I recently did a personality profiling quiz as part of an opportunity. Some potential clients wanted to see if and how I could fit in with their organisation.

Boy, oh boy, I said to myself.

I knew it was going to be terrible. It always is.

At least this was different than the usual tripe. For this, I was given a few dozen sets of questions. Each set had four statements – of those four, I had to mark which one was most like me and which was least like me.

And I rolled my eyes so hard that I gained literal insights into the inner workings of my brain.

The first problem is there’s only so much an online quiz can tell you. The best ones I’ve seen are decent. This setup definitely fell short of that.

As I selected which statement of a group of four best captures my uniqueness, I realised a second problem:

You know the type of things quizzes always ask you to rate.

I’m a team player.

I’m resilient, even though I need downtime for self-care.

People don’t realise how interesting I am.

These are Barnum statements – statements that sound specific to you but apply to almost everyone. This is how astrology works, same with a lot of cold reading.

That makes these questions useless, since everyone can think of times where they’ve lived up to each statement.

So I took a deep breath and kept going, my brain aching as I tried to contort myself into choosing the best options.

Which brings me to a third problem. Often, one of the four statements would be something negative, while the others were positive. Even though I tried to be honest, I found myself writing those unflattering options off. Of course I’m never unreasonably stubborn. I defend my ideas, sure, but I’m perfectly reasonable about it.

The fourth issue is it’s incapable of nuance. Sometimes all four of the statements greatly described me. Sometimes, none of them did. Either way, I had to choose one that matched me and one that didn’t.

As for the fifth problem…

… who cares? Really, you get a nice report at the end, but so what? The only value in it is going through the report and identifying where it’s wrong.

Actually, scratch that – you can’t be trusted with your own report. You need someone who knows you well and isn’t afraid of offending you.

With someone like that, you can skip this voodoo. What are my strengths and weaknesses? is an infinitely better question than You are a people person – do you strongly disagree with that, disagree with that, neither agree nor disagree with that, agree with that or strongly agree with that?

Holding my nose and swallowing my pride, I filled in the last of the quiz and hit submit.

It said I’d receive a report by email in a few moments.

I didn’t.

So I emailed their contact address and explained what happened.

No response.

Oh, well.

Remember how I mentioned it’s better to have a friend who’s willing to be objective?

Even better than that is a coach. Especially one with a better personality profiling system than lukewarm garbage like you find online, not as if that’s hard. My system uses your body language, your choice patterns and things you don’t know you’re telling me.

I can then tell you things about yourself few others know. Some of it might be stuff that you don’t even realise you do.

And it’ll be a hell of a lot more specific than the bland pap you get in horoscopes. No, these readings will be true for you but a bad match for most folks around.

Even better?

I can compare that to your goals – tell you your greatest strengths, biggest risks and what you should focus on learning.

Anything short of that is a waste of your time.

And I ain’t big on waste.

So if you’d like to know what comes naturally to you and how that’ll help you succeed, grab a coaching slot at the link below:

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