Queen Bees and Wannabes, but make it profesh
For many years, I've fantasized about creating a personality assessment that is like Queen Bees and Wannabes, but 1. not just for teenage girls and 2. for the workplace. Do I have expertise in psychometric testing? No, I do not! That's why it's just a fantasy.
Your work personality and your real personality
Sadly, there's no Queen Bees and Wannabes test (yet), but I've taken my fair share of personality tests. The Enneagram (8w3 at work, 3w8 in my personal life). Insights Discovery (red and yellow at work, yellow and green in my personal life). Myers-Briggs (ENTJ at work, ENFP in my personal life). The list goes on.
According to most frameworks, our core self shows up both at work and outside it. But I've always found that my answers on these tests vary depending on whether I consider professional scenarios or personal ones. The differences are small, but enough to consistently change the assessments.
For instance, work reliably brings out my bias for action and my most structured mind. On the other hand, in my personal life, I show up as heart-driven and empathetic. This has been a consistent pattern across all the tests I've taken.
Testing "thinking preferences" rather than personality
A few months ago, Karim Morgan Nehdi reached out to see if I'd join his podcast to discuss the cognitive styles of AI-native leaders. As background, he proposed that I could take his company Herrmann's psychometric assessment, which focuses on "thinking preferences" rather than personality traits.
Is everyone else is obsessed with their own brains or am I just narcissistic that way? I couldn't say yes fast enough.
The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument, or HBDI, is a little different from other tests I've taken. It focuses more explicitly on reasoning style than personality. One test also gives two results; it shows 1) how you work by default, and 2) how you work when the pressure is on.
This is not quite the same as "home vs. work" personality, but it is tantalizingly adjacent. I love a testing framework that validates the distinction I've observed in my home vs. work behaviors all along.
I was right, I have more empathy at home than at work
On the podcast, we talk about how AI-native leaders think. But what about my own results?
Check out the summary graphic below. The dark diamond shows who I am by default: I have a slight bias towards creativity and synthesis (yellow) and empathy (red). But on the whole, my cognitive styles are pretty balanced.
But the dotted line, which shows who I am under pressure, is notably different. Under pressure, i.e. at work, I dial those red qualities (teaching, writing, emotional connection) way back. In their place, I swap in executive function, organization, and a dominant personality.
I feel so seen right now.
Not just me
I was intrigued by these insights, so Karim gave me a link to share with my family so we could compare styles. Alas, because I am not actually the CEO of my household, I was only able to convince two of my three teenagers to give it a try. But those two results were fascinating.
Kid #1 looks a lot like I do by default. She biases a little more to logical thinking (blue) than I do, but her profile is similarly balanced. But under pressure she goes to a very different place than I do, pulling way back on creative thinking (yellow) and doubling down on empathy (red). With her under-pressure combo of logic and empathy, it makes sense that she is interested in psychiatry as a future profession.
Kid #2 lives on a completely different planet. Her default state isn't balanced at all. She is fully indexed on creative thinking (yellow) and empathy (red), not so much for the logic (blue) and organization (green). And under pressure, all her logical thinking (blue) evaporates.
This is the kid with ADHD, and these results give me a much clearer idea of how to support her.
The bottom line: I appreciate the framing of this test, the way it shows that who we are under pressure isn't exactly the same as who we are day-to-day. It's one of the only assessments I've seen that explicitly acknowledges the distinction I've always suspected was there.
I'm still waiting for that Queen Bees and Wannabes test, though.
Kieran
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