How to use personality assessments well as a leader

Executive overview

Most leaders either over-rely on assessments or administer them poorly, leaving value on the table. Assessments like StrengthsFinder sort talents relative to each other — they do not measure competency compared to others. Used well, an assessment is a catalyst for conversation, not an endpoint.

The core insight: an assessment's only real value is the quality of conversation it unlocks — not the scores it produces.

What StrengthsFinder actually measures — and what it doesn't

• Results show your talents ranked relative to each other, not your competency compared to other people
• Having "Futuristic" as your top strength doesn't mean you're better at it than others — only that it's stronger for you than your other talents
• Every assessment has limitations; knowing those limitations is as important as knowing the results
• The "ignore your weaknesses" framing is a misreading of the strengths movement — awareness of weaknesses is essential
• For leaders, some weaknesses must be acted on: vision-casting and giving feedback can't be fully delegated

How to address weaknesses as a leader

• At minimum, be aware of weak areas — don't leave them as blind spots
• For skills critical to leadership (vision, feedback), get better rather than avoid them
• Daniel Goleman's advice: don't target your highest strength (already good) or your lowest (too hard) — start in the middle where progress is achievable
• Compensate by bringing in people whose strengths cover your gaps
• "That's just how I am" is not acceptable when it concerns integrity — showing up on what you commit to is a character issue, not a personality type

Using assessments with teams

• Map the whole team's results; a gap in any of StrengthsFinder's four broad dimensions is a real risk to performance
• Allow people to opt in to sharing results — don't assume sharing is mandatory
• Let people process their results first, then invite conversation
• StrengthsFinder is low-cost, hard to administer badly, and has no "good" or "bad" results — low risk to deploy
• The odds of two people sharing the same top-five profile are astronomically low — it naturally surfaces individual differences

Choosing and using an assessment

• Only use an instrument you know deeply, or bring in someone who does — misuse degrades its value fast
• Reliability (does it measure consistently?) and validity (does it measure what it claims?) are the key questions to ask of any tool
• Context matters: DISC results shift significantly during high-stress periods or job changes
• The goal is to surface conversations faster than you'd have them without the assessment — if it doesn't do that, it isn't working
• Avoid the common failure: administering the assessment, handing out codes, then stopping — that makes the assessment the end point instead of the start

Getting candour in recorded interviews

• Assume any recording can become public — design accordingly
• Frame yourself as an archaeologist, not a journalist: your job is to uncover and showcase wisdom, not ask gotcha questions
• Help guests feel comfortable by sharing your own nervousness; normalise the experience
• Offer to remove anything before it airs — this reduces the perceived risk and increases openness
• In healthcare or similar contexts: protect identity, avoid venting about patients, focus on what gives meaning to the work
• Vulnerability from the interviewer unlocks vulnerability from the interviewee — model it first