You are not your personality profile

The first half-day of my culture workshops is spent talking about relationships and communication and for that exercise I use the personality profile. Over the years I’ve used all of the tools - ColorPersona, DISC, Hogan, Myers-Briggs, Clarity4D - and they’re all useful, to a point.

Here's the thing that I always reinforce at the start of the exercise though. Firstly, a personality profile tells you what you answered on the day you answered it. It's a mirror held up to your current self-perception, which means it's only as honest as you were when you completed the survey. (And if you're neurodivergent, the profile may tell you very little at all - these tools were designed around neurotypical responses, and masking alone can render the results meaningless.)

Secondly, once you have the insights, the real opportunity is in understanding what happens next. Too often, organisations treat the resulting report as a verdict. ‘You’re one of these’.

Some people take it literally and will wear their type like a badge - or worse, a shield:

‘I'm a high D/red, so I'm direct, you need to adapt to that.’

‘I'm an introvert and social situations drain me, so I won’t be attending team events.’

‘I’m yellow so I find it hard to concentrate.’

‘I’m a feeling person, so every meeting should start with a personal check-in’

Which may be true for you, but none of that explains how you're going to work better with the person on your team.

Self-awareness is the starting point, but empathy - understanding others - is the real work and it’s where my focus always is. Also, it’s not our goal to stay exactly the same person that we are today.

The genuine value of any personality exercise lies not just in what it reveals about yourself, but in what it teaches you about adapting to others - their communication style, their needs, their perspective.

That's where strong relationships are built. And relationships, more than any framework or assessment tool, are what culture is built on. Without them teams become dysfunctional or worse, destructive.

We are not a series of letters or colours. We're humans trying to do the best we can, with the people around us. The profile starts that process. It doesn't finish it.