Unpacking Personality with the BIG 5 Model: Coaching Demo / Report Debrief with Lars Voigt from LINC Personality Profiler

Tobi

So as a coaching client, I get this bird's eye view of my character, motives and competencies, right?

Lars Voigt

Especially males tend to rank themselves as being very competent, usually. They always say, I'm really good at conflict, I'm really good at leadership. If we want to coach, we also have to understand the person as holistically as possible.

Tobi

What are you building on there in terms of psychological grounding?

Tobi

Personality assessments are all over the internet. It's easy to find out which Harry Potter character you're most similar to, in case you can't guess, and in case you care. Personality assessments are also all over the coaching industry.

Lars Voigt

The LINC Personality Profiler is a compact, scientific personality inventory that gives coaches, and of course HR professionals, the option to have reliable, valid personality information to develop and coach people in a scientific manner.

Tobi

Cool. And how does your daily life look at LINC these days?

Lars Voigt

It's a lot about talking to people. I've been working there almost three years now, developing our tools, selling our tools. We have to keep developing based on feedback, and that's exactly what I'm basically doing. I'm in contact with our certified coaches, trying to stay on top of their needs, their feedback, taking that into our development department so we can adjust the tool, improve the tool, and enable constant development of good psychometrics at LINC. So it's a lot of emails, it's a lot of calls, it's a lot of back and forth between all kinds of different people. And that's my day to day, basically.

Tobi

And let's say I am one of these certified coaches now, working with the LINC profile. When would you say I should bring it into the coaching journey? When would I use it?

Lars Voigt

Well, I always recommend bringing it into the coaching journey right at the start, as a diagnostic tool. Just as the initial starting point really, to have a blank canvas, to give the coachee the opportunity to reflect upon him or herself, and to give the coach the information that he or she will need in order to then go in depth with the coachee. So putting psychometrics at the beginning of a coaching process will always make sense.

Tobi

So as a coaching client, I get this bird's eye view of my character, motives and competencies, right? You're using the term personality now. How do you measure personality in LINC?

Lars Voigt

Personality is of course something that psychology is trying to measure all the time, because it's such an important aspect of what makes us unique as people. So at LINC, at the heart of it, it's the Big Five model, the Big Five factor model, which is the model from personality psychology that was developed in the nineties and roots back all the way to the 1930s, when psychology still was a very young discipline. As a result, we can now reference our personality inventory back to a long standing tradition in psychometrics, in psychology as a science. If we want to coach, we also have to understand the person as holistically as possible. So the personality information that we give you at LINC includes the Big Five, as well as motive structure, as well as competencies. The basic idea was that the Big Five are useful in order to give a general image of what a person is like. The motive structure will give you the ability to then talk about what drives this person. Because just to know one's personality isn't usually enough to understand why we behave in certain ways in certain situations. And that's exactly what we then also add in terms of the competencies: how they will probably perform, and what kind of behavior they associate with certain terms, like for example leadership.

Tobi

Awesome. So you sort of summarize personality as these three components, which are character, motives and competencies. And with LINC you measure all of them. And the character part is actually based on the Big Five model.

Lars Voigt

That's correct.

Tobi

And what do you use for motives and for competencies? Is that also a well known model from psychology, or have you developed that yourself?

Lars Voigt

So at the heart of it, we have developed it ourselves. Motives as a psychological construct are hard to measure. So we looked at the motive literature, and there's one model from the 1970s by David McClelland, who derived three basic motives that are prevalent in workers in a work relationship. The first one is the so-called relationship motive. He also identified the performance motive, as we have mentioned, and of course the power motive, to have influence on others. And we took this model and derived our own items from that, to measure it as economically as possible. And we extrapolated, based on our items derived from this model, that we are able to measure nine distinctive motives, which are the three motives that I just mentioned, rooting back to McClelland, plus, for example, that we can differentiate the relationship motive into subparts like norms and values, and lifestyle. We distinguished performance into creativity as well, and growth. And influence we derived into influence, security and independence as motive structures.

Tobi

Yeah, I was going to ask, now we talk about motives, and then you said, okay. What's the difference between motives and values?

Lars Voigt

There's of course a strong association, because our values inform motives and the other way around as well. If you have a strong or very distinctively expressed relationship motive, then probably something like friendship might be a value, a norm, something you really strive for.

Tobi

So I could say, okay, friendship is a value of mine. But then what I hear is that motives take that to a more practical application. You decided, okay, we have a tool for leadership development, we want to focus on the work aspects. And that's why you decided to work with motives, compared to a more holistic values inventory.

