I’ll admit it: I’ve always had a zealous interest in assessments and personality profiles. Maybe even the quizes in Cosmo, too.

But ever since my days of leisure began, I’ve become intensely more interested in clearly defining my strengths. What are the innate talents that I, Shenna Jean, possess and bring to the table and can share with the world?

I think it all stems from my mom pegging me for an ENFP (Extrovert, Intuition, Feeling, Perception) from the Myer’s Briggs Assessment at the ripe age of 7. She’s always been a quiz nut and when she discovered the world of personality typecasting, she wasted no time using me as a guinea pig. A classic personality profiling tool, Myer’s Briggs had me pinned early on, and even again when I reconfirmed in my high school AP Psychology class.

But there is something about getting older, trying to become a little bit more wise, and I’ll be honest, soul searching and job hunting, that has inspired me to dig deeper into my strengths. So I decided to take a few tests.

I started by checking out my Kolbe score of 6391, very telling indeed. The Kolbe Assessment is fantastic, as it qualifies your conation, which is defined as: “Action derived from instinct; purposeful mode of striving, volition. It is a conscious effort to carry out self-determined acts.” Here’s my full blown report I received, which explains conation more in depth.

My big takeaways: my go-to mode of action is Improvise based on my score. I also love to Explain things, once I’ve done my homework and read up on it. I’m very Adaptable, which means I can switch up projects and tasks at hand while remaining productive and unflustered. And I love to Imagine. Don’t look to me to build anything, but I’ll dream it up for ya!

Next up came Strengthfinders, which I obvi loved. The idea behind the assessment is to stop worrying about what you suck at and start focusing on what you’re great at. My top 5 themes are Activate, Strategic, Ideation, Command & Woo which you can dig into here with the full blown report. Or simply broken down:
Activate: I have the ability to move a crowd to action and get things started…I make things happen by turning thoughts into action.
Strategic: I can quickly think problems down and around, spotting patterns and issues in any given scenario.
Ideation: Defined, it means idea generation. And if there is one thing I’m never short on, it’s ideas. Look to me for to be constantly cranking them out.
Command: I have a confidence presence about me that allows me to take control of a situation and make decisions.
Woo: People pleaser for life, this one is. I love the challenge of meeting a new person and winning them over. One of life’s small pleasures for me is breaking the ice and making a connection.

I dug back a few years to get a copy of an assessment I took right out of college, called Personaylsis. This one’s a bit more heavy, lots of charts, graphs and colors, oh my…but yet again very much hits the nail on the head. This full blown report consists of about 15 pages, but if you were to break me down into tiny graphs of color on a pyramid, this is how I would look.

Each color represents a behavior set. The bottom graph represents my Instinctive Dimension and looks at my basic go-to behaviors to feel secure and confident. The second graph is my Socialized Dimension and describes how I learned I “should” interact with others. And the third shows my Rational Dimension, or the way I most enjoy interacting if it were completely up to me.

No big shocker here on the colors…Adapt is the big winner with Act & Assess battling it out for second place.

So, what’s my general conclusion from all these tests? Clearly I’ve got a social edge to me, genuine connection with people is something I strive for and need. I’m a never-ending stream of ideas, and with the right audience and idea I can get people motivated to take action. I’m extremely flexible and adapt easily to any situation or project thanks to my quick and strategic thinking. And I enjoy gathering enough information at a lightening fast speed to make the right decisions.

So there you have it, my personality from multiple 3rd party views.

Alas the sickness continues….I’m always on the lookout for a new assessment to objectively quantify myself, so let me know if there are any other good ones out there I’ve missed!! And let me know if you’ve got the same relentless thirst for knowledge of the self and would ever like to discuss Kolbe scores or the like…we’d get along great.

-SJ