The Power of Personality Profiling: Recruiting Right and Building Stronger Teams
Recently, we sat down with Claire Cahill an award-winning executive confidence and leadership coach, and author of Empowering Employee Engagement: How to Ignite Your Team for Peak Performance. Claire is known for helping leaders unlock their potential and drive meaningful change within their teams. Our discussion centred on why personality profiling brings a strategic advantage in recruitment, communication, team building, and engagement.
What Is Personality Profiling?
Personality profiling, also known as psychometric profiling,uses structured tools or assessments to provide insight into how people think, communicate, and behave. You may be familiar with frameworks like Myers-Briggs, Insights, TetraMap, or DISC. While each has its nuances, they all aim to identify an individual’s preferences, strengths, and potential blind spots.
According to Claire, these tools aren’t about labelling people or putting them in boxes. Rather, they give individuals and leaders a shared language for understanding one another something increasingly essential in today’s complex workplace.
Why DISC Stands Out
Among the many tools available, Claire is a champion of DISC. Its appeal, she says, lies in its simplicity and practicality.
DISC categorises people along two continua:
- Outgoing ↔ Reserved
- People-focused ↔ Task-focused
From there, four behavioural styles emerge:
- D – Dominance: bold, quick-thinking problem-solvers
- I – Influence: energetic, persuasive storytellers
- S – Steadiness: supportive, dependable team players
- C – Compliance: analytical, detail-driven experts
One of the challenges with any model is remembering the categories. That’s why Claire loves Merrick Rosenberg’s “sticky object” approach, which uses birds to bring DISC styles to life:
- Eagle (D): decisive, swoops in and out
- Parrot (I): colourful, enthusiastic, sociable
- Dove (S): calm, harmonious, nurturing
- Owl (C): thoughtful, meticulous, knowledgeable
Because these images stick they help teams adopt the language more easily.
The Value of Knowing Yourself (and Others)
Claire uses DISC extensively in her coaching practice because it accelerates understanding. “I can get to know people in minutes rather than months,” she says. By identifying a client’s preferred communication style early, she adapts her approach so they feel comfortable opening up. The result? Faster progress.
The same applies in teams. When individuals know each other’s strengths, triggers, and preferences, communication improves and conflicts reduce. People stop taking things personally and start interpreting behaviour through a shared lens.
DISC in Recruitment: A Missed Opportunity for Many
One statistic from our conversation was striking: only around 22% of organisations use psychometric profiling in recruitment.
Given the high costs of hiring the wrong person, not just financially, but culturally and emotionally, Claire believes this is a huge missed opportunity. Many large organisations still rely on traditional interviews, gut feel, and experience. Meanwhile, small and mid-sized businesses, where the cost of a bad hire is often felt more acutely, are increasingly turning to profiling tools.
Personality profiling doesn’t determine whether someone should be hired. Instead, it helps organisations answer vital questions:
- Does this person’s natural style fit the role?
- Will they thrive in the existing team dynamic?
- Do they fill a gap, or replicate what the team already has?
As Claire puts it, “If we’re all the same, we’d all go off a cliff together. Who pulls us back if we’re heading in the wrong direction?”
Profiling also reduces bias, conscious and unconscious. When hiring decisions focus on strengths, blind spots, and preferred environments instead of names, backgrounds, or similarities, the process becomes more equitable.
Profiling as the Foundation for High-Performing Teams
Beyond recruitment, personality profiling is a powerful tool for improving team performance. Many organisations only introduce these assessments once a team is established and struggling. Claire finds profiling most effective when used proactively.
DISC helps leaders understand:
- where communication is breaking down
- where bottlenecks are forming
- how to adjust leadership styles
- which strengths are under- or over-represented
By identifying gaps, leaders can build teams that are not only diverse in background but also diverse in thinking. This directly supports better decision-making, innovation, and resilience.
Personality Profiling, DEI, and Psychological Safety
Diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) have become non-negotiable organisational priorities. But Claire stresses that policies and checkbox training aren’t enough. Psychological safety, the freedom to speak openly without fear of judgment is essential.
Gen Z, now entering the workforce in large numbers, expects inclusive environments where individuality is accepted. Personality profiling supports this by helping teams appreciate differences rather than resist them.
However, masking – when individuals feel they must suppress their natural style -remains common. This is where tools like the Johari Window help illuminate blind spots and create more open dialogue. When people understand themselves better, they feel safer showing up authentically.
Engagement in a VUCA World
Workplace engagement remains stubbornly low across the globe. According to Claire, the VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous – has shaken employees’ sense of belonging. Without belonging, engagement collapses. The pandemic accelerated this instability, and although hybrid work is now well-established, many employees still navigate discomfort and cultural shifts.
Profiling provides a pathway back to stability. When people understand their place, strengths, and contributions within a team, their engagement increases. When leaders understand their people, they communicate more clearly and support more effectively.
Creating Space for Leaders to Breathe
Claire’s final advice to organisations is simple but powerful: slow down. Many leaders behave like “busy hamsters,” constantly running without pausing to reflect. She encourages leaders to step out of the wheel and into the “helicopter,” gaining perspective on what’s working and what needs to change.
This reflective space is essential for implementing tools like DISC effectively. Without it, even the best profiling insights cannot translate into meaningful action.
Final Thoughts
Personality profiling is far more than a recruitment tool. It supports communication, enhances engagement, reduces conflict, and helps build teams that are diverse in both demographics and thinking styles. In a world filled with uncertainty and constant change, tools like DISC give leaders and teams a vital edge,one rooted in understanding, empathy, and intentional action.
If organisations want to recruit better, collaborate better, and perform better, personality profiling is a powerful place to start.
If you would like to know more about Claire and her work visit https://www.accendocoaching.co.uk/about-me