Lars Voigt

Exactly, yes, that's true.

Tobi

Okay, then let's move on to competencies. What are you building on there in terms of psychological grounding?

Lars Voigt

Well, we have a strong work focus, as you probably have guessed. So, competencies, again, we think of them as behaviors that we can observe in the workplace. That's why we have competencies like leadership, like creativity, like conflict management, and being able to then get an understanding of, how am I performing right now in my work context regarding this competency? Am I good at that competency? Am I handling situations that involve this competency well? Of course that's interesting to know. Yet again, people always tend to, and especially males tend to, rank themselves as being very competent, usually. They always say, I'm really good at conflict, I'm really good at leadership. This is fine. From our perspective this is always fine, because the individual always has a right to say, I'm in such and such a way. It's the coach who has to really then see, is this person truly honest to himself? Mostly, because they don't have to prove themselves to you as the coach, they have to be able to prove themselves to themselves. So you pretty much recognize pretty quickly, are they honest to themselves, or is this something that they might not be aware of, that there is a blind spot, maybe something they should develop? And we try to give you information that would enable you to identify that. Of course, we never say that this is the whole truth. We have a second indicator, which we're going to go into later. We have a personal indicator, which is exactly what I've described to you, where the person ranks themselves in a certain competency and says, I'm the best leader ever. And then we have our potential indicator, which is derived directly from the Big Five model and from correlates that are based in empirical evidence from the Big Five model, that indicate certain characteristics that this person has to have in such and such an expression, for this person to really be able to have this competency in a certain way.

Tobi

Interesting. I also did the profile, you invited me to take the assessment. I've done that, and maybe I quickly show us on screen here how that looked from my perspective. You sent me a link, and I basically hopped into your tool and did the test.

Lars Voigt

Exactly. We have three parts in the test. The first part is the Big Five model, exactly, with our Big Five items. Then part two is motive structure, so motive items. And part three is the direct assessment of your own competencies.

Tobi

That's the part two that you mentioned. So here I picked two out of three.

Lars Voigt

Exactly.

Tobi

So similar to the first challenge, simply only three options. This is where we look at motives, right?

Lars Voigt

Exactly. That's the motive structure.

Tobi

And then lastly, part three looked somewhat like this. So I always get the question, how strong is this competency for you? And then I get a one or two word competency, or some sort of activity here. And then I score myself on a scale of one to five.

Lars Voigt

Exactly.

Tobi

Okay, great. Then let's maybe hop into the outcome. What did I get with that? What we can see here is now the three sections that we discussed, right? We have the character traits, so the Big Five model, we have the motives, and we have competencies. Let's maybe go through them bit by bit. How would you do that now, if this was an actual debriefing of me having taken the assessment, and we are now in this coaching process pretty early, so we possibly haven't even dug into the issue that I came to the coaching session with? Maybe I didn't even come, maybe I was sort of sent by my employer. How would you go about that?

Lars Voigt

So in this early stage of a debrief talk, especially looking at this overview page, it's about engagement, right? We want to activate you as the coachee, as the employee who is maybe not terribly interested in talking about him or herself at this point. So the overview page is something that is usually designed to engage the person as much as possible. We can see trends in the Big Five here, which are underlined in yellow. So for example, in your case extroversion would be something that is of interest to you, and openness would be something that is of interest to you, just because you have rated yourself as a character as very extroverted, very much open. So I would just generally go in with a very brief question like, do you have an idea what extroversion would be about? And then we'll answer that, of course. And of course, always

Tobi

Thanks for the overview. Let's maybe do that in a small demo.

Lars Voigt

Let's do that. So, you probably have some idea what extroversion is about, do you?

Tobi

Yeah, for sure. I think it's more than 10 years by now that I did my first two day personality types workshop. Introversion, extroversion is kind of the aspect that most personality models share. And I think also back then I scored high on extroversion. And we say personality is stable, but I still believe that over time, and also aided by discovering that this is actually a spectrum, I would say I actually became more introverted. I was sort of surprised that extroversion came out highest here. And at the same time, what I also see if I look at these scales, and I'd be curious for your feedback, having seen many profiles: it's also not that this is very extreme. You underline extroversion and openness as my strongest preferences here, and at the same time all of them are just at five out of seven, and there's actually a bunch that score around that level, right?

Lars Voigt

Yes, they are, of course. So the idea why we underlined, for example, openness and extroversion, is that of course there is a score behind this scale. But we don't show the score, and that has a reason on its own, which we can go into later. But in the end, of course, we know, based on your answers, based on your items, extroversion is something that is definitely highest in your character, as well as openness.

Tobi

Okay. So here we can basically see the ends of the spectrum, in which order they score for me. And we have openness, extroversion, cooperation, conscientiousness and sensitivity.

Lars Voigt

Exactly. So now we know that your openness is your main character trait, and then followed close second by your extroversion.

Tobi

And at the same time we see here that it's like a plus five on the extroversion with a three on the introversion. So it's not super extreme, but still that's the order.

Lars Voigt

Exactly, yes. Because it's always about the tendency. We never say you are the extroverted type, or you're the open type, because this is not something the Big Five model would usually entail. So we always try to open the perspective of, yes, you might be a very open character, but you have steadiness in your character which should be understood as well. Don't put yourself in that drawer, don't say I'm the open type. But of course, if we are going to develop you, we should be aware of what kind of aspects there are to your personality that make you very open, and what kind of behavior is associated with that. Because anything that we are doing should be something that relates back to our character, should be something that relates back to our strengths. And of course, everything that we are doing that is natural to us, where we behave as we are, is easy for us. And for a person to understand what kind of tendency they have in their behavior makes it possible to then look at the environment and say, okay, there are certain environments that force you maybe to be very steady in certain aspects, right? But that's not something you are comfortable with, maybe because your character is the opposite.

Tobi

So what I hear is that it's really important for you to have this spectrum. And that's maybe also where you draw the line between LINC, or the Big Five model, and for example 16 Personalities or MBTI, which sort of reduce this spectrum to one end of the spectrum. So you say, okay, I'm extroverted, versus, on the spectrum of extroversion I have the preference that I'm slightly more extroverted than introverted. It's just a bit of a mouthful compared to saying, okay, extroverted, here you go into this box.

Lars Voigt

Exactly.

Tobi

Let's go back. Where would we continue?

Lars Voigt

So I would say, let's go back to the motives, let's talk about that.

Tobi

I would say in general I am quite purpose driven when it comes to my work. And that's also quite multifaceted if you ask for specific values. I think it's about impact and about tackling the big issues. And that led me to choosing the energy sector as a place to work in, to then realize a few years in that, well, actually our energy transition is not held back by technology or by business aspects, but by people's resistance to change. At the same time I had a lot of psychology related stuff going on, and that really drove me into, okay, maybe I want to better have an impact in this mental health space. That's how I then kind of shifted my career from the energy sector to learning and development, let's say.

Lars Voigt

I see there is definitely a lot of purpose driven, a lot of value in what you're doing. You see value in what you're doing and you try to strive towards that.

Tobi

Yeah. And let's move to competencies.

Lars Voigt

Yeah, you have a very interesting profile of competencies you bring to the table. There are definitely a lot of people orientated competencies, like for example networking, intercultural competency, but there's also a lot of academic competencies that are present, like for example holistic thinking, and of course initiative. So how would you say, are these competencies as they are put in the order by the test, networking first, intercultural competency second? Would you say that that represents your abilities, or would you rerank those?

Tobi

Yeah, I don't have a particular preference. I think overall this looks quite accurate. Maybe I would score the initiative, the proactiveness, a bit higher. That's sort of my blessing and curse at the same time, because there's always lots of things I could do, and then I also drive myself to pursuing them, leading to mental overload to some degree. There's always maybe one or two projects too many on my plate. So if you ask me where I can see overuse of these competencies, then I would say that's definitely in the initiative aspect, and possibly also in the networking. I really enjoy connecting with people, talking to our customers, talking to people on this podcast, which oftentimes, I would say, educates us for developing our coaching tools. And at the same time, of course, that can also be, you can either think or you can do, right? And when it comes to networking, I would say that's broadly in the thinking, in the learning category. And that hinders me then from actually getting things done, from getting from learning about what would be possible to actually working on making that real. So I would say the networking and the initiative ones are the ones that really stick out to me here, where I'd say I score high. And that's not always great.

Lars Voigt

And you have proven right now to be very reflective, which you haven't mentioned so far, but you have done it throughout your explanations right now. This is all you reflecting, and you're doing that naturally, basically. So I would say reflectiveness should be something you should maybe rank higher.

Tobi

Thanks for that feedback.

Lars Voigt

Exactly. So, relating back to the Big Five model, of course we have the Big Five factors. We see that here in extroversion, flexibility, steadiness or introversion, conscientiousness, openness. But each factor has its own facets, which again are like six subcategories attached to each character factor. Having information on these very detailed aspects of one's personality really can drive a coaching process, really can drive a developmental process, because we can revert back to very specific behavior, and we can allow you as the coach to reference back to a very detailed picture of the person. So I now know, even though we have seen you are more of an extroverted character, you might associate that with a social openness. Do we have an idea of what your social openness looks like?

Tobi

So one thing that definitely stuck with me from reading the report is this tendency to trust. Rather being open, also when it comes to the business world, let's say, talking to people there. I don't value secrecy a lot. And I learned that maybe from one of my first entrepreneurial mentors, Jo, who, when it came to talking to customers and competitors, was very like, okay, it's not the intellectual property on that level that we are discussing here that anybody could benefit from, quote unquote, stealing from us. And that I found quite interesting, because I think it helped him a lot to establish trusting relationships, and that really inspired me to also then do it similarly to him. And that's where I can really put this social openness, in combination with maybe this conceptual innovation that we see in openness, to work.

Lars Voigt

Yes, interesting.

Tobi

So if I look at these categories of the Big Five: introversion versus extroversion, then conscientiousness versus flexibility, openness versus steadiness, cooperation versus competition, and sensitivity versus emotional stability. If I had to make a guess, I would say that there's a correlation, for example, between openness and cooperation and possibly also extroversion. Like if I score high on one of these, then I'm also more likely to score higher on the others. At the same time I believe, okay, Big Five is really the established model and they have nailed it down to these five categories, so probably they are independent of each other, right? How is that?

Lars Voigt

Yes. Based on the mathematical model, they are independent from each other. We have experienced things from our personal point of view, we might have seen certain people that have certain correlates, that they're extroverted and open, and over time we might have learned that certain character traits go hand in hand. But that of course is not something that is proven by science, by the Big Five model. They're independent. Everybody's unique, and there are no clear correlates here.

Tobi

Which I think is quite an important insight, to overcome my own biases. If I now say, look, Lars, I believe if someone is open, then they're also more likely to be cooperative versus competitive, you're telling me no, that's bias by your own perception, by maybe how my own preferences are, but that's not the case statistically.

Lars Voigt

Exactly. And again, we are able to then reflect upon that, like what kind of experiences might be informing this opinion that you are now bringing to the table. Again, that says something about you, more than it says about the Big Five model.

Tobi

Yeah, and that's actually an interesting learning point here.

Lars Voigt

Yeah. As we're looking at the last Big Five dimension here, sensitivity and emotional stability, this is something that makes us a little unique compared to other Big Five inventories, in that we completely said, we don't want neuroticism as a term within our Big Five model. Of course the concept that we have here, the sensitivity concept, still reverts back to neuroticism, as it is proven to be part of the Big Five model, existing within people. Of course neuroticism is a valid character trait, yet there is a lot of stigmatization that went into the term neuroticism, being neurotic. We try to give you, as the coach, a tool that is as free of such associations as possible. I have observed that if I, for example, revert back to the term neuroticism, people always wall up. They say, okay. But as soon as I talk about sensitivity, they're very much interested in talking about their sensitive side, because this is something they don't associate with any negative stigma or anything bad. And this is something that makes us a very good tool to really approach the personality of a person free of any previous expectations, free of any stigmas that might exist in a person's head, and to allow a person to then, of course, open up to the idea that they might be neurotic in certain aspects, or, as we call it, that they're sensitive. They might have a higher tension level, they might be socially sensitive, and for example impulsive. Nothing bad about it. There's no good or bad personality. And that's what we try to convey to your coachee, to your employees: that they are good, no matter what kind of personality traits they have. They're good how they are, who they are, and it's just important to get that picture, to understand who they really are, and not a mirror image that they try to paint by themselves.

Tobi

So basically doing a bit of a tiny euphemism, maybe, by changing neuroticism to sensitivity, to aid in that developmental process and get acceptance, and the ability to reflect and talk about this, on the coachee side. And it's funny that you say that, because I had quite a few people here on the podcast who've been using MBTI, and for me also MBTI was the first personality types model that I came in touch with. And what I also really liked, and what I heard people say they like about MBTI versus the Big Five, is exactly this neutral scale. In MBTI, for example, there is also extroversion, introversion obviously, then also a focus on intuition versus sensing. And these terms allow you to feel at home on either side. While the Big Five model, and especially this neuroticism category, almost sounds a bit like a diagnosis of mental illness, or at least of neuroticism. And that's why you changed it. That makes a lot of sense.

