Take this quiz
Open any newspaper, magazine or website and it won’t be long before you come across a quiz. Whilst some quizzes just catch up on the latest trivia of the day, others ask more probing questions such as:
What’s your attitude to work? How motivated are you? Should you quit your job?
Once you’ve finished the quiz, sometimes you’ll get a score, say out of 10 and other times, you may get a recommended course of action to consider.
But are these types of quizzes and their results just a bit of harmless fun, or do they have more serious side effects?
The problem with tests
From a young age, we grow up with tests and exams at school. Whilst ‘mock-exams’ or ‘test – tests’ provide an opportunity to assess our knowledge and our ability to apply it (via a teacher’s feedback after the test), once we get to more formal exams such as ‘A’ levels and degrees, we seldom have the ability to look back at our marked exam papers or assessments and work out what mistakes we made or where our knowledge gaps were. We are simply issued with a grade, which without closer inspection, may subconsciously be taken to be a true reflection of our knowledge and ability.
That in turn may plant a little seed in the mind, for when we encounter further tests or quizzes in the world of work, as I’ll come on to later.
The workplace test
Fast forward from school and university and welcome to the world of employment. After settling in, many of us naturally want to gain further recognition through promotion and achieving higher status within a firm or profession.
However, one frequently used tool to assess what kind of role or work you may be best suited to, or what types of areas you should focus on, is the personality test. You answer a series of questions and you find out all about yourself and what you’re best cut out to do.
There are however, two key problems with these types of test:
- you never really know what biases you have introduced into answering the questions (because you may want to see a particular result and/or don’t answer questions in the way that you really feel); and
- you have no idea how the test results are actually formulated and what biases are used in formulating them.
But remember the seed planted in our minds when we get our exam results (e.g. ‘I’m not that good, I’m only a B grade student)’? Well if we’re not careful, the results of these types of test can leave us feeling like we’re only cut out to do one type of role at work, or that we must focus only on certain things to improve our chances of promotion at work.
Add another quiz on top
But how do you go about assessing whether a workplace personality test is accurate, or whether you’re actually in the right job/career? Well, remember those quizzes mentioned at the top of this piece? Conveniently, they give us an opportunity to try and validate whether the workplace personality test was actually right!
However, in a worst case scenario, there are two possible outcomes from testing the result of a personality test with another personality test:
- it reconfirms your worst fears that you’re only cut out for a certain type of role or work; or
- it provides you with a completely different result, which you then take to be accurate instead.
The little seed planted in our minds from exam days then takes that information and potentially stores it subconsciously to reinforce the assertion made in that test result, which then creates a level of bias around our perception of our own abilities, strengths and weaknesses.
The anxiety & career blocks that tests and quizzes leave behind
Unfortunately, the true and sometimes devastating effect of personality tests is that they prevent us from realising our true and full potential, because they lead us down a one way street, rather than encouraging us to stop, think and then explore via our own self-learning, how we wish our career to progress. Not realising how you have become stuck in a career cul-de-sac can then lead to anxiety, as you find it difficult to reverse back out.
Being told in a ‘reputable’ personality test that you shouldn’t focus on becoming a leader, because you exhibit different traits does not mean that you don’t have leadership potential. But if you start to develop the mindset that you will never progress to a leadership role because of a test result, then the chances are that you will quash any hidden desire, talent or true potential to become a leader.
Health warning
Of course personality tests don’t get it wrong each and every time, but there is a danger that they send the wrong message to vulnerable people who for whatever reason, feel the pressure to follow their results to the ’t’ or worse still, feel that they have no talent to pursue a different career path, that in time they could truly flourish in.
As such, personality tests should really come with health warnings, because the only real way of examining your personality and how you want to progress in a career, is to really get to know yourself, what you enjoy and what you find difficult. And then ensure that you surround yourself with supportive, caring people who actively help and nurture you along your natural growth path.
By focussing on continued self-learning, rather than the outcome of a test, you remove the immovable grade that you might otherwise subconsciously give yourself and create a way of developing, learning and improving in a manner that is both healthy and sustainable. In turn that benefits both you and those you work with, by naturally developing your real desired and achievable strengths.
So, the next time that you’re tempted to complete a little test or quiz, ask yourself this. Who would you choose to determine your future – a test result, or your own reasoning based on your own continued life long learning and critical thinking?
