In this issue of the Proceedings, Blose et al discussed the potential value of personality inventories in medicine and medical education.1 They highlighted how incorporation of inventories could improve learning, workplace dynamics, teams in medicine, and graduate medical education. We were delighted to see advocacy for tools that can play an important role in personal, leadership, and team development in medicine. This contribution to the literature will further the conversation and normalize the utilization of tools that have been around since the 1900s.
A common place to utilize inventories is in leadership education. Leadership trainings in medicine are gaining traction.2 In leadership education, the journey begins with self-discovery; thus, inventories are a great place to start. The role of an inventory in leadership education is to encourage awareness. This awareness promotes self-reflection and growth. Often inventories are a jumping point for team conversations.3 When implementing educational interventions around these topics, one of the most exciting outcomes is watching individuals shift their understanding of each other. Team members are able to step outside of themselves to see that not everyone sees things or thinks the way they do. In this context, inventories encourage holistic views of self and others.
Despite the popularity of using inventories in leadership education, leadership according to personality style is not common practice. Scholars recognize that personality style and leadership skills are not synonymous. Leaders need to be nimble with an adaptive response.4 Knowledge of a personality type enables leaders to recognize blind spots and helps them avoid rigidity in their stance or preferred style. Inventories for communication skills, leadership skills, conflict management skills, and even personality styles are used to help people gain insight into themselves and others. Incorporation of these tools builds the key leadership skill of emotional intelligence (EI).
EI includes four domains—self-awareness, other awareness, self-management, and relationship management—and helps leaders reach their full potential.5 Each domain has its own competencies. For example, a competency in the self-awareness domain would be reading your own emotions, while a competency in the relationship management domain would be conflict management or resolving conflicts. Thus, spending time in self-reflection with inventories would help build and solidify EI domains. Leaders who possess EI have better team trust, have less burnout, and maintain better relationships.6
As medicine and medical education move from autonomous practice to team-based practice, these inventories become even more paramount for building teams. Inventories like the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Management Mode, a validated and highly utilized tool, can illustrate team preferences around conflict and areas for improvement.3,7,8 Additionally, the inventories can help repair dysfunctional teams and improve team cohesion. Inventories can be used when filling social sciences gaps in formal education.3 Educational gaps in medicine include areas like communication, conflict management, leadership education, and personal development. These inventories encourage students’ awareness and acceptance of their diverse team members. When using these in education sessions, faculty should encourage dialogue to better understand the nuances of team members and inventory findings and avoid generalized statements about others.
It is no surprise that inventories are gaining traction in medicine as the human brain likes to categorize and use fast thinking to understand the world. However, fast thinking relies on assumptions and previous knowledge, which can keep us from being open minded and learning about the nuances of each other.9 Therefore, personality inventories should be complementarily tools for development, education, and awareness rather than diagnostic. These tools can encourage dialogue, team development, and leadership development through EI. Finally, we hope this conversation continues, and people use these inventories as an engaging way to encourage relationship and rapport building, which will encourage bigger things like psychological safety, positive culture shifts, and emotionally intelligent workspaces.
Disclosure statement/Funding
The authors report no funding or conflicts of interest.
References
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