B822 Book 1 Section 5.

The NEO -FFI (Five Factor Inventory) is based on the ‘Big Five’.

Several psychometric publishers have their own versions of the inventory – often with extra scales.

I don’t know the EPIP-NEO but from the above it has 7 rather than 5 scales so has added some of its own – and this may affect its reliability and validity compared with the normal Big Five.

Some core thoughts:

It is OK to be you – the one examination on which you can only gain 100% and are bound to beat everyone else hands down is being you

Whatever that ‘you’ is, and whatever the strengths and weaknesses that are the potential outcomes of any particular dimension of your personalty, it is you that manages being you – and how that you relates to all sorts of other ‘you’s’

So if I were giving advice then I would say something like:

• Learn to value and get the most out of those apects of you that you like most
• Learn to manage and work with or round those aspects of you that you like least.

There is far more to be gained by maximising the value that is you than by attempting to change it into something that is ‘not you’

And if all this feels a bit too challenging, then make sure you have a guide / coach / mentor /friend / loved one who will support you as you work through it.

Lastly  – whatever you are like brings value to a team.

The biggest danger is what happens when you work to create a team that is all like you.  (And if you want a classic example, think of the difference between the success – in its terms – of the Thatcher Government in its early years, and later on when the wets were removed and they were all ‘people like us’!

Francis Cattermole