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 Personal Style Inventory 
The Personal Style Inventory is a personality style learning assessment for employee and management development training. Individuals identify a preference for one of 16 different personality styles, learn the characteristics, strengths, and potential trouble spots of personality traits. With this knowledge, individuals can better understand themselves and others, and improve their interpersonal skills.
Why do we behave the way we do? Personality style is the essence of who we are and how we approach life. Knowing one’s personal style provides useful insight into how we think and behave. The Personal Style Inventory is an accurate, easy to use, and statistically reliable assessment that identifies personality style along 4 pairs of dimensions: Extraversion or Introversion, Sensing or Intuiting, Thinking or Feeling, and Perceiving or Judging.
The Personal Style Inventory is based on the same Jungian theory as the MBTI®. Similar to the MBTI, the Personal Style Inventory identifies the dominant characteristic of each dimension. The Personal Style Inventory also reveals the relative strength of each characteristic. For example, in MBTI language, you are either Introverted OR Extraverted, Thinking OR Feeling, etc. The Personal Style Inventory reveals the relative strength for both characteristics within each dimension: Introversion AND Extraversion; Thinking AND Feeling, etc. This balanced approach is a more realistic representation of an individual’s personality profile.
No formal certification is required to administer the Personal Style Inventory or facilitate a training session using the assessment.
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Learning Outcomes
Theory and Development
Uses for the Assessment
How it Works
What to Order
Related Products
Learning Outcomes
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Identify preference for 1 of 16 personality styles
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Explore the strengths and potential blind spots of each personality style
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Understand how each style is likely to affect other individuals and/or group members Discover how to adjust to and capitalize on the personality strengths of others
Theory and Development
The Personal Style Inventory is based on Carl Jung’s theory of personality types. Jung found recognizable and repeated patterns in human behavior. These patterns, for almost all of the people Jung observed or read about, fell into one of several pairs of reactions. He described these in his Psychological Types, Volume Six of his Collected Works, published in 1921. Since that time, many people around the world have developed and expanded on Carl Jung’s work. We developed the Personal Style Inventory after careful study of his original ideas.
The assessment measures an individual’s preference in four pairs of traits that relate to perceiving (the types of information to which one pays attention) and judging (how one makes decisions.) Differences in the way people prefer to perceive and make judgments about their perceptions lead to differences in behavior or personal style.
Perceiving refers to the way in which people become aware of things, people, occurrences, and ideas. There are two ways of perceiving: Sensing and Intuition.
Judging refers to the way in which people come to conclusions about what they have perceived. There are two ways of judging: Thinking and Feeling.
In addition, people have preferences about where they choose to exercise their perception and judgment. Some people are outer-world oriented. They are referred to as Extraverts. Others are inner-world oriented. They are Introverts.
Finally, people prefer one mental process to another. Some people favor the Perceiving process; others favor the Judging process.
What are the differences between the Personal Style Inventory and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? Both the PSI and the MBTI use Jungian theory to measure personality style. However, each instrument asks the individual to assume a different frame of reference. The MBTI attempts to measure how people usually behave. The PSI measures how people would prefer to behave. We believe this unveils a style closer to the true nature of the individual’s personality style.
Uses for the Assessment
The Personal Style Inventory is effective both as a stand-alone learning instrument or as part of a more comprehensive training program. Here are some suggested applications for the Personal Style Inventory:
The PSI vs. the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Both the PSI and the MBTI use Jungian theory to measure personality style. However, each instrument asks the individual to assume a different frame of reference. The MBTI attempts to measure how people usually behave. The PSI measures how people would prefer to behave. We believe this unveils a style closer to the true nature of the individual’s personality style. |
How It Works
Individuals respond to a series of 32 statements, each describing a behavior associated with one of the four pairs of personal style preferences. The result is a personality style preference profile that is abbreviated by a combination of four letters (i.e., ISTP = Introversion/Sensing/Thinking/Perceiving).
If you are planning to use the Personal Style Inventory in a classroom training session, we recommend you allow approximately 1 hour for interpretation of scores, topic discussion, debrief, and action planning. The Personal Style Inventory Facilitator Guide includes everything you need to lead a successful training session from comprehensive background information and activities, to reproducible handouts and even a professional PowerPoint presentation. The Facilitator Guide also offers an easy-to-follow workshop outline that expands the Personal Style Inventory into a 3-hour training program.
What to Order
The Personal Style Inventory is available in both Online and Print Versions.
The Online Version is an excellent choice for enterprise-wide training or audiences that are geographically dispersed. It offers 24/7 access, streamlined distribution, and instant scoring. Each Online Assessment includes personalized reporting, full-color charts, interpretive information, worksheets, and action planning.
The Print Version is ideal for facilitators who prefer to oversee scoring and administration of the assessment, if you don’t know who the participants will be before the class begins, or if your learners do not have easy access to computers. Includes pressure-sensitive forms for scoring to aid manual tabulation. The accompanying Participant Guide includes interpretive information, worksheets, and action planning.
Initial Rollout
You will need to order one Facilitator Guide per trainer and either 1 Participant Guide (Print Version) or 1 Online Assessment (Online Version) for each individual learner. The Starter Kit is a great way to begin your rollout and includes a Facilitator Guide and 5 Print Participant Guides or 5 Online Assessments. Additional Participant Guides or Online Assessment credits may be purchased separately. Purchasing all of the participant materials you need at one time may qualify you for quantity discounts that can save you money and simplify ordering.
If you are new to this product we highly recommend HRDQ QuickStart Training, whether you are a novice trainer or a seasoned facilitator. It’s an excellent way to quickly get up to speed on the product so you can step into your first training class with confidence. Personalized, one-on-one telephone coaching is provided at your convenience. Our subject matter experts will review the program with you, offer ideas for tailoring the program to your specific needs, discuss typical participant questions and reactions, and more.
Additional Resources on Personality
 Exploring Personal StylesTM- What do you do after the personality training? It''s time for practical follow up and elaboration. This supplement has activities for 1-, 2-, 3-, and 5-hour workshops.
Personality and the Team - A half-day team training session and assessment using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator that helps teams completely understand their interactions and relationships.
Article - Personality and the Team: Value the Person Few teams really understand or appreciate the powerful effects that our unique personalities have on team functioning. Ray Martin shares the basics in this excellent article. Our experience over the last 20 years shows that when team members have a clearer understanding of each others'' unique personalities, they experience less conflict and ultimate frustration due to misunderstandings.
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