Amused to receive an email inviting me to take part in The Accountants Personality Profile Questionnaire. Almost tempted in the hope that it would come back with the result "You do not have a personality, so are ideally suited to your profession"!
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Extrovert accountant, looks at the other person's shoes when speaking instead of their own.
Didn't get the email you're referring to, but we got most staff to do "PRISM" profiles not that long ago. On the one hand they didn't really tell us anything we hadn't already figured out...but they did add a lot of flesh to the bones of the impressions we already had, and also helped us figure out how best to deal with the differences.
Eg some staff might be dreamers...great at coming up with creative ideas, not so great at focussing on a given task for a prolonged period. Some will be really driven, great at getting the task in hand done quickly and efficiently, but might upset a few people along the way. Some will be great at getting on with people from all backgrounds, but might struggle with technical stuff. Etc etc.
One thing I liked about it is that unlike most exams we're used to, there is no right/wrong answer. It's all done from multiple choice, so scoring higher in one segment means you'll score lower in others. I think this helped relax people that whilst to some extent they would be being compared to peers, not in a "this person's better than you" way, more in a "this person's strengths complement your weaknesses, and vice versa".
Also leads to the question on whether you should focus on improving your weak areas to be reasonably good at everything, or just get everyone to work on tasks they're innately good at, hoping across your employees you've got all bases covered.
Two accountants walk in to a bar.
"We're here for the audit, do you have somewhere quiet we can work?"
Q. Why don't accountants stare out the window in the morning?
A. They'd have nothing to do lunchtime.
Pft, I know mine too well. You know when people in CVs write "works well as part of a team or on own initiative"? You can delete the first part for me :-)
Loved setting up on my own 10 years ago, despite the harder and harder work its getting with HMRCs "initiatives".
I love chatting to clients when I meet them, but that's small doses.