Outtakes 115
Who Am I?
By Cait Collins
Have you ever been asked to take one of those personality tests? The ones that attempt to determine your traits as they relate to your job? Don’t feel slighted if you’ve missed this opportunity. There are not many surprises. The tests present some seemly innocent questions such as “If you had an hour with no commitments, how would you spend the time? A) Read War and Peace B) Spend the time contemplating the veins in a flower petal C) Work on a craft project D) Dance or E) Organize your computer files.” Once you have answered all the questions, you total your points based on the number of A answers, B responses, and so on. You don’t get the key until you’ve totaled the responses. In my high stress job, I usually learned I was dominate/analytical. Translated – – boring. But if I took the same test as a Disney cast member, I scored free thinking/creative.
Was the test flawed? Absolutely not. Each of us have different personalities for different situations. As an office manager I had to take charge, set deadlines, study the issues, crunch the numbers and make the best decisions based on the information at hand. At the Disney store, my instructions were to exceed the guests’ expectations and to have fun. I had a blast at Disney because I was permitted to use my creative side. I could be a kid, a princess, or a villain. It all depended on the guest. With the children I could be silly, but when a serious collector came in, I changed the personality to speak the collector’s language. I loved both jobs. The requirements were performed by one person with two distinct personalities.
All of us have multiple personalities. We are different people depending on circumstances. Accepting our varied personas doesn’t mean we have mental issues. Instead it makes us more balanced and real. Have you ever met a one dimensional person? Someone who displays only one personality? While they are basically good people, they are not always comfortable to be around.
As writers we know our characters are complex. They change with their surroundings. This is good. By permitting them to be themselves we have real persons and not cardboard characters. Listen to your characters. They will guide you in telling the story. How will you know if you are allowing the players to run amuck? Don’t worry. If you are truly listening, the characters will tell you. ,
Wordsmith Six 
These tests ARE flawed insomuch as we are (or we ought to be) very aware of who will be studying the results. In your example above, you are highly unlikely to answer (B), even if you had a predisposition for biology, because this would not reflect well on your work ethic. We return the answers that are expected of us as employees, not people.
My company recently inroduced this test and distributed it en masse to its 4,000 employees. Panic ensued. Many assumed that their jobs would be at risk and I had numerous queries (even though I am nowhere near the top of the company food chain) on what answers they ought to give. I gave the answers some, but not a great deal of thought. My attitude was ‘if they want to know what sort of person I am, they can damn well speak to me.’ Six months on, some of colleagues are still fretting about their answers…