Personality Dimensions® – More isn’t always better

While I have had the chance to meet with lots of great people at conferences, workshops, and networking events, my role at CLSR is very much behind the scenes. If you call our office, and I pick up the phone, it’s usually because the customer service team is busy with other clients; we really try our hardest to not let calls go to voicemail.  In today’s world of AI and automation, it’s kind of nice to connect with an actual human from time to time. Since I don’t often have the opportunity talk to clients and find out what’s going on in their individual worlds, I need to talk to our customer service team to know what’s up.  Really they’re great people and they’ve got interesting things to share as long as they’ve had their morning coffee.

One of the questions that keeps coming up has to do with the number of Personality Dimensions® Cards that should be used in an introductory workshop. In addition to the Picture Cards there are Life Values, In Communications, At Work, In Conflict, Relationships, and In Communications Cards. All of these cards were developed to be used in specific contexts, and for the most part shouldn’t all be used at the same time.  There are some guidelines about this in the manual, but as a general rule of thumb, more isn’t always better. From my personal experience I like to recommend the Picture, Life Values, and In Communications cards if you’re leading an introductory workshop; the one in Building Blocks.  If you’re working with one of the Toolkits, or any other kind of applications then you can add in the appropriate cards.

Personality Dimensions® Online through CLSRassessments.com has really taken off over the past few years with more and more trainers making the switch all the time. If you’ve ever tried it, you’ll know why; it frees up a bunch of time when you have face-to-face time with your clients, and it lets you know their personality preferences before you start your training. It’s very tempting to click the checkboxes beside each of the cards when you’re sending your clients the invitation to take the assessment; why not, it doesn’t cost any extra. But in reality you might be doing your clients a disservice and missing out on an opportunity for yourself in the future.

Selecting all of the Personality Dimensions® Cards means your clients will have to spend more time focusing on the assessment, and we all know what is happening to attention spans these days. It doesn’t make the assessment any more or less valid. In fact Personality Dimensions® was validated using the Life Values in combination with two other cards.  When your clients get to see their results and see blanks on their score sheet, someone will inevitably ask why. That’s your chance as an entrepreneur to sell them on an application session, and let them know that they will get a chance to experience those, when you come back. Isn’t it great to turn a question into an opportunity?

When you come across things you’re not sure about with Personality Dimensions® reach out to us, we’re always happy to have a chat.

 

Brad Whitehorn – BA, CCDP is the Sales & Marketing Coordinator at CLSR Inc.  He was thrown in to the career development field headfirst after completing a Communications degree in 2005, and hasn’t looked back!  Since then, Brad has worked on the development, implementation and certification for various career and personality assessments (including Personality Dimensions®), making sure that Career Development Practitioners get the right tools to best serve their clients

Personality Dimensions® for Youth Foundations

As many Personality Dimensions^® facilitators are aware, we have an ongoing commitment to continuous research and development of Personality Dimensions^® materials. For the last year or so we’ve focussed that commitment on recognizing the diverse needs of the youth population and developing materials that support the very timely and much needed Youth Employment initiatives across the country.

Following extensive beta testing this past Fall – with our sincere thanks to all who participated – it’s my real pleasure to announce that the PD for Youth™ online assessment is now available! The accompanying PD for Youth Foundations™ Facilitators Guide will be available on February 26^th.

Want to take a test drive of the PD for Youth™ online assessment? Email or call us, and we’ll be delighted to provide you with a complimentary credit on your online account.

What makes the PD for Youth™ online assessment and Foundations Facilitator Guide unique is that they were designed for youth in youth employment and/or career development settings. Unlike the classic materials, PD for Youth™ is tailored to suit the needs and experiences of this age group, encouraging them to explore their values, how they see themselves while learning, with their friends and family and in the world of work. Facilitators can adapt the content of the Foundations guide to suit the direction and time frame that they need to work effectively with their youth group.

In addition to leading your participants through an introductory Personality Dimensions^® workshop, the Foundations Guide also walks you through a career building application workshop.

