Over the past day or so I’ve been taking a bunch of assessments. Perhaps this demonstrate how odd I am, but I love these things. It was probably about 20 years ago when I took my first Myers-Briggs and discovered that I am an INTJ. There was a lot about me that just started to make sense, in that framework.

Later on I took the DiSC test as well as StrengthFinders, and time after time I complete the assessment, got the results back and said, “Yup, that’s me.”

Until this morning. I took a DiSC type assessment yesterday, and the results came in today.

Let me back up for a minute. I’ve taken the DiSC probably 5 times in the past 12 years and have consistently come up “High-D High C”, with i tending to barely register.

However on this assessment, I registered as an “S”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I married an S. When we planted a church in Ithaca, the two key members of our team were S’s (Elizabeth & James Cherian) and without the gifts and stability they brought to our plant, it would never have gotten off the ground.

But me? I don’t think so.

Two sentences from the report say:

“Your favourite world is: giving priority to personal needs of the people rather than the outcome of the task.”

“Others see you as: warm, caring and very relational in all you do.”

Another word used was “friendly”.

I told Erin that the report said I was warm and friendly.

She laughed.

She said, you are warm and friendly, its just probably not how most people see you.

At the same I do think over the past 2-3 years part of what the Father’s been doing is sanding down some of the rough edges and building up some areas of weakness. Let’s face it, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if my High D and High C were tempered a bit.

And since it’s been almost 2 years since I was actually serving as a lead pastor, and of late have been focused more on getting our family settled in a brand new country, it probably makes sense that that is coming through a bit more at this point in my life.

Still, warm and friendly? Seriously? I’m not buying it

Have you ever had a time where because of a stage you were at, one of these assessment seemed way off? What did you learn from that?