Last week I received the results from a couple of personality assessments.

This got me thinking again about the value of personality and communication-style assessments.

Generally speaking I feel personality/character/communication-style assessments are of very limited value. I believe a person's personality is far too complex to define in four quadrants or even in multiples of four quadrants.

In addition to the sheer complexity of the human traits and personalities, the nuances of situations radically alter the way people behave in curious ways. We see this repeatedly, every day we spend time with others.

Spirited Leaders say Business Contains Only 3 Things: People, Processes, & Situations.

They say this because they know both Processes and Situations exert profound influence on people's behaviour. 

Before we try to boil people's personalities down into four quadrants we should take a time out and read some of the legacy left by Sigmund Freud. Before we opine on people's personalities we should consider the thoroughness of his observations and the depth of his thoughts about people's behaviour. Whether you agree with Freud or not, you must marvel at the scale of analysis he performed in an attempt to understand people, their personalities, and their behaviour. Freud understood the scope of the challenge. He performed his observations with diligence. He thought much. Then he rendered opinions.

When you have done that you will feel rather uncomfortable pegging people into 4 quadrants.