Activities include:

• Identifying key strengths brought to the workplace by each colour
• Preparing for an informational interview
• Exploring job search methods

Handouts and PowerPoint^® presentation for both the introductory session as well as the career building workshop are all included. The PD for Youth Foundations™ Facilitators Guide is packaged onto a USB drive for portability and easy access on current technology.

I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but I am personally delighted to be able to bring these great, immediately useful resources to you.

Yours, from the back office.

~Denise

Denise Hughes is the Director and owner of CLSR Inc. and general editor of Personality Dimensions® materials and products. She just noticed the calendar and realized it is just past the 44th anniversary of her introduction to career and type and temperament materials. Those experiences and the expertise she gained through her years with the Guidance Centre, University of Toronto, and now with CLSR, continue to shape the direction that both CLSR and Personality Dimensions® take.

Personality Dimensions® – PD Basics Online™ Now Available

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

It has always been our aim to make Personality Dimensions® as widely accessible to as many people as possible around the world.  You may remember earlier this year we asked you, the ones who deliver Personality Dimensions® all the time, where you wanted us to focus our efforts next.  Overwhelmingly you told us that you wanted to have PD Basics™ put online… and we’ve done just that!  We could have just put the paper-based assessment online, but that just isn’t our style… we wanted to give your more.  PD Basics Online™ has all the same parts as the paper-based assessment but we’ve added to the report to include other areas: Getting Along With the four personalities, Problems Caused By, Rewarding each of the personalities, and descriptions of Preferred Work Environments.

PD Basics™ was created with lower English literacy skills in mind.  It was painstakingly edited, reviewed, re-edited, and reviewed many times over to bring it to a reasonable and consistent grade level;  It falls somewhere between a grade 4 -5 on the Flesch–Kincaid readability test.  It uses the same concepts, and some of the same terminology at the original Personality Dimensions® assessment, but removes the colloquialisms, and slang terms that can be difficult to understand for adults who are learning English, or have lower literacy skills.

If you’re working with youth/teenagers, this assessment isn’t for you.  We have a different version of Personality Dimensions® for them – PD for Youth™.  PD for Youth™ uses phrases, terminology, and life experiences that are more in line with this age group, and is more relatable.  Right now it is available in the paper-based format with Participant Packs™ and Dimensions Cards™, but we are working hard to get it up and running online for the beginning of September.  PD for Youth Online™ will have a bunch of new content for the report, and all new Dimensions Cards™, and we’ll let you know when it’s ready.

Access to PD Basics Online™ has already been added to existing qualifying accounts on CLSRassessments.com, but if you want to try it out for yourself, let us know and we can add a free credit to your account so you can see how it looks.  Email us at info@clsr.ca, or give us a call at 1-877-680-0200 / 905-760-0111.

Personality Dimensions® – New Report

You asked for it, and we delivered!  Based on a recent survey,  and feedback to our customer service team we have added PD Basics to the suite of assessments available on CLSRassessments.com. We’re just putting the finishing touches on the new report and are testing the assessment to make sure that the results are accurate.  We will have it wrapped up and ready to go for the end of August.

The all new customized nine page report includes all the valuable information from the print version of PD in Action, plus an additional four areas for each colour, and an expanded section on Introversion/Extraversion.  All existing Personality Dimensions Facilitators with a CLSRassessments.com account will automatically get access to the assessment, so look for it in your control panel soon.

Personality Dimensions® – I don’t have any Inquiring Greens… Help!

Picture this, you are fresh off of three jam-packed days of Personality Dimensions® Level 1 training, and you are getting ready to present to your first group.  You have everything you need; PowerPoint Presentation®, Participant Packs, table cloths in the four colours, and you even found colour-coordinated candies to put on all the tables.

