavy legal damages if you make unauthorised photocopies from these pages. Photocopying copyright material without permission is no different from stealing a magazine from a newsagent, only it doesn’t seem like theft. The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) is an organisation which issues licences to bring photocopying within the law. It has designed licensing services to cover all kinds of special needs in business, education and government. If you take photocopies from books, magazines and periodicals at work your employer should be licensed with CLA. Make sure you are protected by a photo- copying licence. The Copyright Licensing Agency Limited, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 0LP. Tel: 0171 436 5931. Fax: 0171 436 3986. First published in 1997 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address: Kogan Page Limited 120 Pentonville Road London N1 9JN © Mark Parkinson, 1997 The right of Mark Parkinson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0 7494 2235 1 Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and Kings Lynn What is Personality? 5 Contents To the Reader 7 Introduction 8 About this book 10 1. What is Personality? 11 Where does personality come from?12; Do you know yourself? 15; The Self-Discovery Exercise 15; Key points 16; Example trait adjectives 17 2. How is Personality Measured? 19 Body humours 19; Projective tests 20; The Colour Test 21; The personality questionnaire 23; The Big Five 25; Impression management 26; Key points 28; Interpreting the Colour Test 28 3. Job Profiles and Personality Reports 31 Managerial profile 32; Sales profile 34; Entrepreneurial profile 37; Technical profile 39; Personality reports 40; Example personality report 41 Rogue reports 44; Key points 47 4. Preparing for Personality Questionnaires 48 Completing a Personality Questionnaire 49, Questionnaire Strategies 50; Five Hot Tips 51; Key Points 53 5. The Mind Style Questionnaire 54 Completing the questionnaire 54; Scoring the questionnaire 58; Interpreting your results 65; Impression control 70; Some things to remember 70; Key points 71 6 How to Master Personality Questions 6. The Personality Toolkit 72 How people change 73; The Ideal Job Exercise 74; Ten ways to change 77; Practising new behaviours 88; Places to practise 89; Key points 90 7. The Top UK Personality Questionnaires 91 Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF™) 91; ® Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ ) 93; California Psychological Inventory (CPI™) 95; Rapid Personality Questionnaire (RPQ) 96; Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) 97 8. The Major Test Publishers 99 Further Information 102 Epilogue 104 Further Reading from Kogan Page 105 Index 107 What is Personality? 7 To the Reader As a psychologist, I am frequently asked what personality ques- tionnaires are, how they work, and how they should be complet- ed. In fact, some days my telephone runs hot with employers asking about the different way of measuring people’s personality and with potential test candidates wanting advice on the assess- ment process. This book is based on the advice I give to people who contact me, and also on the various talks I have given over the years. My intention is to give you some essential inside information and, more importantly, some practical help. All the information in this book is in the public domain. However, much of it is technical or difficult to find. I have simply done what you could do if you had the time and knew where to look. I also believe that it is important to demystify psychological testing, and to demonstrate the benefits and pitfalls to employer and test-taker alike. After all, the cloaking of testing in complete secrecy and the belief that psychologists are only one step removed from alchemists, does no one any good at all. The results of my endeavours are presented in a way which I hope you will find entertaining and informative. I have also included a specially written personality questionnaire, The Mind Style Questionnaire, for you to try. Mark Parkinson Berkshire, 1996 8 How to Master Personality Questions Introduction The last 20 years have seen a steady increase in the use of all types of psychological tests. Nowadays, if you go for a job with a medium- to large-sized organisation, you stand about a 75 per cent chance of being tested. The tests are used at all levels, from clerical and production positions to managerial and professional staff. The subject of this book is the personality test, or, strictly speaking, the personality questionnaire. To clarify any misunder- standing, while the word ‘test’ is widely used, it gives the impres- sion that questions about personality have right or wrong answers. This is not the case as no one type of personality, in itself, is necessarily ‘better’ than any other. The element of selec- tion comes in comparing people’s differing personalities with the requirements for a job. Personality questionnaires are big business – for example, the most popular questionnaire is used to assess about 3.5 million people per year. This is on a global basis, of course, but the figure is still very impressive. One of the main reasons for the increase is the shift towards service or people-orientated industries – hence the importance of assessing the type of working relation- ships that people prefer, both with colleagues and customers. Another reason is that questionnaires can provide reliable infor- mation not only quickly but cheaply as well because many people can be assessed at the same time. Well-constructed question- naires are also a fairer way of assessing personality as most inter- viewers are unskilled in this area. The use of personality questionnaires is not without criticism. Many people object to being categorised and maintain it is impos- sible to measure something as complicated as personality. This is an understandable argument but it slightly misses the point. It is true that our personalities are complex, but there are obvious sim- ilarities and differences between people, and this is what ques- tionnaires highlight. It is these broad and enduring factors that are used to help in the job selection process. Introduction 9 Another major objection to questionnaires is that people behave differently in different situations. Again, this is perfectly true, but whether or not you find yourself in a particular situation presum- ably has something to do with your personality. What personality questionnaires are doing is predicting what you are most likely to do. This does not mean that you always do the same thing, rather that, given a particular set of circumstances, you are more likely than not to behave in a certain manner. This should make sense, as we know from personal experience that people do not react to things in a completely random way. Finally, people believe that the use of questionnaires is in some way underhand and that employers and psychologists have bad intentions. Indeed, a recent magazine article made much of the expression ‘personality inventory’: ‘“Inventory” is sometimes used as a synonym for “questionnaire” or “test”.’ The thrust of the piece was that the expression ‘personality inventory’ conjures up a picture of someone making a list of assets or attempting to detail all the positive qualities of a person. But what about the negative aspects? Surely personality questionnaires are measur- ing both the positive and the negative qualities, argued the author. Yet again, this is true, but somewhat off-target. Any sort of personality assessment does cover both sides of the equation, but a particular personality is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’, ‘positive’ nor ‘negative’. Whether or not your personality fits a specific work setting depends entirely on what you are trying to do. So what are employers looking for? This question will be con- sidered in much more detail later on, but basically as employers can be far more choosy nowadays, they can also be more precise about the personality characteristics they demand of their employees. For many jobs, qualities such as self-reliance, flexibility, the ability to plan ahead, and to work as part of a team are impor- tant. For managerial positions, the emphasis can shift to leader- ship, drive, problem solving and the ability to motivate others; sales people, on the other hand, require persuasiveness, adapt- ability, resilience and confidence. All of these aspects of personali- ty are of key importance in one way or another. So, for example, an inflexible and domineering manager is unlikely to be particu- larly successful; likewise, a shy and hesitant salesman is unlikely to progress. As an applicant for a job, it is obviously useful to know what an