Exploring your Plum Profile

Your Plum Profile is generated using the results of the Plum Discovery Survey and provides insights that are meant to provoke self-reflection, discussion, and developmental action. It is up to you to decide what aspects of your Profile you would like to focus on and explore.

• To inform your development and career planning.
• To understand the types of activities that drive or drain you, including those in your current role.
• To identify where to develop compensatory strategies for your Talents, or additional support.
• To help craft your current job and goals in a way that leverages your driving Talents.

Within each Talent are several behaviors. Beside each behavior, you will see an indicator of how likely you are to be driven or drained by that behavior. As the scale moves to the right, the greater the likelihood that the behavior will come naturally to you. It is not possible to be driven/energized by everything.

Drivers and Drainers

• Talents should not be considered as good or bad as different roles require different Talents. Instead, Talents should be seen as something that either Drives you or Drains you.
• Your top Talents are your Drivers. They give you energy, you enjoy doing them, and/or you seem to have a natural ability for them.
• Your bottom Talents are your Drainers. They take more energy to exhibit, and you may have to work harder at them as they do not seem to come naturally. This does not imply that you cannot exhibit or are “bad” at that talent. 
• Everyone has driving Talents, and everyone has draining Talents. Even in the Talents that drive you, there are likely some competencies and behaviors within that Talent that are more natural than others.
• On the days you may be stressed, tired, or rushed, driving Talents will be easy to exhibit while draining Talents will be more challenging. A role where you need Talents you are not naturally strong at will likely leave you feeling tired or run down and may eventually lead to burnout.

Reflection

Looking at your Profile:

• What confirms what you already knew?
• What surprises you?
• Have you taken a personality assessment before? How is your Plum Profile similar or different?
• Looking at your Top Talents, are there any behaviors you are particularly strong at? Are there any behaviors that drain you more even though, as a whole, this is a top Talent for you?
• Looking at your lower-ranked Talents, which behaviors are your biggest drainers? Are there any that you are strong at that you can leverage?
• Looking across Talents, do you see similar types of behaviors you are driven or drained by? What patterns do you see and how may they display themselves differently within each Talent?

Plum and Development Planning

Understanding that your current or future role may rely on more draining Talents for you, it is important to find ways to develop coping strategies and compensatory skills to fill the gap.

Plum has created various resources to help you leverage insights from your Plum Profile to support your ongoing development:

• Development Planning with Plum provides more detailed guidance on how to leverage Plum data for your development.
• The Plum Plum Development Worksheet can be used to set your development goals and actions.
• Plum Learning and Development Catalogue directs you to helpful learning resources such as LinkedIn Learning courses, books, or videos for each Talent. You can also access Talent-specific development resources in the Suggestions tab for each Talent.

Plum and Building Relationships

Once you have had the opportunity to explore your own Plum Profile, you may wish to use this information as a way to build or deepen your relationships with others. Use the guide “Exploring your Plum Profile with Others” to show you how this can be successfully done. It includes a step-by-step guide, example questions to ask, and helpful tips.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. I found the Plum assessment difficult / The Plum assessment made me feel uncomfortable / I felt conflicted when taking the Plum Discovery Survey.

This is a normal reaction to taking the Discovery Survey. This happens because the survey is forced choice (e.g., forces you to choose between desirable options). Research has shown that if we give people the ability to say everything good is “most like them” and everything bad is “least like them”, we would not get a very accurate picture of a person. Plum wants to get an idea of your priorities. If given limited time in a day, everyone prioritizes some things over others.

2. I do not agree with my top Talent/I think my Talents are in the wrong order. What should I do?

If you feel this way, don’t worry, it is a natural response to feedback. If you disagree with the Talent order it can be helpful to:

• Dig deeper into the specific competencies and behaviors within a Talent. Sometimes people disagree with where a Talent is ranked, but when they see a deeper explanation of what the Talent entails, they can understand why it was given a certain ranking.
• Ask yourself whether you naturally gravitate towards the Talent or behavior, or if you have to consciously work at it. As discussed before, you may not naturally exhibit that Talent, but have developed strategies to overcome it or put deliberate effort into making sure you demonstrate that Talent. 
• It can also be helpful to have a discussion about this with others that you trust, such as friends, family, colleagues, mentors, managers, and/or coaches. The Plum Profile is only one input from a number of different possible avenues for feedback, and it should be taken into consideration among all other feedback sources.

3. I completed a personality assessment before, and the results were different. How is that possible?

It is possible that other assessments have given you different results as they may be grounded in different models of personality or can also be assessing completely different things, such as states instead of traits. The Plum Discovery Survey is a measure of your personality traits and is grounded in the most well-researched model of personality, the Big 5 Factor Model.

4. What does the scale next to the behavior mean in the Plum Profile?

Beside each behavior, you will see an indicator that shows how likely you are to be driven or drained by that behavior. As the battery indicator moves to the right side (green zone), the greater the likelihood that the behavior will come naturally to you. The farther the batter indicator is to the left (blue zone), the greater the likelihood that you will need to work harder at that behavior. 

5. If the scale indicator is in the blue area for a behavior, does that mean I am bad at that behavior?

Not at all. The scales are relative only to your own natural inclinations towards certain behaviors. It is not possible to be perfect at everything, which is why you will see some behaviors in the green area and some behaviors in the blue area. The scale in the blue area means that you may have to work harder or be more deliberate with that particular behavior in order to excel, yet it is still possible.

6. If I work on improving my Talents, will my Plum Profile results change?

The Discovery Survey (the Plum assessment) is designed to capture your natural, ingrained tendencies. Those tendencies tend to be stable over time. Even if you try to develop a particular Talent, that Talent may still be difficult for you on days when you are stressed or tired (i.e. when you revert to your natural tendencies).