Today I’ll be taking the 16Personalities test and talk a little about why you should too. This is part of our week-long mini-series on self-awareness.
What is it?
Similar to yesterday’s Strengthsfinder 2.0 test, 16Personalities is a pretty-reliable personality test with the goal of helping you understand yourself. However, unlike yesterday’s test, 16Personalities’s goal isn’t to help you understand your strongest soft skills. Instead, today’s test is intended to help you learn what makes you tick. Why do you react the way you do in social situations? Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert? Are you a creative person, or do you have more of a technical mind?
Why did I choose it?
In business, understanding yourself is huge. Unfortunately, for a lot of us gaining this kind of deep self-awareness isn’t something we devote a lot of time to. That’s why tests like 16Personalities are massively beneficial as you start out in your business journey.
The results of the test follow the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) format, an established measuring stick for personalities. Not only does this give you an accurate starting point for measuring your personality, it also makes the test results easy to analyze and understand.
However, the 16Personalities test differs from standard MBTI format in that it splits your personality type into five categories instead of four: mind, energy, nature, tactics, and identity (with identity being the unique category).
We’ll get into more detail as to what each category means next week. For now, just know that 16Personalities is well-regarded for being accurate, is based in science, and can return very insightful results. Also, the site’s design and accompanying illustrations are fantastic!
What did I get?
As mentioned above, the 16Personalities test returns results in MBTI format. This means you receive four letters, with an additional letter tacked onto the end. Each of the letters tells you where you fall on five separate spectrums: Mind, Energy, Nature, Tactics, and Identity.
Confused?
I’ll go into a more detailed explanation next week in our final analysis. However, in a nutshell the five spectrums are essentially:
Introversion (I) vs. Extraversion (E)
Intuition (N) vs. Sensing (S)
Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)
Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P)
Assertive (A) vs. Turbulent (T)
When you receive your results from 16Personalites, the test shows you where you stand within each category. Are you more Introverted or Extroverted? Lean towards Thinking or towards Feeling? By how much?
With all that in mind, here are my Week One results:
What did you get?
You can take the 16Personalities for free online. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the test. Send me an email, or write a comment below. How do you feel about the results? How are you planning to apply them in your day-to-day?
Also, if you’re interested in learning more about what these test results mean, this is a great introduction to the MBTI results format:
