I’ve said before that it’s really important to consider the skills and personality of each team member but it’s become more apparent again as I move forwards and change the way I do business.  Sometimes it’s just a gut feeling but other times it’s a dramatically different approach to a situation that makes me take stock and re-evaluate.

Have you every done a psychometric profile for work?  When I was much younger I always felt that any time I’d done one of these at interview I ended up without getting the job.  The disappointing thing was I never found out what the interviewers learnt - it might have given me some amazing feedback.  I have to say I didn’t go back and ask for the data or any feedback and would now recommend that to anyone who doesn’t get a job.  It may be as simple as your personal style doesn’t fit into the existing team or it may be that they were looking for a team player and you’re a leader.  However, I do believe that knowing that early on in your career can help you make decisions about which route to take.  So as you make career decisions I’d recommend you take any, reasonably priced, opportunity to learn more about yourself.

As an employer I used a system by Colourworks to try to get more information about potential employees before I brought them back in for a second interview.  It was invaluable - not just in learning more about the person but also to help me identify what I was looking for and which of my prejudices I was using to qualify or rule out that person.  After all an office full of me’s sounded great but really wasn’t the best way to build a cohesive progressive team!

So to the current day - things have moved on personally and in my career and I’m once again making some choices as to which direction to take.  As things have changed so dramatically in the past 3 years I’m looking at re-doing my profile to see how my values have changed. Much of this is related to age - I’m more experienced, I’m not quite so ambitious, I’m certainly not willing to drop everything to run to another country (well, not without serious consideration this time!).  As a result I’m really looking forward to exploring my values and motives again and seeing what direction life takes me.