Lars Voigt

So, of course the main focus is to engage with your client, with your coachee, with your employee. And there are of course people that are very easy to activate, like you are, for example. If I drop a term like, how does your social, strategic communication express itself, you might open up to that really quickly and give me the option as a coach to then understand what you are about. Of course there are also people that are more closed up. They are less willing to immediately share their inner thoughts and being. And in order to give them the ability to maybe prepare for a talk, you might say, let's have a look at the reflection questions below. Maybe you prep these questions as well and bring them to our debrief. Or of course you can use them very flexibly in the talk itself and be like, let's look at the reflection questions. Making a person as comfortable as possible, being able to then tell you about who they actually are.

Tobi

Awesome. That makes a lot of sense.

Lars Voigt

Just to wrap up this review, we have the motive structure.

Tobi

What would be common themes to look into here?

Lars Voigt

Yeah, of course. Values is something, or purpose drivenness is something, that is of importance to you. Of course a person can be driven by more than one motive, and each motive can be present in more than one situation. So in order to unpack now, where do we want to go? Are you able to use these motives currently, in your current situation, in what you are doing from day to day? Again, we reference back to your work life. Are you able to express your purpose? Are you actually able to strive towards that purpose? Are you able to use these motives currently, or is this something you may not be able to?

Tobi

I would say very much yes. I mean, being a founder is always about doing many things at the same time, being in a different role one day than the other, learning a lot all the time. So all of that really pays into plenty of these, like the performance, the growth, the creativity. I can really see that in my daily life. I can choose which kind of work I believe is purposeful to do, so there I also can bring in the values, and I think that's probably then a good choice of profession. And I would say I also had this in my employee jobs, where I was working in business development, partnership development, which was also a lot about creatively coming up with ideas: what new products could the company develop into, with whom could they work?

Lars Voigt

Absolutely. That's what we want, right? We want to understand what drives us currently, and how this affects us as a person in the future, and can we then use this in order to get that challenge done, to be successful in dealing with, for example, becoming a dad.

Tobi

Cool. So these are all themes that we could explore here. And sorry for not giving you much space to actually go into a coach role; by coaching myself with this prompt, it makes it a really pleasant process. Lastly, just to wrap up, here we see the competencies that we explored earlier, the overview, and then I just picked out two of them here. And thirdly, I have reflection questions again. What would we do in this section?

Lars Voigt

Yeah, we of course try to now paint the picture of, what is your behavior, what is central to your person? You, for example, mentioned earlier that initiative is something that we should discuss a little bit, because you're taking a lot of initiative all the time, and you have already mentioned that that could be something you could improve upon. You are starting a lot of projects, then you have to deal with that in some way. This section allows us to do exactly that, that we can of course go back to, what strengths are associated with your initiative?

Tobi

There would certainly be quite a few things that we could explore here, and with the reflection questions that also seems relatively straightforward, even if I'm not super experienced as a coach. Love it. Let's close the chapter of looking at my report at this point and do an exercise that I thought would be fun. Because as mentioned, I have many coaches here, and oftentimes I ask them to bring their favorite tool and then we look into that. Due to that, I recently was able to do a DISC personality assessment. And what we can see here is the result. So DISC also has this motivator section that in some ways is similar to your motives, I guess. And I thought it would be interesting to actually compare the tools a bit and see you react and comment here. So what do you see here in the DISC assessment? How do you believe you are doing things differently at LINC, and where can we draw parallels and differences?

Lars Voigt

First of all, it looks pretty, it's a beautiful diagnostic image here. We have a lot of data that is conveyed through a very beautiful range of colors. There are a lot of numbers here that make things, to a certain degree, academic, numerable. But of course it's lacking, at least in what I can see here right now, it's lacking depth. Because that's the difference at the core of what we do differently: we try to give you as much depth as possible, to really give the person the ability to go into detail. As a coach, that you are able to really understand every aspect of the situation, of the challenges your coachees are bringing to the table, because that's why they're sitting in front of you. At least from what I'm seeing here, reducing this to a certain expression, a certain color that is more dominant than another, doesn't really help you as the coach, you as the HR professional, as much as what we are trying to give you. To give you the complexity, the opening into talking to your coachees in detail, trying to really get to know them. And I think that's definitely something that we are doing differently from what DISC is, at least in what I can see here, what I can read here.

