research paper: use of profiling tools
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Research Paper Assessment
Name: Balakrishna ShenoyDate: 23rd July 2012Student ID: Balakrishna ShenoyEmail: [email protected]
Complete your 2000 word research paper and insert it in the space below. Then email this document as an attachment to [email protected]
Effectiveness of
Personality Assessment Tools
and
Its application in Coaching
By Balakrishna Shenoy
Word Count
Body : Approximately 1900 words
Cover Page, Appendix etc. Approximately 1000 words
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Table of Contents
1. Research Objective
2. Part 1- Research Summary
a. Research Methodology Summary
b. Research Findings Summary
3. Part 2 – Relevance to Coaching
a. Application in Coaching
b. Recommended Use Cases for Coaching
4. Part 3 – Research in Detail
a. Research methodology
b. Research Findings
i. Awareness Section
ii. Application and Use Section
iii. Factors Influencing Effectiveness Section
iv. Respondent Details Section
5. Works Cited
6. Appendix
a. Questionnaire
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Research Objective
The use of psychometrics tools to assess personality types and traits is of recent
origin and less than 150 years old. Francis Galton, often referred to as “the father of
psychometrics”, pioneered the use of questionnaires. While the first psychometrics
instruments were used to measure the concept of intelligence subsequently, one of the
major focus area in psychometrics has been on personality testing.
The objective of this research is to find out the effectiveness of such Personality
Assessment Tools in the workplace and outside workplace, and its application in the
coaching context i.e. how a coach can enhance the effective use of the Personality
Assessment tools.
Part 1 – Research Summary
Research Methodology Summary
An online survey was created and a total of 40 responses were recorded.
The survey is divided into four parts. Part 1 - Awareness, Part 2 -Application and
Use, Part 3- Factors Influencing Effectiveness and Part 4- Respondent details. Each of
these is detailed later in this paper.
Research Findings Summary
Part 1 – Awareness: The awareness about the personality assessment tools was
widespread i.e., 100% of respondents were aware of at least one personality
assessment tool out of which 87.5% of respondents knew more than one tool. The use
of assessment tool was again widespread. 39 out of the 40 respondent had been
assessed at least on one of the tools. From the 8 tools listed in the survey, MBTI was the
most popular tool with 31 respondents having been assessed on this tool. DISC and
Gallop or Clifton Strengths Finder came at second place with 16 respondents and
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Tetramap stood third with 14 respondents having been assessed on the respective tool.
Amongst these four tools, the Tetramap tool obtained a high score of 95% for practical
relevance, and followed by the Gallop or Clifton Strengths Finder tool which obtained the
second highest score of 75% for practical relevance.
Part 2 -Application and Use: This section had five statements and respondents
who slightly agree or strongly agree with the statement are considered. For the
statement “I feel my self-awareness has improved”, 35% of the respondents strongly
agreed, and 58% slightly agreed. This indicates a mixed response to impact of the
personality assessments on self awareness. To the statement “I felt that the profile
results reflected my personality fairly well”, 28% of the respondents strongly agreed and
68% slightly agreed indicating a mixed response with regard to the reliability of the
personality assessment tool result.
To the statement “I feel the tool helped me in dealing with interpersonal
situations”, 8% people strongly agreed and 68% slightly agreed. To the statement “I
have used the knowledge gained from the tools in my daily life at work”, 15% strongly
agreed and 58% slightly agreed. To the statement “I have used the knowledge gained
from the tools in my daily life at home and outside of work”, 5% strongly agreed and
48% slightly agreed. The above three responses indicate a low level of practical
application of the knowledge gained from the tool. There was a strong preference for use
of the knowledge at workplace as compared to strong disagreements for statements on
using the knowledge in interpersonal situations and outside of work situations.
Part 3- Factors Influencing Effectiveness: This section had two statements “I
found the following factors influenced in a positive manner in the effective use of tool”
and “I found the following factors influenced in a negative manner in the effective use of
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tool”. More than 50% of the respondents felt that personal debriefing and ease of use of
the tool would positively influence the effectiveness of the tool. Exactly 50% of the
respondents felt that Lack of follow through hampered effective use of the tool.
