HR Professionals need to be aware of the needs of their staff- and one great way to understand their staff better is to use personality tests.

While personality tests such as the Color Code, the Enneagram and my favorite, Myers-Briggs, are helpful for understanding how people work and smoothing interaction at work and home, they are not meant to be omnipotent.

People can act in generalized ways that can be categorized. The key word is “can.� People don’t always act in their percieved category. Beyond randomness of choice there are other factors that cannot be ignored- namely physical, emotional, and mental health.

If we are physically sick we may have too much “noise� from the pain and too little energy and desire to always act in consistent ways. Some do manage to do so regardless of pain or illness, but as most of us know, this is very hard to do.

With emotional pain, disruptive thinking patterns or life experience the pain, thoughts, or conditioning we have gone through override our natural tendencies.

Mental health factors such as Attention-Defecit Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Bi-Polar/Manic Depression can radically alter our natural reactions. Even if you are healthy, chances are you work with someone with a mental disorder of some kind, whethere they are diagnosed or not. Many people with Asperger’s Syndrome, an Autism Spectrum Disorder, are naturally drawn to seek employment in the High-Tech fields. Obsessive-Compulsive people are drawn to positions of power. There are no simple cookie-cutter ways to deal with people who suffer from either disorder.

Think of a personality test as a way to generally categorize the healthy tendencies of people and not as a complete picture. Take a chance to look deeper.

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Jared Hawk is a professional trainer in office technology. He also maintains a blog on Microsoft Excel tips, tricks and more.

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