21st March, 2025
Creating the conditions in which people can discover themselves – and why I am unlikely to sell you psychometric profiling for your team.
Don’t get me wrong, psychometrics are great tools for provoking conversations about communication preferences. They help teams identify how and why miscommunication can occur and are a brilliant entry-level intervention.
Learning and Development professionals will often introduce personality profiling when they start working with leadership teams. It can open up conversations about how others make sense of the world, how we might tailor our communication to help others understand us, what motivates different people, and how we can appreciate difference and encourage diversity of thinking during project work.
I am not anti “type and trait measures”. In fact, I have a whole section on my website clarifying what these are, and from time to time I do offer them to clients who are adamant they want to use them.
In my corporate career, I was fortunate to be trained to administer a wide range of these tools and have profiled hundreds of managers and leaders. I understand the frameworks and the comfort of a well-written report. I understand the power of seeing elements of yourself reflected back in structured language.
But I also can appreciate their limitations.
Personality profiles offer a snapshot of preferences based on self-reported answers. They can help us consider how we might behave in different scenarios, but they are necessarily removed from the reality of those situations. A good practitioner will remind you that preferences are not your identity, that you have behavioural range, and that a profile should provoke flexibility rather than become an excuse or a box to keep you in.
And yet, if what we want is to become more aware of our behavioural preferences, there is another way.
The most profound moments of self-discovery and team connection I have witnessed have come from shared experiences in blue space, not from printed reports.
Nature, and especially the coast, invites us to step outside our prescribed roles and reveals something about who we are in the moment.
A development day by the sea, with its changing conditions, unpredictability and invitations to move, pause, problem-solve and reflect, provides opportunities to observe how people actually respond to challenges, interact with others and adapt to new situations.
Behaviour is not imagined. It is observed, felt and lived.
We do not need a profile to see who moves first and who waits, or a colour code to notice who seeks instruction and who prefers autonomy.
We do not need a report to observe who scans the horizon for risk and who is drawn towards possibility.
When a team arrives at the shoreline, preferences begin to reveal themselves in real time.
Who checks the tide times or comments on the weather? Who notices beauty or threat? Who fills silence and who allows it?
The coast elicits a response.
As a blue health facilitator who partners with blue space, I am paying attention and taking time to notice how individuals relate with the environment and to one another. I listen carefully to the language they use to describe the sea: wild, calm, chaotic, freeing. I observe what people are drawn towards and what they avoid.
The natural world can act as a mirror without judgement. Patterns surface, sometimes gently and sometimes unmistakably, creating opportunities for curiosity rather than categorisation.
If the sea is described as “wild and chaotic”, what might that reveal about how uncertainty is experienced at work? If it is described as “freeing”, what might that say about autonomy?
If someone stands back from the water, what might that suggest about how they approach risk? If someone wades straight in, what might that say about their relationship with action?
And don’t get me wrong this is not the place to make assumptions, behaviour simply provokes curiosity. These are invitations to explore, not conclusions to jump to. There may be many reasons for a person’s response, and the value lies in the conversation that follows.
Discussions are not theoretical. They are anchored in a shared experience, something that was just felt, just witnessed, just lived.
Psychometrics ask you to consider how you might behave. Experiential learning gives you the opportunity to notice how you actually behave, in a particular moment and context.
And, of course, we can organise the preferences and patterns that emerge into frameworks if that helps a team make sense of them. But rather than imposing a framework at the outset, we allow it to emerge from lived experience. A bit like permaculture, we work with what is there rather than forcing something onto it.
So, why am I unlikely to sell you psychometrics?
Because, for teams who are open to working in and with blue space, we often don’t need them.
We can learn a great deal through shared experience, thoughtful observation and good questions. We can explore how people respond to uncertainty, navigate difference, make decisions and relate to one another without first asking them to complete a questionnaire.
And perhaps more importantly, we can do this without reducing people to a type, a colour or a set of preferences.
So here is my invitation.
The next time you find yourself in a natural space, whether that is the coast, a river, woodland or a park, allow yourself to become curious.
Notice how you pay attention within the space. Notice the way you describe it. Notice how it informs your decisions.
Do you adapt quickly? Do you wait for clarity? Do you seek consensus? Do you default to independence?
These small decisions can offer a glimpse of our leadership patterns, but they are also an opportunity to ask questions, challenge assumptions and discover something new about ourselves and each other.
No label required.
If you are interested in developing your team in a way that is lived rather than simply reported, explored rather than categorised, then perhaps it is time to step away from the questionnaire and towards the shoreline.
Bring your attention. The coast will do the rest.
