My website recommendation for April is 16personalities.com. Created by NERIS Type Explorer, who are passionate about helping us learn what drives, inspires and worries different personality types to build more meaningful relationships.

Many of us may be familiar with the older form of four-letter personality type descriptions used by Myers Briggs. Still, we may not have taken their official test as it is a paid product done only with trained professionals. But NERIS wanted to make a more understandable, modern method for people to enable vast numbers of us to apply to our lives realistically. They also added a fifth type to help us understand our identity scale as it affects how we respond to the other four traits. It’s called 16personalities and not 25 because there are 16 personality profiles made up of the first four-letter distinctions and then underpinned by the new fifth type. 

What the website offers:

Your personal profile.

Key introduction information helps you gain insight and language to understand more about yourself and explain it to others. This includes Strengths & Weakness’, Romantic Relationships, Friendships, Parenthood, Career Paths, Workplace Habits and Conclusion. 

Premium Profile

If you’d like deeper insights into your personality (and I’m sure even more), judging by the book type pictures they have for each profile.

Tools and Assessments.

If you’re someone who loves to take tests – then you will love this section of the website. There are hundreds of tests (a few of which are free) you can take to further your understanding of yourself (and others). They all rest under three main categories of Personal Growth, Relationships and Career. I do particularly like the free one under Personal Growth called Trait Scholar. As it gives you more tests to specifically help you understand, for example, the three subdivisions within Observant—Intuitive trait. Being Practical vs Imaginative, Experiential vs Theoretical and Scanning vs Envisioning. If I took the time to go through the whole Trait Scholar session, which they say is two hours, I’m sure I would gain a lot from it. So I may do this when I’ve time, as the one section I have done was beneficial.

Community.

If your someone who loves to talk about personality type profiles with others – 16personalities.com provides you with a place to make and connect with friends to discuss as much on this topic as you like. Personally – I’m not going to try this out.

Library. 

Profiles. The place you can find all 16 profiles, nicely grouped in their Role category. Our Role helps us see how our goals, interests and preferred activities are linked. I like how each personality has its own character and brief description to quickly understand many different types. 

Articles. I like how they have already collected them into ten different categories to help us navigate the hundreds available. It also highlights at the top of the page the latest article posted (and which category it’s in).

Surveys. If you’re someone who likes to take more tests or surveys – here is a dream place for you to hang out. Again, neatly arranged into three groups, Traits & Habits, Life Satisfaction, and Thoughts and Stories.

Theory. I would highly suggest starting here either before or after you’ve taken the test. But before you look at anything else. Here NERIS give you the big picture of how to understand the theory behind this whole system. The how, what, and why for each of the letters, types, traits and categories. It’s not too long but gives you the key points to understand.

Country Profiles. Wow! Because so many people from so many countries have taken this test. NERIS have a unique position and generously shared what each countries results look like pictorially. Ever wanted to know the personality traits of your nation or random country? Here you have it. If you love endless statistics, graphs or maps – enjoy your new paradise. Who would have thought that Switzerland was slightly more extroverted? Or that Brazil has more introverts than extroverts? Or that more INF-T’s like to take these tests more than others? Or how one country compares to another?

What else is new is the four Roles and Strategies you also are when two types are combined. 

The test results also give us the percentages we are on the scale between the two opposite traits to know how strong or weak our preferences in this trait are. None of us can genuinely be entirely on one side or the other, which they make very clear.

I used this website last month as part of my leadership schools identity profile. We all got a lot out of this particular personality type test. I’ve continued to go back to read and discover more about my group’s characteristics and the fact that I love these kinds of tests and the data they produce.

Boxes ticked

As a leadership development school leader, I’m constantly looking for good (and free) resources to help my students develop in various ways. And 16personalities.com ticks many boxes for me.

  1. They have their test in 37 languages! Which is fantastic for my bi-lingual group to be able to take the test in their first language. However, the individual profile results and many other site features aren’t fully available in all those languages. For example, my French speakers could only have the introduction to their profile in French. 
  2. Over 40 Million people have taken this personality test, so they have a fantastic pull of information to produce some surprising results. They are open and honest about how they clarify these results and refine the results information. Not to mention just how many countries across the world have used their site. So they’ve got a much broader results pool than many other companies would dream of obtaining.
  3. When you give your email address to receive your test results, you’re not bombarded with future emails trying to get us to sign up for their paid premium version. (Well done for caring about us and not spamming us!)
  4. A surprising lesson I’ve learned from looking through the website again today was discovering that personality doesn’t have much correlation with your culture or country? I have travelled a lot. I thought some traits about a person’s personality possibly could identify their country/culture. But I was wrong. We really can’t put people in a box according to their passport – it’s not a big enough difference even for a continent For example, my personality type is ENFP-A. The top three countries for this unique trait – Senegal, Iceland and The Netherlands (all with varying degrees of 7%). 

What else do I like about this website?

  • The fun caricatures for each personality profile, famous people and other people dotted around the site. 
  • The interactive world map to look at individual traits on a global scale. 
  • The added links to the sections they talk about so it’s quick to jump around
  • The quality of the site and vast amounts of good information – all for free.

So, for those of you who never want to be put in a box. Or don’t need a test to understand yourself or others? I invite you to try 16personalities.com. NERIS have done their homework. They have us in mind and have done an excellent job to visually give us more than we thought possible to understand not only those close to us – but the world too.

Last year I recommended a website to help you understand your spiritual gifts. Check out my post on spiritualgifts.com