Do Personal Development Tools Improve Employee Performance?

Overview

To understand the impact and e􀆯ectiveness of personal development tools in various organizations, CDM Partners conducted a survey with Ian Rosenberg, a recent Loyola University MBA graduate. A personal development tool o􀆯ers strategies, exercises, and a framework to help enhance the development of new skills, overcome challenges, and achieve goals and outcomes.

Specifically, we asked respondents to consider five popular personal development tools:

1. Everything DiSC on Catalyst
2. Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (Elevate)
3. Gallop StrengthsFinder (Gallup Access)
4. Cloverleaf
5. Hogan Assessments (Halo)

The survey aimed to determine usage, familiarity, reasons for use, pain points, and other insights about these tools. Twenty-nine responses were collected from organizations of all types and sizes (44% were over 500 employees, and 30% were under 200 employees). Organizations represented included government, manufacturing, non-profit, consulting, tech, education, and services.

When asked which tools were used in the past year, Everything DiSC was used almost twice as often as other popular personality assessment tools. This high usage suggests a strong preference for tools that provide actionable insights into team dynamics and individual strengths.

The top two things participants liked about the personal development tools were:

• Helped them better understand their strengths

• Improved team dynamics and collaboration.

Surprisingly, 61% found nothing about the tools they disliked.

When asked about challenges that could be addressed with personal development tools, the top response was poor communication between team members. For example, Everything DiSC provides valuable insights into flexing a person’s behavioral style to increase e􀆯ectiveness when communicating with someone with a di􀆯erent style.

Mentoring, coaching, and leadership development were all identified as enhancements to the benefits of using personal development tools. We see this in our coaching. Coupling a personality assessment like with coaching and leadership development principles is highly e􀆯ective.

The most significant barriers to adoption were a lack of time or resources and insuicient buy-in from leadership. Starting with leadership when implementing personal development tools will help overcome these barriers. Based on our experience working with numerous organizations that adopted personal development tools, starting with leadership is the best practice.

Key Survey Findings

Tool Usage: Everything DiSC was used almost twice as often as other popular personality assessment tools.

Positive Feedback:

• 61% of participants had no dislikes about the tools.

• Participants appreciated how the tools helped them better understand theirmstrengths and improved team dynamics and collaboration.

Enhancements: Mentoring, coaching, and leadership development were identified as key enhancements to the benefits of using personal development tools.

Best Practices: Implementing personal development tools by starting with leadership is crucial to overcoming barriers such as a lack of time, resources, and buy-in.

Workplace Challenges and Solutions

Top Challenge: Poor communication between team members.

Solution: Everything DiSC provides valuable insights on flexing behavioral styles to increase effectiveness in communication.