You Are Who You're With

We often hear people say, "My personality is different at home than it is at work." Is that true? Yes, in a way.

eRep is the premier provider of the world's most accurate and reliable psychometric assessment, the Core Values Index™ (CVI). Unlike competing assessments like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Big Five, Enneagram, and The DiSC, the CVI has a 97.7% repeat reliability rating in longitudinal studies¹. Those other assessments struggle to get above 50%.

This means if you take the CVI twice, many years apart, your results will likely differ less than 3%.

Why does this matter?

When people take the CVI, we often hear customers say, "I took it at work and the CVI seemed accurate, but I'm a completely different person when I'm at home."

Is this true? How can an assessment with a 97.7% repeat reliability rating accurately reflect your personality in one part of your life yet be inaccurate in another?

The truth is, the CVI is accurate at revealing your innate and unchanging nature, and you behave differently at home than you do at work.

How can both of these be true?

As we stated, the CVI accurately reveals your innate and unchanging nature, but you are far from being one-dimensional.

No one behaves the same in all situations and around all people.

What's amazing about the CVI, however, is it can describe the way you're likely to behave depending on the situation, and more importantly, how you will likely behave around other people.

Here's how.

The CVI Predicts Your Default Behavior

If you are a talkative person with a lot to say, but you engage in conversation with someone who is even more talkative than you are, guess what happens? You say less.

The other person's hardwiring comes out and implicitly dominates the discussion. The primary part of your personality, that part that normally does all the talking, intuitively gives way to the secondary aspect of your hardwiring (whatever that may be).

Your personality isn't one dimensional.

There are different ratios of four broad personality types within you — and within everyone you meet. We call those personality types core value energies — and it is the specific ratio of those core value energies that make you unique (coupled with your life experience, too, of course).

The four core value energies are called Builder, Merchant, Innovator and Banker.

Your primary core value energy is likely what governs and shapes not only your behavior throughout the day, but it also influences the lens through which you see the world.

Your secondary core value energy shapes and influences how your primary core value manifests, especially if their scores are close together. If your primary is profound — significantly higher than your secondary core value — then it is in the driver's seat of your personality nearly all the time (but is still shaped by your secondary core value nonetheless).

There Can Be Only One

Your psychometric profile is essentially on autopilot at all times. It represents your default behavior. Your primary, secondary, tertiary and minor core value energies influence and shape your default behavior based on their relative weight or values within your overall CVI profile.

When one of your core value energies is especially high, one or more of your other core value energies will be proportionally weaker.

NOTE: Every person has a CVI profile made up of different amounts of the four core value energies, each represented by a score from 0 (none) to 36 (maximum). The total of all four core value energy scores will always be 72. This means if one core value energy is high, the others will be lower.

What happens when you meet someone who shares the same primary core value energy as you?

Both your personalities will instinctively recognize the presence of that same core value energy in each other. Whoever has the lower primary core value energy will automatically and unconsciously give way to the other person by relying more on their secondary core value energy in their behavior.

For instance, let's say Cynthia's CVI profile is 25-points of Builder energy (primary) and 21-points of Merchant energy (secondary). Cynthia meets Bob who is also a Builder/Merchant, but his scores are more well-rounded, 23 and 21 points, respectively.

When Cynthia and Bob meet, they unconsciously pick up on the fact that they both share Builder as their primary core value. Their brains also quickly detect who's got the higher Builder score (Cynthia). When around Cynthia, Bob will act more like a Merchant, his secondary core value energy. It's unconscious.

When Bob is around his spouse at home, who might be an Innovator/Banker or Merchant/Innovator for example, Bob will act like a Builder.

This shift is automatic and totally natural. It also validates the fact that the CVI accurately represents the individual's psychometric profile, while simultaneously explaining how we can behave differently based on who we're with.

Both are correct!

It's important to note that Bob isn't a different person at home than he is at work. He is merely using the underlying aspects of his innate and unchanging personality based on the circumstance.

You will probably behave differently around a visiting monarch than you would around an old college friend. You’re still the same person, though.

You are who you are based on who you're with, and the Core Values Index gives you the knowledge you need to understand why.

NOTES

[1] Source: Seattle Research Partners, 2014

Core Values Index™ and CVI™ are trademarks of Taylor Protocols, Inc.