Jim Barrett - The Complete Personality Assessment: Psychometric Tests to Reveal Your True Potential

This ebook published in 2011 by

Kogan Page Limited

120 Pentonville Road

London N1 9JN

UK

www.koganpage.com

Jim Barrett and Hugh Green, 2011

E-ISBN 978 0 7494 6374 8

Contents

Treat someone as [the person] he wants to be and he will become that person.

Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832)

After Goethe, with the benefits of modern psychological techniques, we are able to say:

Treat yourself as the person you want to be and you will become that person.

Jim Barrett and Hugh Green

This book aims to tell you the truth. We consider this is the best a friend can do. The truth gives you the only means of enabling you to find out who you are. Being told the truth and telling yourself the truth are essential if you are to take responsibility for yourself. No one else is in a better position to make choices about your life.

People know who you are, although you may not think they do. People know more about who you are than you think. You know more about them than they think you do. There is more to you than people think they know. There is more about who you are than you know yourself.

By the character you have been, you are recognized as who you are. If you do something different from what people expect, they say, Thats not like you! Sometimes you behave in ways that you do not expect, and say, Thats not like me! Sometimes you hate yourself for repressing yourself and not doing something you know you want to do.

Of course, all your behaviour is you, but, as with every other human being, most lies beneath the surface. What lies there, and what is there that you can make use of, is what this book will help you reveal.

The best estimate of science is that each one of us has a potential that we are born with, our genes determining the person we shall be. But the crucial thing is that how we shape our lives for ourselves is within the domain of our choosing. That we can do whatever we choose sounds simple enough, but this is where the problems start. It is because we frequently think we have no choice or that, even if we do have a choice, we are afraid to make it.

It is paradoxical that, when we know that we can choose to do something that has the potential to make us feel good about ourselves, we often shrink from doing it. So often, there are inhibitions that we allow to put restraints upon ourselves. Fear of the outcome makes us check our actions. Although we have a vision for ourselves, the gap between here and there seems so wide, and the risk of failure, humiliation or rejection so strong. It sometimes seems better to compromise, to tell ourselves that what we imagine for ourselves is just an idle dream it is not us. So we make excuses and deceive ourselves by pretending that we have no choice. The consequence is that people never know who we really are. Even worse we never know who we really are! Sadly, we live with a bitter sense of underachievement, of never having been fully alive and of never having been ourselves.

This book uses well-researched psychometric and analytical techniques to help you assess who you really are. It deliberately invites you to examine possible areas of discrepancy or imbalance in your life. It takes a structured approach to assist you understand how underlying emotions work in order to enable you to control them for your benefit. Ultimately, the aim of this book is to enable you to actualize the person you are.

Synopsis

The questionnaires in this book are designed so that you can obtain feedback and complementary views from key people around you, if you choose.

: your personality

The six-factor personality test reveals six critical characteristics that describe your own individual style. The results enable you to better understand your disposition as well as that of others. Applying this knowledge effectively is a certain way of staying on the road to personal and professional success.

: your behaviour and attitude towards work

The career development profile investigates how motivated you are by different types of work and also how you approach situations at work. Areas of uncertainty and conflict are highlighted in order to assist you to carry out the most suitable career planning. There are practical exercises to guide and assist you in pursuing your choices.

: your work, life and well-being

The life balance profile helps you to critically assess key areas of your life associated with contentment and success. The relative balances in your life are essential if you are truly to experience living to your full potential. Depending upon the results, you are asked to examine where and in what ways you may be holding yourself back. Suggestions are provided as to how to overcome these so that you really can achieve what you want in order to make balanced life choices.

I n this chapter you can complete the six-factor personality test, which reveals vital characteristics about your style, your behaviour and your relationships. The analysis of your results will raise your awareness of yourself and your potential. How you may have been, perhaps unknowingly, under-fulfilling yourself is explained, and numerous exercises will show how you can enable yourself by developing the insights you have gained.

The real you is, very possibly, not the person you appear to be! It is the person you could be.

Although you have characteristic behaviours by which others recognize you, there are many aspects of you that you may not express. Perhaps you are unsure how to or perhaps you have qualities of which you are not even aware. These aspects may be lying dormant, latent within you. You may get only occasional glimpses of them when you are put into an unusual situation that demands that you stretch your talents or, more usually, in your imagination, where they fleetingly reveal themselves to beckon you to be the real you.

On the premise that the real you is, actually, likely to be different from the person that we see today, we will find it useful to establish if there are developments that you want to make. The gap that arises between how you are now and your real self is what is often termed potential. Being anything else than the person who uses his or her potential will make you feel limited. Therefore this section will also establish a basis upon which you can take an objective approach to overcoming any limiting factors you think there may be, with a view to the development of your personality in the ways you want.

Part 1: How I am

In this questionnaire, be honest about how you now see yourself. It is about how you are at this time in your life. It is not about how you imagine you could be or would like to be. Take a good, hard look at yourself; it is especially important to be honest even if there are things you do not like so much and even if you would like to be different. The results are for you and, the more honest your answers, the clearer the picture, and the more benefit you will get from the later exercises.

You have to say whether you agree or disagree with each statement for the way you truly are, not how you might want to be. Think carefully about how you normally think, behave and feel. For example, look at the statement that appears immediately below: