At Admin Slayer we spend a lot of time navel gazing. All belly buttons are interesting, even the virtual ones.
Why? Because getting to know ourselves and the people around us makes it a lot easier to work together successfully. Whether it’s understanding chronotypes, values, work styles, personality preferences, or even biology, this key knowledge helps us seamlessly work together, with everyone focused on being the very best possible version of themselves. The idea makes us giddy.
Set aside an afternoon to complete a self-assessment or two - and ideally, get your team to do them as well. Capitalizing on the strengths, weaknesses, values, and quirks that make you you will drive your personal productivity to its highest possible peak. If you capitalize on those same qualities in your team, your business will thrive over the long term*.
*We are imagining each of Admin Slayer’s clients completing these assessments and sharing the results with us, which would allow us to do an even better job of building teams around you and helping you delegate, and now we’re so excited that we have tears in our eyes and should probably go lay down for a bit.
Here are some of the tools we’ve tried, and what we like about them:
Kolbe A Index: How do you Work?
$50 USD
“True leaders give people the freedom to be themselves”
Members of our leadership team were introduced to this tool at different companies, and we’ve faithfully kept and used these reports ever since.
This assessment measures ‘conative’ ability - the instinctive way that you operate. It gives you a clear picture of your natural strengths and weaknesses, what motivates you to take action, and HOW you go about taking this action. In our latest ebook (The Entrepreneur's Survival Guide), on page 55, check out the article Fred Feistmann wrote for us specifically on Team Building and Personality Tests.
What we like about this assessment
We love that it tells us more about how we work, as opposed to how we are as people. It helped us understand that some members of our team have their foot on the gas all the time, and are able to fly by the seat of their pants. Other members cannot even begin to press the gas pedal until they’ve gathered every single piece of information. Some members thrive on constant, repetitive follow up, while others can’t even remember how to find the thing that they were supposed to follow up on.
Knowing this helps us give each team member the type of work where they can be their best - and allows all the other members to understand what information or assistance will help them move forward. It can also be used to find people who have complementary work styles, so you can avoid hiring someone exactly like yourself.
What the assessment is missing
This test doesn’t give you an overview of an individual’s values, personality or preferences.
Minessence AVI: What do you believe?
$35 AUD for the combo report SMO_WVR (Setting Meaningful Objectives & World View Report)
“If you’re not living your own values, whose values are you living?”
Our CEO took this assessment while wearing one of her other hats, working with family businesses on clarifying values, and took this tool back to the team.
This assessment identifies your unique value system - and it’s very different from any value approach we’ve taken before. The minds behind this test are highly academic, and continue to research, update, and improve the output. WARNING: The website is pretty tough to navigate. They are clearly not marketing experts…
What we like about this assessment
We love the way the test is designed - the answers you give produce different questions, making the results far more personalized than anything else we’ve seen (and that’s the point, right?). We like that the values that they have identified in the world are based on rigorous research, with detailed definitions - and that what they’ve identified as “values” are often things we didn’t know could be values. The reports also give you very clear actions that you can take with this knowledge.
What the assessment is missing
This test doesn’t give you any idea of how you work, which is where Kolbe can come in handy. It's also, as mentioned, an annoyingly old-school website. We have process improvement ideas if the company wants to contact us!
MBTI: How do you interpret your world?
(Sometimes) free!
“It’s so incredible to finally be understood”
Our leadership team enjoys this personality test as a way of getting to know and understand how our team thinks, and what types of interactions give them energy, or drain energy from them.
This assessment categorizes people into 16 personality types, broken down by their preferences for extroversion, introversion, sensing, intuition, judging, perceiving, thinking and feeling.
What we like about this assessment
We love that this assessment tells us how best to communicate with someone, and what kinds of interactions might make them feel overwhelmed or under …. whelmed? We know we can expect a sensing person to follow processes, and an intuitive person to look for new ways of doing things. We know that a feeling person will care about how your day is going and think about how you are feeling throughout the day, while a thinking person will prefer to find logical, efficient solutions. A judging person will be very diligent about deadlines, while a perceiving person will be less stressed about it.
What the assessment is missing
It doesn’t tell us what you love, what you believe, or what you’re good at. It just tells us how you prefer to be in the world.
Chronotypes: When are you at your best?
(You don’t need an assessment for this)
Master Your Body Clock
Everyone has their own unique body clock, with optimal times for eating, sleeping, working, reading - everything. Understanding your own body clock - and that of your team - will help you ensure that, whatever time of day it is, you’re doing the most effective thing for you.
Check out this great article on mastering your own body clock.
“What can your DNA say about your health?”
Yep, being healthy matters. If your body is running like a top, your capacity and productivity are as well. If you’re sick, or just not at your best, your business can suffer.
Tests through programs like 23andme - (C$174) and APO E Gene - (price varies) can help you turn your body into the relentless machine you always knew it could be.
If you’re working with us, or thinking about it, please feel free to share your results with our team. We’d love to dig into them and use them to take action in the work we do together. Have you found another assessment tool you love? Touch base with your slayer or share with us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook!