Why Behaviour is More Important than Personality – A Comparison Of Assessment Tools

Duo Global Consulting

Have you ever considered the impact of behaviour in your business?

Often the biggest challenges in a business are related to people and their behaviour.

Because of this, all of our work employs behaviour change strategies in some form.

We believe the behaviour of you, your business and your employees is your differentiator. It’s how you do things, not just what you do, that enables you to outperform your competition, or in our words, out-behave them. The performance of your team is underpinned by the behaviours you drive day to day. If you ever want to measure your culture – look no further than the dominant behaviours that appear in your business – they will either be your main drivers, or detractors of success.

When looking at assessments, in particular pre-employment testing, personality profiling has traditionally been chosen over forms of behavioural assessment. While the insight into someone’s personality is interesting, it is static, so it cannot be changed which renders the insight interesting but not particularly useful. To put it simply – personality is who we are, whilst behaviour is how we do something.

Personality Is Fixed, Behaviour Is Flexible

Dr Robin Stuart-Kotze, professor at Oxford University says, “it has been maintained that personality becomes virtually fixed at about age five.” It is extremely difficult for people to change elements of their personalities. However, they can more easily alter their behaviour, to flex according to the needs of a situation. It is this flexibility, that enables businesses to employ behaviour change strategies to drive the right behaviours, and discourage the wrong ones.

Behaviour Impacts Performance

Behaviour impacts all aspects of performance and each different role needs different behaviours for someone to be successful. Being able to identify behavioural traits and pair them with the right job role increases performance.

It is useful to first understand what kind of behaviours would be best suited to the job role you are recruiting for. From there, you can identify key traits to look out for at interview.

Some questions to consider:

It is much easier to change how we do things (our behaviour), than to change who we are (our personality).

Personality Assessments vs Behavioural

Assessments

As previously discussed, the concept of “personality,” presupposes that a person will react the same way in every situation—an idea that was proven incorrect by cognitive psychologists in the 1980s.

We often get asked the difference between our behavioural map, and other popular personality assessments on the market. Outside of the obvious difference between personality and behaviour, one of the key elements is the depth of insight. In most personality assessments, and in the ones we compare below, they assess across a relatively small scope – in fact normally across four key areas. If you are looking for a top level overview of someone’s personality this is fine, but when you are looking for more in depth insight to be able to really drive performance changes with current staff, or to glean real insight into how someone will perform in your business during recruitment activities – you need deeper, more actionable insight.

As an example, we recently did some work with a large organisation who had previously used personality profiling. In this exercise, three team members had exactly the same personality profile, despite the fact that the manager knew that they had some intrinsically different behaviours. When they transitioned to behavioural profiling, it gave them the detail to understand what exactly was different and what to do with that information.

It should be noted that we can provide all of the below assessments, and still run personality profiles if specifically requested by organisations we work with, however our preference is always behavioural, quite simply for the fact that they give you much deeper, and more flexible, insight to be able to then act on within your business.

We are going to compare below the behavioural map and three other popular assessments to compare key differences and benefits to your business.

What is the Duo Behavioural Map?

Richard Bandler introduced meta programs in the 1970s and since then they have become highly researched and used extensively through Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). Meta programs essentially evolved as a model for understanding, predicting and influencing behaviour. They answer the question: “How is this person behaving, and how do I communicate with them to create win:win interactions?”

Having undertaken significant training in behavioural change management, and NLP, underpinned by meta programs, we developed our signature behavioural mapping tool – the Duo Behavioural Map.

This tool provides a blueprint to managers and leaders in how to manage their team to achieve higher levels of performance, how to communicate with increased impact, how to build deeper level relationships, and is used pre-hire to help you better predict how someone will behave and perform should you hire them. We have even had clients use it to map the behaviours of their clients for increased sales & customer service. The map uncovers 8 key areas of behaviour with 18 separate behavioural patterns, and identifies an individuals key motivational and attitudinal preferences in the context of work. It helps predict how an individual will behave in certain situations and job roles, which can then be used in both recruitment, management and performance to drive even better results.

The areas include:

With the depth of insight the map enables both an individual to gain a deeper level of understanding into themselves, whilst also providing management insight to drive performance, facilitate better communication and relationship building.

Myers Briggs

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was created to measure an individual’s personality. Based on the answers to the questions on the survey, people are measured against four pairs of patterns that then ladders up into 16 personality types:

There are free versions available that can be unreliable, but the real MBTI must be administered by a trained and qualified practitioner that includes a follow-up of the results. This can make this assessment costly as it requires so much time and structure around it.

DISC

The DiSC Model of behaviour and personality was first proposed by William Moulton Maston, a physiological psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard. Later, others developed assessments based on this model. The Everything DiSC product family, which we reference in this post, was launched by Inscape Publishing in 2007.

The DiSC profile measures your personality and behavioural style. It does not measure intelligence, aptitude, mental health or values. The DiSC profile describe human behaviour in various difference situations, in both a work and personal context, for example how you respond to challenges, how you influence others, your preferred pace and how you respond to rules and procedures.

The outputs of the assessment provides a score across the following four areas:

Once taken the assessment you will receive a report that includes a percentage score of your highest to lowest areas on the four part scale.

Insights

Insights Discovery is a psychometric tool based on Jungian psychology, which uses a four-colour model to highlight key personality preferences and associated behaviours.

The profile separates people into four categories and outlines a unique “colour mix” of the four colour energies: Cool Blue, Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow and Earth Green – each colour represents certain personality preferences.

The profile is quite similar to the DISC categories:

The process starts with an online evaluation which takes about 20 minutes to complete and is comprised of detailed multiple choice questions. Following completion of this, a personal profile is then generated providing in-depth insight into individual strengths and weaknesses, communication style, approach to problems and value added to the team.

Key Differences

Measurement Type

Age

Scope & Depth

Assessment

Cost

Conclusion

As shown in the outline of comparisons above, there are pros and cons to each assessment. The firm difference that we see across the board is the fact that when you focus on behaviour over personality, you can see much higher levels of impact in your business. This is ultimately what led us to create the Duo Behavioural Map. Although some of the other profiles look at some behaviours, all are predominantly personality based, and look at a very narrow scope with only four areas of assessment, which as previously discussed, is not often enough to really drive performance changes in your business.

When you look at behaviours, in the specific context of work, and across a wider range of 18 behavioural patterns – you can achieve a deep analysis into the people into your team, whether existing, or when used during recruitment to learn more about the person you may hire.

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#HR #National #Premium #Insight #Personal Development #Premium

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