My portfolio career includes working as a specialist study skills tutor at Gloucestershire University. The students I work with have been diagnosed as having dyslexia.

Being properly diagnosed can be very expensive, and I know many people who wonder if they have dyslexia. I’ve just found a low price test which not a full diagnisis could be a useful step to decide if you should take it further.

You can read about the assessment here:

http://www.spot-your-potential.com/

 I’ve received feedback from a client who took the Highlands Ability Battery as she didn’t know what to do, career wise, and was certainly unhappy in her current job. 

The CPI is an in depth measure of professional and personal style that helps to understand behaviour.

It is suitable for both personal development and in also used in recruitment.

It assesses a range of personality characteristics with a focus on behaviour. Helping you to understand management style and leadership potential can be very useful for personal development to enable you to build on existing skills to suit current and future interests. The Coaching Report for Leaders helps you to understand your attitudes and behaviours in key areas of management.

It’s not an assessment I have promoted much, but it is really good. These past few weeks i’ve had 3 people take the assessment and everyone has found it very helpful.  The report is comrehensive and covers 18 different areas:

Self management

• Self awareness
• Self control
• Resilience

Organisational capabilities

• Use of power and authority
• Comfort with organisational structures
• Responsibility and accountability
• Decisiveness

Team building and team work

• Interpersonal skill
• Understanding others
• Capacity for collaboration
• Working with and through others  

Problem solving

• Creativity
• Handling sensitive problems
• Action orientation

Sustaining the vision

• Self confidence
• Managing change
• Influence

• Comfort with visibility

   

  The report provides useful feedback and in the feedback discussion with me I’ll make further suggestions. You can read more here: http://www.personalassessments.co.uk/CPI_260_For_Leaders.html

   

My first book review for amazon

I’ve been a highlands affiliate since 2003 and my clients believe the Highlands Ability Battery is the most effective piece of information in helping them make a career decision.

The Highland Ability Battery helps people understand their natural abilities. Once you know what you are good at you can then choose a job which uses your abilities and plays to your strengths.

This book takes you through the 8 success factors – unlike other programmes it doesn’t just take interests or personality into account but a holistic view which helps you to review a wide perspective to really understand who you are and what will be the best fit. It includes a number of exercises, Thought Experiments, to complete.

The first step is to understand your talents. You then need to find the right place to use your talents.

Chapter 1: Escaping the Lemming Conspiracy. Most of us lead stressful lives, working hard to buy possessions we don’t actually need. We are willing to put up with long hours for career success, but most never achieve this, no matter how hard we try. Others achieve career success at the expense of relationships with their family. If we are lucky one day we realise we are following someone else’s dream.

Read more >>

I think I have probably talked about my MBTI – INFP!

Just found out there is a site that will analyse the type of your blog!

So I went here and found out that my blog is ISTJ. – I’m a duty fulfiller!

"The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever.

The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it."

Umm, so not letting the creative, fun loving me shine through on my blog! But it won’t with the nature of my postings, think I perhaps need to be a bit more creative a couple of times a week rather than just sharing information.

My MBTI type is INFP.

I’m borderline Introvert/Extravert and over the years have realised I’m an Introvert who can demonstrate some Extrovert qualities.

I’m shy and reserved and get really drained by spending too much time with other people, but I’m also very open and willing to talk about personal stuff with people.  This helps me to build warm relationships with others.  (That’s the Extravert bit of me).

However I give a good impression of being an Extravert. We can all act "out of type" for a while, but not for too long, although when I was younger I was able to act "out of type" for longer.   So I can be outgoing, sociable and chatty and this is much easier on a one to one basis than at a large group – that’s one reason why I avoid networking events. However I have a limit, and this means that I’ll look for ways to recharge – this can be skipping out on going to the bar after working with people and ensuring I intersperse working with people to time spent along – writing or researching.

I’m much happier working one to one than in a large group, and do wonder how I was able to run training courses in the past. Now I much prefer my one to one work as again this is less of a drain on my personal resources.

So my way of being an introvert may differ to yours, but considering me really helps me and others understand who I am.

I am often asked of our MBTI type will change.

The MBTI is closely aligned to the work of Carl Jung. Jung was clear that our personality type is set in childhood as it enables us to make sense of life and to help with decision making.

As we get older we become more aware of the postive aspects of the personality characteristics of the alternative to our preference – an Intuitive person can see the benefits of Sensing and vice versa. This can then mean that peoples scores change, bringing them closer to the mid range score.

Again Carl Jung talks of this, referring to this as good type development.

I see this as part of people become more wise as we get older and even better at appreciating differences!

I am very careful to explain to my clients how to take the MBTI assessment but people forget what I say and  don’t always read my instruction list.

Just the other day I worked with somebody who didn’t fully read the key points I describe – the need to take the assessment as their "shoes off self", the person they can be when they are not trying to portray an image or to fit in with the requirements of their job or company.

As we discussed her results I got to understand how the person she is at home is very different to the person she has to be as a very senior manager at work.  So she is going to take it again at the end of a weeks holiday when she is relaxed and no longer in work mode. I appreciate that it can be difficult to think of ourselves outside of work.

So if you are going to take the MBTI do you best to consider the person that you are when you can be you, its the best way to get the best out of the assessment.