Tobi

I think I would disagree to some extent, because of course this is also just one overview that I took from a very long report that I received. If we actually zoom out here and look at the reports of DISC and LINC, which are both here on the board, we can see that the DISC report is also huge, in fact many more pages than the LINC report. I'm not sure if that's necessarily a positive, but I think we cannot say that, okay, it just reduces it to four colors and that's why it's not valid. I think what you refer to is that in popular science in the workplace people often use the simplicity of the DISC report to then simplify it even further and say, okay, there's this yellow guy again, who tends to talk a lot. But we could also do the same thing with LINC, right? We could also say, ah, this guy who scores high on extroversion, or even simpler, he's the extrovert who tends to talk a lot. And I think that risk is there for any assessment, I guess.

Lars Voigt

Of course it is. It's something that is just a basic need for us as people. We always try to reduce cognitive complexity. We always make heuristics. We always try to put things into categories. This is just a natural tendency. And in order to battle that tendency for our coaches that are certified with LINC, we have, as I just mentioned, a certification process which really goes into detail about, first of all, how we derive the data that we present to you, and then also gives you the ability to present it as objectively as possible, with as much depth as possible, and to really get into the aspect of getting to know the person, with as little putting a person into a category as possible. And to really listen and understand: who is this person actually, what is this person referring to, what can we do now to really help this person in his or her developmental journey?

Tobi

So what I hear is, as coaches it helps to focus on the spectrum and really show the client, okay, you have a choice in a way, you have a developmental choice: to follow your preference, to recharge your batteries, but maybe also at some point not to follow your preference, to stay on the open side if you have this tendency to be more careful, or vice versa. And the same, I'd say, I could also do with the DISC model, let's say tune down the yellow scale here a bit. And I think what we can see here is that in the end both tools can be weaponized, which I think is what another guest of mine, Marie, said: any tool can be weaponized if you simplify it too much, if you use it to box people. And maybe, due to its simplicity, the risk is simply higher for this to happen with DISC.

Lars Voigt

Yes, yes. In the end, of course, there's always a big benefit to any instrument you use. Every tool has its unique purpose, has its application. And the big challenge for you as a coach, for you as an HR professional, is to really understand what this tool brings to the table. What kind of purpose is behind this tool? When is a good situation that I should use tool X, and tool Y, and when should I use tool Y over tool X? And having a basic understanding, not just of what is presented here to me, but also of how to convey the information, is what will make you really able to benefit from something like the LINC Personality Profiler. So it's not just the data itself, it's not just the way it's conveyed, it's also the context of learning, understanding, being able to really bring the tool into practice, get feedback, and engage of course also with the tool developers themselves, to really get the point of what this tool was developed for. And that's exactly what we are offering. We at LINC are a small company still, and my day-to-day task is really to talk to our coaches, to engage with them, to get their feedback, to teach them how to apply the information with your coachees, also on a case to case basis, to really benefit your coachee as best as possible, and to really drive the coaching process with as much depth as possible as well.

Tobi

So either way, it makes sense to get trained as a coach on the tool that you're using. That's what I hear. So you can also convey it with that nuance that's required.

Lars Voigt

Yes, yes.

Tobi

Well, I think many of my guests have said, don't overanalyze your choice of tool. Just do your research, pick one, and then get properly trained on it.

Lars Voigt

Yeah, the obvious next step is to get more information, really get in contact with us. Usually you can reach out to me directly via the webpage. And then of course there would be the certification that is next on your agenda. This is done via Zoom, so you don't have to go anywhere, it's very flexible. Certification is once a month, usually on a Thursday and Friday, always from 10 to five. And you are then of course able to use all our tests, which is not just the LINC Personality Profiler, but there are lots of derivatives that we have in our portfolio as well, which allow you to really go in depth with the information. We are very open and say very clearly that we have one upfront cost, which is just the certification, for 890 euros. And once you've done that, you have access to all our tools forever and ever. And we also have to say that each LINC Personality Profiler is not a tool that will set you back a lot of money. One LINC Personality Profiler is usually priced at just under 60 euros for you as a coach, to make it really as approachable and as usable as possible.

Tobi

Okay, so a two day certification program happening online, that's 890 euros one off. And then each test that I use with a client is just under 60 euros. Great. Thank you so much, Lars, and thanks for being here.

Lars Voigt

Thank you for having me, Tobi.

Tobi

This is it regarding my LINC profile for today. I definitely appreciate the scientific rigor, and I really like the adjustments that the LINC team has made to the language of the original Big Five model. My conclusion with regards to our small comparison of DISC versus LINC is that yes, you cannot reduce personality to four colors, but, unlike the LINC team sometimes claims, DISC actually doesn't