Part 4 – Respondent details: The respondent profile was predominantly male
(80%), from banking and financial services industry (68%) with a significant set of
respondents holding senior management positions (60%). Only 13% of the respondents
were self employed or had own business or were free lance consultants.
Part 2 - Relevance To Coaching
Application in Coaching
The survey summary findings provide key insights and opportunities to the
fraternity of Coaches. These insights and opportunities are limited to the respondent
profile surveyed.
The key insight here is that the administration of the personality assessment tool
sans debriefing, follow through and guidance indicate low return on investment i.e.
valuable resources spent (time and money) without obtaining the corresponding benefits
in terms of knowledge being applied at work or home. It indicates the need for a
structure that goes beyond mere administration of the personality test.
A coach or mentor is best placed to create this structure. The relevance to
coaching can be found in three aspects of coaching (a) Awareness creation (b) strong
action orientation combined with accountability (c) debriefing where the coach is certified
to administer the tool.
The coach could partner with institutions who administer the test as a value
added service. The coach could pitch directly to the corporate to market the support
structure as a niche offering. The coach could as part of their existing engagement
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provide the follow through, action orientation and accountability and significantly
enhance the value derived from the personality assessment tools. These are elaborated
further as use cases.
Recommended Use cases for Coaching
Case 1 – Coach partners with the institution administering the personality tests
and provides the support structure to the clients of the institution.
Case 2 – Coach pitches for specialized niche service of providing support
structure for Corporates who are sponsors of personality tests for their employees.
Case 3 – As part of an existing client engagement:
(a)The client is ready and keen to derive benefits of personality assessment
profile results. Coach can provide action planning and accountability structures. Coach
can provide guidance and debriefing if certified/qualified.
(b) Client has specific issues and is ready to take a relevant personality
assessment tool. Coach can recommend the relevant tool. Coach can provide action
planning and accountability structures. Coach can provide guidance and debriefing if
certified/qualified.
(c) Client has shared personality assessment results. Coach can use the result
to validate the conclusion reached based on other inputs received during the coaching
engagement. Coach can provide action planning and accountability structures. Coach
can provide guidance and debriefing if certified/qualified.
In short, though there is a widespread use of personality assessment tool, there
is a significant gap in terms of the utility of the tool in its impact. The coaching framework
is a powerful framework that readily lends itself to improve the effectiveness of the use of
the tool.
Part 3 – Research in Detail
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Research Methodology
A questionnaire was used as the sole instrument to gather the data. For this
purpose, an online survey was created (see appendix for the questionnaire) and the link
to the survey was sent out to more than 100 people via email. In addition, a few
respondents were requested to fill up a paper copy of the online survey. These
responses were manually added into the online tool. In total more than 125 persons
were requested to participate in the survey during the period 27th Jun 2012 to 20th July
2012 and 40 responses were received. The survey respondents were selected from
three main sources (a) LinkedIn network, (b) office network and (c) the ICA student
network. On 20th July, the survey response was downloaded and data used in this paper.
The questionnaire had the following sections:
Awareness
Application And Use
Factors Contributing to effectiveness
Respondent Details
The awareness section listed 8 personality assessment tools and an others
column. This section had questions on awareness, use, recall and utility of the
personality types listed. Multiple selections were allowed when responding to the
question. The second section “Application and Use” had statements on reliability,
improvement in self awareness, usefulness, and application of personality test tools.
Responses were collected on a graded scale of 0 to 5, where zero stood for Don’t
Know/Can’t Say, 1 stood for Strong Disagreement and 5 stood for strong agreement.
The respondent is allowed to choose only one value. The third section was on factors
that contributed to effective use of the personality test tools. This section listed a few
factors and an others column. Respondents could choose multiple factors when
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responding or add new factors not listed in the questionnaire. The first question was on
factors that aided effectiveness and the second question was on factors that hindered
the effectiveness. The final section was on the respondent detail. All questions were
mandatory except the name and contact details.
Research Findings
Awareness Section
100% of the respondents were aware of personality assessment tools and more
than 99% have been assessed on at least one of the tool. Using assessment as a key
criteria, four tools make up the three most popular tools. Please see the table below for
the results against the four popular tools.
