Nobody else has exactly your personality. That singularity is not merely an appealing idea: it is an essential key to understanding human behaviour, developing leadership potential and supporting individuals and organisations over the long term.
In this article you will find why every personality is fundamentally unique, how that individuality shapes our behaviour, our relationships and our development, and how personality assessment helps make sense of what sets us apart. You will also find the four laws of unique individuality put forward by Nigel Nicholson, emeritus professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School, along with the opportunities and the risks artificial intelligence presents to what makes human beings singular.
At a time when organisations are looking to personalise their talent management, leadership and skills development strategies, recognising the uniqueness of each individual becomes a genuine lever for lasting performance.
Nobody else has your personality.
Unique individuality rests on a simple idea: nobody has ever been, is today, or will one day be exactly like you. It is also one of the characteristics that separate human intelligence most profoundly from artificial intelligence.
But uniqueness is far more than a flattering concept.
On Hogan's view, when that individuality is measured through personality inventories, it makes it possible to predict performance more accurately, to encourage behavioural change and to improve the understanding we have of ourselves and of others.
Episode 144 of the podcast The Science of Personality turned to the theories set out in Unique You, the latest book by Nigel Nicholson, PhD, emeritus professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School. Hosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp welcomed him to discuss them.
Nigel Nicholson explains:
"In psychology, individuals are generally treated as a nuisance, a disturbance, variation down to error. For me, on the contrary, everyone is an exception. It is the only approach that genuinely makes sense."
Here are the four laws of unique individuality, the reasons our singularity is decisive, and the threats as well as the opportunities artificial intelligence may represent for individuals and for society.
"Individuality is the very substance of life," Nigel Nicholson states.
He does not treat individuality as a synonym for isolation, but on the contrary as carrying extremely rich potential. On his view, four laws of unique individuality apply to each of us, universally and inescapably:
Nigel also explains that free will and the choices we make shape our behaviour and, in consequence, our reputation, meaning the way others perceive us.
"For example, seeing yourself as an attractive person or, on the contrary, as an unattractive one will lead you towards completely different experiences," he explains. "You only have to start seeing yourself differently to transform many aspects of your behaviour profoundly."
Coaching grounded in personality assessment, along with the various approaches that build better strategic self-awareness, can therefore contribute to significant and lasting behavioural change.
Nigel Nicholson quotes the Canadian physician Sir William Osler, who practised in the Victorian era:
"It is much more important to know what sort of patient has a disease than what sort of disease a patient has."
The observation illustrates an essential reality: even when they live through the same events or share certain characteristics, people's reactions and experiences remain deeply personal.
"Every lived experience is conditioned by who you are," Nigel Nicholson points out.
Unique individuality therefore implies that each person should be understood on their own terms, rather than simply as a member of a group or a representative of a personality type.
This approach calls into question certain classic conceptions of leadership development.
"My thinking overturns a great many assumptions in leadership development, not least the concept of the average manager. But the average manager does not exist," Nigel Nicholson explains. "You have to work with the raw material in front of you."
The idea resonates particularly with the psychometric approach. Hogan's inventories can theoretically generate 72 quadrillion different profiles, far more than would be needed to give a distinct profile to every human being who has ever lived.
Personality assessment is therefore not about shutting people into a handful of categories. On the contrary, it captures the richness and singularity of the combinations that make up a personality.
For Nigel Nicholson, genuinely understanding individuality calls for a biographical approach.
He proposes a four-dimensional model to complement psychometric assessment: destiny, drama, deliberation and development.
"From these four elements, it is possible to tell the story of a human life," he explains.
Destiny corresponds to the given and unchangeable realities of a person's existence: their DNA, the place and date of their birth, their childhood environment, and the temperamental foundations on which their adult personality will be built.
Identical twins, for instance, begin life with the same DNA. Yet from the very first moments, their experiences start to diverge.
These elements of destiny help shape behaviour, in working life as much as in every other dimension of existence.
Drama refers to the continually unpredictable character of life.
That uncertainty helps make existence exciting, but it can also make it dangerous or difficult at times.
It is above all in how we adapt to the events of our lives that personality comes in.
Personality inventories make it possible to anticipate the kinds of reactions and responses a person is likely to show when faced with the unforeseen events that may come their way.
From a talent management or leadership development perspective, this understanding is particularly valuable: it helps anticipate how someone may react under pressure or in complex situations.
Deliberation refers to free will: that moment when a person stops and says to themselves:
"Hold on a second!"
Deliberation helps us answer fundamental questions: why are we here? What are we actually trying to accomplish?
Over his career coaching executives, Nigel Nicholson has watched high-performing leaders wanting to change both their identity, meaning how they see themselves, and their reputation, meaning how others see them.
This distinction is central to assessment and development. Better self-knowledge lets leaders understand any gap between their intentions and the real impact of their behaviour on those around them.
Development rests on the idea that we never stop learning.