Everyone is finished their assessments and you ask the group to rearrange themselves into like-colourd groups to get ready for the first exercise.  You look at the groups… six Organized Golds, four Resourceful Oranges, ten Authentic Blues, and zero Inquiring Greens… You think to yourself “no Inquiring Greens, now what am I supposed to do?  I’m an Organized Gold, and Inquiring Green is my absolute LAST colour!”  Then you remember that you have a copy of Phantom Groups: Virtual Flip-Charts for Personality Dimensions Brightened Groups.  When it comes time to debrief the Inquiring Green responses, you open the PowerPoint® and share how actual Inquiring Greens responded.  Presentation saved!

The flip-charts selected to appear in Phantom Groups are reproductions of actual flip-charts created by Personality Dimensions® groups over an eight year period. They are typical representations, not tailored to any special groups, just as you would expect to be generated at an introductory workshop. The contents are an accurate reproduction of what each group contributed, using computer graphics to make them easier to read. There are five flip-charts for each colour group so you can show multiple examples.

While supplies last, or until the accountant finds out, we are offering the remaining stock of Phantom Groups on CD for 40% off!  You can still get it on USB if you don’t have a CD drive, but I can only get away with offering the USB version at 25% off for the rest of until April 13th, just use coupon code “phantomgroups” when checking out.

*Sale pricing cannot be combined with any other offers or discounts.  Valid on orders placed with Career/LifeSkills Resources Inc. only.  Must be a Certified Personality Dimensions Trainer to purchase.

Personality Dimensions® – Making the PD-Online™ Assessment System More Accessible

Earlier today I came across the phrase “Character is what you are when no one is looking.” It reminded me of how we ask people to respond to the Personality Dimensions^® assessment: as they are when they are relaxed, maybe sitting at home with a good cup of tea or coffee.

The process of developing, and evolving, an online version of the Personality Dimensions^® assessment has been interesting to say the least. I have certainly learned a lot of lessons along the way. I stand in awe of those programmers and visionaries who have made, and continue to make, big strides in this technology.

One of those strides has resulted in a new way for facilitators to make Personality Dimensions^® available to their clients. Entitled Self-Registration Link for Clients, facilitators can share their specifically designated links any way they wish – via e-mail, text message, social media groups / events, however they find it easiest – to communicate with their clients.  As a facilitator, you have a series of unique URL links that you can share with your clients that allow them to self-register directly to your account. These URLs can be found at the bottom of you Profile screen, which is accessible from the Dashboard Menu.

 

If you have any questions about using your Self-Registration Links for Clients, most of the answers can be found on page 10 of the user guide, found on your facilitator dashboard.  If you are still stumped, you can reach out to our tech support genius at techsupport@clsr.ca.

We would love to hear from you with suggestions about how to make Personality Dimensions^® more easily accessible to your clients. Keep in touch – Personality Dimensions^® continues to grow – did you see that we passed the million assessments taken mark – because of you!

Onward and upward from the Inquiring Green in the back office!

 

Denise Hughes is the Director and owner of Career/LifeSkills Resources Inc. and general editor of Personality Dimensions® materials and products. She just noticed the calendar and realized it is just past the 41st anniversary of her introduction to career and type and temperament materials. Those experiences and the expertise she gained through her years with the Guidance Centre, University of Toronto, and now with CLSR, continue to shape the direction that both Career/LifeSkills Resources and Personality Dimensions® take.

Personality Dimensions® – Certificate of Attendance

We asked … and you answered! Yes, you wanted a “certificate of attendance” that certified Personality Dimensions Certified Trainers® can provide for your workshop attendees and we have one available.

Check out http://www.personalitydimensions.com/additional-resources to see what we’ve come up with. It is modifiable – you can either print out and hand write in the name of the participant and the date, then sign each certificate or you can create a file that you can modify to include the name of the participant and date in a pre-printed format, then print out each certificate and sign them personally.

We included a brief overview of some of the key points that are covered in an introductory Personality Dimensions® workshop and that we felt would add value to the certification if it was part of an employment portfolio.

Rather than have the certificate generally available to all who might visit the website, you must request that the file be sent to you. It will only, of course, be sent to Personality Dimensions Certified Trainers.