Personality Assessment
Tool Name
Question on
MBTI DISC Clifton
Strengths
Finder
Tetramap
a. Awareness 93% 65% 53% 38%
b. Assessed 78% 40% 40% 35%
c. Recall of Profile
Result (% of b)
81% 63% 69% 100%
d. Practically Relevant
(% of b)
68% 60% 75% 93%
Considering the above data, MBTI is very popular with high recall value but scores third
on practical relevance. DISC is second in both awareness and use, though scores
lowest on recall and practical relevance. Clifton Strengths Finder scores third on
awareness, second on use and scores higher on recall and practical relevance.
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Tetramap scores fourth on awareness and use and it is the tool with highest recall and
highest practical value.
Application and Use Section
I felt that the profile results reflected my personality fairly well.
I feel that my self awareness improved.
I feel that the tool helped me in dealing with interpersonal situations.
I have used the knowledge gained from the tools in my daily life at work
I have used the knowledge gained from the tools in my daily life at home and outside of work.
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
3%
3%
5%
8%
5%
3%
5%
15%
20%
35%
68%
58%
68%
58%
48%
28%
35%
8%
15%
5%
5%
8%
Application and Use- Profiling tools
Don't Know/Cant Say Strongly Disagree Slightly disagree Slightly agree Strongly agree
The second section on application and use consisted of 5 statements (as shown
in the graph). Overall, taking strong agreement/disagreement to indicate definiteness,
and slight agreement/disagreement to indicate tentativeness we see a bulk of
respondents are tentative in their response. The range of tentative response (adding
together both agreement and disagreement) is between 63% and 83% while definite
response the range is 8% to 35%.
Taking into account only the definite responses, we see that the awareness and
reliability statements had strong agreements and no strong disagreements. The practical
application statements on interpersonal situations and situations outside of work show
close scores on both agreement and disagreement – indicating that the use of
personality assessment tools outside of workplace evokes strong sentiments and needs
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to be used with greater care. However, the respondents seem to be more favorable
using knowledge gained from personality assessment tool at work and there is no strong
disagreement for this statement. The reason for this is unknown and would require
further study.
Factors Influencing Effectiveness section
The section on factors influencing effectiveness of the tools, a list of factors that
had a positive or negative impact on the effectiveness of the personality test tools were
explored. More than 50% of the respondents feel that a tool that is easy to use and one-
on-one debriefing sessions would have helped improve effectiveness. Lack of follow
through sessions and lack of one to one debriefing sessions come as the top two
deterrent factors that impede the effectiveness.
Executive or Life Coach
Firm or Organisation wide use of the tool
Follow Through sessions
Mentor
Expertise of the person who administered the profile test
Group De-briefing session
Individual one to one debriefing session
Ease of use of the tool
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
13%
25%
30%
35%
38%
38%
53%
53%
Positively influencing Factors
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Expertise of the person who administered the profile test
Tool was difficult to use or recollect
Lack of Debriefing
No one to one session
Lack of Follow Through sessions
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
8%
20%
30%
35%
50%
Negatively influencing Factors
Respondent Profile Section
The respondent profile was predominantly male, from banking and financial
services industry with a significant set of respondent holding senior management
positions.
20%
80%
Respondents - Gender profile
FemaleMale
3%25%
13%
60%
Respondents-Pro-fessional status
Junior cadre
Middle Management
Self Employed/Own business/Free Lance
Senior Management (VP, Director, Managing Director, Partner, General Manager etc.,)
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23%
63%
13%3%
Respondents-Age pro-file
25 to 35 years 35 to 50 years50 to 60 years above 60 years
68%
26%
3%
3%
Respondents - Industry profile
Banking and Financial ServicesHuman Resources and Training RelatedCoaching , Consulting ITES
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Works Cited
Wikipedia Pages on :
Psychometrics
Personality Psychology
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APPENDIX
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Research On Use of Assessment ToolsThank you for taking time out to fill up this survey. The purpose of this survey is to find
out the effectiveness of people profile assessment tools and its application in the
coaching context. Please rest assured the details will be kept confidential and only
summary results will be published. If you wish receive the final report summary, please
indicate the same in the appropriate column in the questionnaire below.