Some of what we learn is beneficial. Other lessons can have negative consequences. Someone who has been betrayed may, for example, learn resilience, or may instead develop a lasting attitude of mistrust.
Personality assessment can support this learning process by shedding light on a person's strengths, on how they tend to react to stress and on the values that determine what they look for in life.
It is therefore a particularly powerful tool for supporting skills development, leadership potential and coaching work.
Unique individuality is shaped by physical and psychological factors alike.
Put simply, a human being consists of a body and a mind. This conception, known as mind-body dualism, was formalised by Descartes, then reinterpreted by Freud among others.
Our usual assumption is that the body answers to the mind.
Nigel Nicholson suggests turning that perspective around.
"The mind exists only to serve the needs of the body; the body has this mind in order to look after itself," he says.
So when we say that human beings are biologically programmed to form relationships with their fellows, that means both our body and our mind seek out human interaction.
We draw closer to people who complement us and combine our skills to create something entirely new.
Human relationships also play an essential part in self-knowledge.
Watching how others react to our behaviour gives us valuable feedback on our reputation and helps us understand the impact we have on those around us.
In organisations, this relational dimension is essential to leadership, to team transformation and to building a sustainable organisational culture.
"Unique individuality is our last line of defence against artificial intelligence," Nigel Nicholson states.
Artificial intelligence is remarkably good at imitating and simulating. Yet on his view, computers and AI cannot genuinely reproduce human thought processes.
Nigel draws on an idea from neuroscience according to which human perception is a form of controlled hallucination.
What we see of the world is in fact a mental construction: our brain continually predicts the stimuli we perceive at any given moment.
Our unconscious introduces an element of randomness, chaos and improvisation into that construction.
"We have extraordinary capacities for whimsical, unpredictable singularity that artificial intelligence cannot even come close to," Nigel Nicholson explains.
Artificial intelligence can pose certain psychological threats.
If we let machines take too many decisions on our behalf, we risk becoming intellectually lazy.
If we attribute human intentions to artificial intelligence, such as sympathy or goodwill, we can become emotionally gullible.
And if we attach excessive importance to facts and data while underestimating human ingenuity, we can develop a form of fatalism and feel that we are losing our capacity to act.
Take sport as an example: someone focusing exclusively on data showing their athletic limits might give up on trying to improve or to reach a higher level of competition.
Yet a human being is never entirely summed up by the available data about them.
The opportunities AI offers are nonetheless closely tied to the mechanisms that can equally constitute its main threats.
Artificial intelligence can help us personalise how we communicate, analyse and process information, and improve our decision-making.
Nigel Nicholson himself used artificial intelligence tools while writing his book. Not to draft the text for him, but to look for resources and explore various questions.
"Recognising unique individuality as an inescapable reality in the context of the technological revolution is absolutely essential," he points out.
The point, then, is not necessarily to set human intelligence against artificial intelligence, but to understand what technology can amplify without losing sight of what makes human beings fundamentally singular.
Nigel Nicholson points out that the four laws of unique individuality also carry moral imperatives.
The first is to be yourself. The second calls for humility and a capacity to forgive. The third is to reach out to others. And the fourth encourages us to look for the best possible way of relating to them.
Personality assessment gives us precisely the tools to turn these principles into concrete action.
By measuring what makes each individual unique, it helps make sense of interpersonal differences and build relationships that are stronger, more authentic and more meaningful.
Nigel Nicholson sums up his ambition this way:
"I hope unique individuality will lead us towards a more authentic form of community, capable of taking in all the diversity that exists between two individuals, in how they are built as much as in how they take in the world."
Recognising the uniqueness of each individual profoundly changes how leadership and talent management are approached.
There is no average manager, any more than there is a universal development path capable of suiting everyone.
Organisations wanting to develop their talent over the long term therefore have to move beyond standardised approaches and understand the singular combination of personality, experience, motivation, behaviour and values belonging to each person.
Personality assessment, when it rests on robust methodologies such as those developed by Hogan Assessments, can supply that depth of understanding. It supports a more personalised approach to assessment and development, to coaching, to skills development and to HR strategy.
It also allows leaders to build better strategic self-awareness: understanding their strengths, identifying the behaviours liable to surface under pressure, seeing more clearly the impact they have on others and adapting their leadership without giving up what makes them singular.
In a working environment where artificial intelligence, data and automation take up ever more room, this understanding of the human becomes more strategic than ever.
Lasting performance does not rest on the search for an ideal profile or a standardised leader. It rests on the capacity of organisations to understand, develop and connect profoundly different individuals.
It is precisely this diversity of personalities that allows teams to create, to collaborate, to learn and to transform organisations.
Individuality, then, is no obstacle to the collective.
It is one of its principal riches.
At Authentic Talent, we believe that objective assessment of talent and potential within organisations is a decisive factor in their future success. If you would like to discuss it with us, let's talk!
This article draws on an article published on the Hogan Assessments website: Why Uniqueness Matters: Personality and Individuality
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