Keep your comments and suggestions coming … we listen!

Personality Dimensions for Youth

Now available from Personality Dimensions®: PD for Youth™.  Based on the popular PD@School™ site licence, PD for Youth™ is designed to be used with students in grade 7 – 12, and can be purchased by any qualified Personality Dimensions® trainer.  The components are the same as the standard version; however the content has been tailored to suit the needs of students.

To administer PD for Youth™ with your students/clients you will need 1 set of Picture Cards for each (reusable), 1 set of PD@School™ Cards for each (reusable), and 1 Participant Pack™ (consumable) for each.  The available PowerPoint presentation follows the narrative of the Building Blocks™, however the content and language has been modified for students.  Read more about the individual products at: http://career-lifeskills.com/personality-dimensions-6/pd-for-youth-169/.

For trainers in Australia and Hong Kong, please contact your local distributor for pricing and availability.

Personality Dimensions – Upgrade and Save

 

For a limited time only, upgrade your Personality Dimensions^® Manual and Personality Dimensions^® Building Blocks to the new Second Editions, and save up to 50%!

 

Building Blocks to a Personality Dimensions^® Introductory Workshop provides a complete “how to conduct an Introductory workshop” in a binder.

The second edition of this Guide includes:

• A revised and updated PowerPoint^® presentation, including:
  • An expanded Tying It All Together section with more examples
  • A new History section reflecting the extensive research undertaken
• Guidance on how to use and integrate PD-Online^™ into your presentations
• An appendix of PowerPoint^® slides for quick reference
• Combined handouts and PowerPoint^® on the accompanying CD for easy reference
• A myriad of other updates and revisions throughout, based on trainer feedback

 

This Manual has the information you need to learn about the theory behind Personality Dimensions^®.

The second edition of this Manual includes:

• Vastly expanded research into the history of temperament and personality
  • Researcher and author Scott Campbell found a few surprises!
• Improved and expanded section on Introversion and Extraversion
  • Introversion/Extraversion expert Carole Cameron offers insight into integrating and respecting Introversion and Extraversion in your workshops
• Countless other updates and revisions throughout, based on trainer feedback

 

Get the Manual or Building Blocks and save 35% off the list price; buy them both together and save 50% off the list price!

 

 Call us today to place your order – 1.877.680.0200

Available for a limited time only.  50% discount only applies when both Manual and Building Blocks are ordered on the same invoice.  Additional trainer discounts to not apply.  Offer only available from Career/LifeSkills Resources Inc.  Available only to Personality Dimensions Certified Trainers.

Personality Dimensions – New Book

Now available for pre-order!

Great Parenting Skills for Navigating Your Kid’s Personality

By Kate Jones, M.Ed & Wayne Jones, M.Ed

Do you sometimes wonder if your child is trying to drive you crazy? Or do you sometimes ask the question, “Why can’t they be more like me?”

Great Parenting Skills for Navigating Your Kid’s Personality (GPS)  is the product of the authors’ parenting workshops on the four temperaments/colours that help parents understand better “what makes our kid tick.”  The book acts as a Roadmap (…or GPS!)  that provides effective parenting techniques geared to your child’s specific and natural way of behaving, while promoting positive self-esteem.  It supports the notion that every child has great potential ready to be unlocked.

Based on the theory behind Personality Dimensions®, GPS  is fun, easy-to-read and filled with real-life stories and anecdotes to help you identify what each temperament wants and what gets in the way.  This book provides practical strategies for raising children in a positive environment that enhances your kid’s specific nature.  – “Yummy” or “Yucky”  – Ready! Set! Start Your Engines! – Destination: Disney – GPS For Your Parenting Journey Preferences – GPS for Your Children’s Journey – GPS for “Bumps” Along The Way – GPS for Positive Communication on Your Journey – GPS For Introverts & Extraverts on Your Journey – GPS for Creating Positive Home Learning Environments – The Final GPS Coordinates Are Yours!

Order your copy from www.clsr.ca today!