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Personality Assessments
Bonus from Be A Free Range Human (chapter 7)
From figuring out what to do, to getting started, to taking off and shining, you have got to know who you are (and who you are not).
Personality profiles = a shortcut to discovering what you really have to offer the world and where you’ll be happier in the process.
A good assessment can also save you months or years of struggle by showing you which strategies work best for your personality.
But not all assessments are created equal so here are some handpicked profile systems I use for myself and our clients:
1. Gallup Strengths (formerly Strengths Finder 2.0) is a simple test based on empirical research.
With this you aren’t classed as any ‘type’, instead you discover your top strengths and how they interact. I have found this assessment to be pretty accurate but the downside is that it is written for employees and teams so does not show you how to use these in a free range setting.
Conclusion: used with other tools this is a good addition to your you-arsenal:
2. Myers Briggs is the classic personality assessment. Here you come out as one of 16 four letter types (I’m an ENFP).
Discovering this profile years ago helped me see there was a reason I didn’t fit into my job… I went from thinking I was doing something wrong to seeing there were plenty of others like me and we were just suited to other things. This was part of the fuel behind my free range escape.
Today we use it in more depth ways to help people figure out their most effective way of working! It’s a classic for a reason.
How to do this: you can’t do MBTI (or its cousin, the Keirsey profile) for free as it is supposed to be done with a qualified assessor who checks how well the description fits you.
However, there are close variations of the ‘indicator’ available free online to give you a general idea of your profile:
3. Wealth Dynamics. This is a favourite (despite its unfortunate name).
It has the advantage of being especially for entrepreneurs/free rangers and it shows you the best role for you to play in any idea.
For example if three people of different profiles start a dog walking company all of them would do it differently based on preference: the Star would focus on the brand, the Deal Maker would make connections with all the other dog walkers around, and the Mechanic would probably automate the entire thing within a month (these are all profile names by the way).
The idea is that yes you can do all of these roles (and more), but if you try to succeed by primarily using someone else’s style you’ll a) be unhappy and b) struggle a lot more than you need to. WD is powerful because it pushes you to do your ‘very best strength’, not your second or third best (which is where most of us spend our lives if we don’t think about it).
End result: it gives you permission to be you and the roadmap for approaches that will best help you do that in your free range career.
👉 This is a key assessment I use with private clients as I’ve seen real changes made from it, and getting this was a big part of what made my business take off. You can do it yourself below:
(After you do this assessment, feel free to email admin [at] free-range-humans [dot] com for my audio where I interpret the profiles in a much more ‘human’ language for you).
These tools are great, but are just a start!
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PS: on Instagram? Same! Come say hi @FreeRangeMarianne