* Required
Awareness
I have heard about this tool * Please tick even if you just know but have not used the tool.
MBTI
DISC
BELBIN
Tetramap
Gallup or Clifton Strengths Finder
Via Character Strengths Finder
FIRO B
IPNI
Other:
I have been assessed on this tool * Please tick ONLY If you have taken an sefl assessment
on this Tool.
MBTI
DISC
BELBIN
Tetramap
Gallup or Clifton Strengths Finder
Via Character Strengths Finder
FIRO B
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IPNI
Other:
I recall my profile type of my assessment * If you recall your profile type, then tick the
box.
MBTI
DISC
BELBIN
Tetramap
Gallup or Clifton Strengths Finder
Via Character Strengths Finder
FIRO B
IPNI
Other:
I find the following tools easy to use and of practical value. * Please tick ONLY If you have
taken an sefl assessment on this Tool.
MBTI
DISC
BELBIN
Tetramap
Gallup or Clifton Strengths Finder
Via Character Strengths Finder
FIRO B
IPNI
Other:
APPLICATION and USE
In this section, please answer the following questions keeping in mind the assessment
tools you were administered. Please use the below as a guide 0 - Don't Know/ Can't Say. 1
- Strongly disagree 2 - Slightly disagree 3 - Slightly Agree 4 - Strongly agree
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I felt that the profile results reflected my personality fairly well. * From the tools you have
used and recall, please select an option that best describes your response. 0 1 2 3 4
Don't Know / Can't say
Strongly Agree
I feel that my self awareness improved. * From the tools you have used and recall, please
select an option that best describes your response. 0 1 2 3 4
Don't Know / Can't Say
Strongly Agree
I feel that the tool helped me in dealing with interpersonal situations. * From the tools you
have used and recall, please select an option that best describes your response. 0 1 2 3 4
Don't Know/Can't Say
Strongly Agree
I have used the knowledge gained from the tools in my daily life at work * From the tools
you have used and recall, please select an option that best describes your response. 0 1 2 3 4
Don't Know/Can't Say
Strongly Agree
I have used the knowledge gained from the tools in my daily life at home and outside of
work. * From the tools you have used and recall, please select an option that best
describes your response. 0 1 2 3 4
Don't Know/Can't Say
Strongly Agree
Factors contributing to Effectiveness
In this section, please list down the factors that you felt helped you use the tools
effectively and factors that hindered the use.
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I found the following factors influenced in a positive manner in the effective use of the
tool Tick as many as you feel that have actually helped you. Please remember this
question needs to be answered with regard to the use of the profiling tool.
Group De-briefing session
Individual one to one debriefing session
Executive or Life Coach
Mentor
Follow Through sessions
Firm or Organisation wide use of the tool
Ease of use of the tool
Expertise of the person who administered the profile test
Other:
I found the following factors influenced in a Negative manner in the effective use of the
tool Tick as many as you feel that have actually helped you. Please remember this
question needs to be answered with regard to the use of the profiling tool.
Lack of Debriefing
No one to one session
Expertise of the person who administered the profile test
Lack of Follow Through sessions
Tool was difficult to use or recollect
Other:
RESPONDENT DETAILS
This is the last part of the survey and we need a few details about yourself. I thank you
once again for your valuable input.
Your Gender
Male
Female
Your Age Group © Copyright 2006 International Coach Academy Pty. Ltd.
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Below 18 years
18 to 24 years
25 to 35 years
35 to 50 years
50 to 60 years
above 60 years
Please specify your professional status
CxO level
Senior Management (VP, Director, Managing Director, Partner, General Manager etc.,)
Middle Management
Junior cadre
Self Employed/Own business/Free Lance
Other:
Please specific your Industry
Human Resources and Training Related
Banking and Financial Services
Manufacturing and Core Industry
Other:
Your name (Optional)
Should you wish to receive this report please fill in your email id The report should be
ready in about 6 to 8 weeks time - by mid to end Aug 2012
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