Last week I attended a workshop on Luminaspark psychometric profiling. I’ve always had reservations about personality profiling. I worry that people might be pigeon holed, or that profiling might filter diversity out of organisational cultures.
Luminaspark is different. It recognises complexity and diversity within the personality and so fits very neatly with the subpersonalities model from psychosynthesis which informs my work in coaching.
Working with subpersonalities creates an awareness of the multiplicity of our personality, making our inner conversations and often competing wants, needs and values explicit. This helps us to recognise, include, co-ordinate and ultimately integrate different ‘parts’ of ourselves. While highlighting dominant tendencies Luminaspark also recognises that depending on my situation I can be supportive and challenging; feeling or thinking; caring or tough; spontaneous or responsible, disciplined or lazy. Its goal is similar to subpersonality work; to guide us towards self awareness, build a greater sense of our strengths and highlight possible areas for future development.
So what am I taking from the day? Well, a reassuring reminder of my strengths: collaboration and compassion that goes with my ‘people focus’; vision and inspiration; flexibility, an ability to see the big picture and work creatively with the ambiguity and paradox this raises; self sufficiency and sense of responsibility.
My profile also helped me see that my interest in emergent goals can make me neglect my capacity to set clear ambitious goals and work diligently towards them. From a subpersonalities perspective when we are caught up in one way of being we lose access to our full richness as a person. So, to ensure I have enough ‘oomph’ to carry out my purposes it’s time to dust off what psychosynthesis calls my ‘strong will’. The good news is daily life is full of possibilities for developing strong will (I’ll say more about will in coaching in future posts); almost any action can be a ‘will building exercise’, the key is conscious intention to use and develop it. So watch this space…