You are probably not seen by others the way you see yourself. How we assess personality determines what we learn.

While leadership assessments are standard practice in organizations today, the question is: “what are we really measuring?”

Personality assessments are often part of executive development, and many leaders use them when deciding who to hire, promote, or partner with. What's fascinating about that to me is that most of these assessments focus on how we see ourselves - our mindsets, values, hopes, fears… We psychologists refer to that as “self-reported.”

However, what really matters is not our self-image but knowing how others experience us.?

More often than not, when I’m working with executives, they are surprised by some of the feedback they get from 360 interviews.? Sometimes, they are completely blindsided. "But I'm very caring and supportive of my team!" one of my leaders insisted when he heard that his direct resorts experienced him as unavailable.?

We've all been there, right? That moment when we realize others don't see us quite the way we see ourselves.

I was reading "The Science of Personality" on the Hogan Assessments website, and they put it well. There's "identity" - how we view ourselves - and then there's "reputation" - how others experience us.?

The good news is we don't have to wait for potentially cumbersome 360 feedback to figure this out. There are assessment tools that measure reputation directly.

It got me thinking about how we approach development - for ourselves and our teams. When we're sizing up strengths and weaknesses, we need to make sure we are assessing what really counts - reputation, not identity.