I am not new to personality assessments. While I have never been put through a corporate assessment center, I have done quite a few tests during my MBA program at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology.

My MBA program was a two-year-long self-discovery journey, and the assessments played a vital role in this experience. Already in our first kick-off event, we did a PDP Works Personal Development Report.

As part of an extra-curricular activity within the MBA, I did a very detailed Inventory of Leadership Styles and Emotional and Social Competency Inventory, which included 360-degree feedback from my bosses, peers, and staff.

And when the MBA concluded, we did a Hogan Develop Compass, a personal value-oriented assessment that I have repeated since, as I was invited as alumni facilitator for a different graduation year.

Commercial personality assessments are extensive questionnaires developed by psychologists, tested psychometrically, designed to draw conclusions to your personality, leadership styles, character traits, values, or energy levels.

Personality tests are not perfect, primarily as they depend on you filling them out honestly. You can easily (knowingly or unknowingly) manipulate the results by choosing answers representing more who you want to be than who you are.

Personality assessments are correlation-based, and correlations are never perfect.

However, if you are honest with yourself and do an assessment to learn more about yourself and not make yourself look good (whatever that means), I believe professional designed personality assessments are a great tool to understand yourself a bit better and to make conscious efforts to improve upon your weaknesses.

Mr. Principles Offers Free Testing

Because of my positive experience with personality assessments, I was excited to see Investment Legend Ray Dalio launching Principles You, a free personality test.

Having read Dalio’s book “Principles” (Amazon Affiliate Link here) and being a subscriber of his principled perspectives newsletter, it was clear that a personality assessment promoted by “Mr. Principles” would be comparable in depth with the tests provided by leading commercial providers like Hogan, PDP, or Hay Group.

Why does Ray Dalio offer free personality testing? I can only speculate, but it looks as if Dalio sees in his Principles a way to leave a unique legacy. Since publishing his book, he launched an app and found a consulting company.

As for the credibility of the test, according to the launch information, the PrinciplesYou test was developed over two years, with contributions by popular psychology heavyweights Dr. Adam Grant (Wharton, Books: Originals, Think Again), Dr. Brian Little (Cambridge, Book: Personal Project Pursuit), and Dr. John P. Golden (Golden LLC).

While the webpage directed to free test takers does not have too much information, the corporate facing website of Principles.co, has a four-page PDF with some information on the scientific backing. Based on my understanding of this information, PrinciplesYou similar to other professional tests. You answer questions (the test takes around 40 minutes) on a 7 point scale from “very unlike me” to “very much like me,” and your answers generate scores for 12 major traits, 36 sub-traits or facets, and five independent dimensions.

Trait combinations then are illustrated with 27 Archetypes, ranging from Politician to Planner, Artisan, and Adventurer. Other tests use animal symbolism to make test results less abstract (According to PDP, I am primarily a Peacock, not an Owl).

PrinciplesMe – My Takeaways from the PrinciplesYou Test

Taking the test is as easy as it gets; all you need is stable internet, 40 minutes of time, and some patience. You can find the test here.

You can choose to create a login, but you don’t have to. Without registration, you have to complete the test in one sitting, though, and you won’t be able to revisit the results at a later point in time.

Once you are done with 40-minutes worth of questions and your results are calculated, the findings are broken down into the sections Archetype, How You Prefer to Think, How you Engage with Others, How you Apply Yourself, and “You” in Context.

As for the archetype, the test thinks I am most like the Coach, with some Commander and the Shaper attributes. This characterization seems pretty much in sync with how I see myself. In 2013, my leadership style was primarily seen as “Pacesetting” and “Democratic” when doing my Hay leadership inventory. With maturing as a manager and leader, I grew a bit wiser and am more “Coach” today than I was back in my early career years. It would be interesting to see if this result would hold up in a new 360-degree assessment, but I believe they would.

My weakest match in the Archetype section is the “Implementer,” the detail-minded operational-focused task executor. Well, no doubt about that.

The Archetypes of the PrincipleYou test are grouped into islands, Shaper and Commander are on the Leadership Island, Coach is on the Islands of Advocates. This island visualization is a good example where PrincipleYou excels: making the test results extremely relatable and accessible.

In the “How I Prefer to Think” section, there are not too many surprises. I am more of a conceptual Thinker (90%) and much less Detail-Focused (17%).

How you engage with others is a section a bit more Myers-Briggs-like. I score high on Leadership and Tough, reasonably high on Extraverted, Nurturing, and Humorous.

And in “How You Apply Yourself, I score very high on Composed, High on Autonomous, and relatively know on Flexible.

The last section, “You in Context” is interesting. Instead of percentage values, you can find entire sentences describing you in different situations.

A few remarkable statements about my test results were, “When interacting with others, you... are willing to speak your mind, but are always aware of how others perceive it.” Or “When planning, you... have a strong desire to push things through that may compensate for your lack of organization and orderliness at times”.

My overall impression of PrinciplesYou is that it is a free test that provides similar insights as costly tests of leading commercial providers. If you are looking to understand yourself a bit better and have the patience and honesty to get through the 40 minutes of questions, I recommend you give the test a try.

And if you do, post your result! What did surprise you! Do you think the test got you right?