Facet5™ is a personality assessment specifically designed by Psychologists for use by management in organizations. It produces a comprehensive multi part report on how an individual behaves at work: actual behavior, how to best manage, what the work strengths are likely to be, and where individual work preferences might lie.
Amy is a Facet5™ practitioner based in Waterloo, Ontario in Canada. She is using it to help local businesses transform and grow, and regularly blogs about the various applications Facet5™ has to offer. We caught up with her to find out more about her work.
What was your background before your started working with Facet5™?
It’s probably not typical of most Facet5™ practitioners! For most of my professional life, I worked in my family’s automotive dealership business, and real estate management and development. A friend introduced me to Facet5™, as he uses it in his line of work. I could immediately see its potential in small and medium businesses, which need simple tools for team building, leadership and recruitment. Around here there are lots of multi-generational, family-run businesses, which experience a lot of difficulties around succession planning and team integration between family members and externally recruited staff. I knew there was a great opportunity with Facet5™, so I got myself accredited, and started contacting people about it.
How do you introduce Facet5™ to clients in your work?
Working with new clients that aren’t familiar with personality instruments can be a challenge, and often lack of understanding or apprehension can be a barrier. It’s a bit like car sales though – people like to take a test drive. Once they understand the product and have seen the incredible accuracy and detail of the profiles Facet5™ provides, they buy into it. The simple, neutral, jargon-free language of Facet5™ is always popular, and the undeniable science behind it is reassuring, yet intuitive and straightforward. Entrepreneurs are looking for an effective tool without any complex scientific language to explain it.
I have found that if you can get the general manager to complete their profile, often the improvement in their self-awareness and understanding of their own management style can be really beneficial to the company. Once one person has done it, it’s also easier for them to see the value it can add when others in the organization get on board.
Because Facet5™ is so comprehensive and detailed, it can take a while for organizations to realize how much they can do with just one report. But I’ve got a real passion for it, and that comes across when I’m talking to people. Writing the blog and building strong, supportive relationships with my clients gives them the chance to get to grips with it in bite-sized chunks which work for them and solve the immediate issues.
How do you use Facet5™?
In all sorts of ways! Selection, recruitment, team development, leadership style… it’s really flexible. In our region there are lots of small start-ups, and I advise using Facet5™ right from the start to help secure the foundations of the business. Start-ups are often founded by friends, with big ideas. When they’re successful, they’re not always equipped to cope with how the business, and their relationship, changes over time. So using Facet5™ can be a great way to lay the foundations for a successful partnership, improving communications and conflict resolution. Facet5™ helps companies to evolve smoothly, and it has uses throughout the whole spectrum of the employee lifecycle, no matter what scale the business is on.
One thing I’m particularly interested in is Facet5™’s ability to help people to make better decisions, whether in terms of career planning, parents returning to work after having children, or developing your own business. It really helps people to understand their own preferences, what is really important to them, and to define the environment which they will find the most fulfilling. Many people find themselves questioning their career path, and understanding yourself better is often the perfect way to work out where you want to be – and how to get there.
What are your most memorable “wow” moments?
My first real wow moment was working with the General Manager of an automotive dealership soon after I was accredited. When we looked at his profile, we were both amazed at how accurately his profile matched the “ideal” characteristics for his role – it really brought the product’s value to life for both of us, and underlined the value of Facet5™ as a selection and recruitment asset.
The second was when I worked with an individual who was considering taking a promotion at work into a different role. When we worked though her profile, and looked carefully at the requirements of the role, the applicant realized that this was not a role to which she was naturally suited. She turned down the role, because she believed so completely in the findings of the Facet5™ profile; later an opportunity came along which was much more suited to her personality preferences, which she accepted, and is now thriving in. For me, this was a huge achievement, seeing how Facet5™ helps people to make better decisions which help them to lead more fulfilling lives.
What are your top tips for other practitioners and consultants?
Word of mouth is more powerful than any other form of advertising. Ensuring every client has a positive experience and gets real value from the product is the best investment you can make. Their opinion carries more weight than traditional advertising.
Increasing general awareness of the power of Facet5™ through blogging and social media helps create real stories that people can relate to, allowing them to and participate in a conversation about the product rather than simply being told about another brand.
I don’t sell Facet5™. I sell stories about how people can realize their potential using Facet5™. People don’t like being sold products anymore, but they respond well to being offered a solution, and a picture of a better future. Personal value is more powerful than hard sales tactics.
It’s about relationships. Facet5™ helps people to understand what makes them tick, to have better relationships and to make better decisions. Facet5™ is personal. You can’t help people using Facet5™ if you, as a practitioner don’t build a relationship with the client.
