What's My Decision-Making Style?
Decision-making style test: 20 questions on whether you decide rationally, intuitively, dependently, avoidantly, or spontaneously (Scott and Bruce).
Work and Productivity tests
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What's My Leadership Style?
Free leadership test: 16 questions to find your style, among inspiring, organizing, adaptive, or hands-off (Bass and Hersey-Blanchard).
What Motivates Me at Work?
Free work motivation test: 15 questions on what drives you to put in effort, based on Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory.
What's My Team Role?
Free 16-question test to discover your natural role on a team: driving results, holding the group together, guarding quality, or connecting people.
Imposter Syndrome Test
Short 15-question test on the imposter phenomenon, described by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978: low, moderate, or high.
Am I a Procrastinator?
Free procrastination test: 16 questions to discover your style of putting off tasks, based on the research of Ferrari and Steel.
Burnout Test
Short 15-question test on burnout syndrome, based on Christina Maslach's model: low, moderate, or high risk.
Psychology applied to work isn't just about measuring performance: it also explains why some people put off tasks and others don't, what keeps people showing up motivated week after week, how they decide under pressure, and what role they naturally settle into within a group. These questions have more research behind them than they seem to, even though that research rarely makes it out of academic journals.
This category brings together five distinct angles on personality at work, each grounded in a named academic model, not categories invented for the occasion.
Five angles, five named models
- Procrastination: Piers Steel (2007) pulled together all the available research in a landmark meta-analysis and concluded that it's better explained as a problem of emotion regulation (avoiding the discomfort a task brings up) than as a simple lack of discipline.
- Motivation: Edward Deci and Richard Ryan's self-determination theory (2000) identifies three basic psychological needs that sustain lasting motivation: autonomy (feeling like you're the one deciding), competence (feeling like you're progressing), and relatedness (feeling connected to others).
- Decision-making style: Susanne Scott and Reginald Bruce (1995) identified five general decision-making styles: rational, intuitive, dependent (seeks other people's advice), avoidant (puts off the decision itself), and spontaneous (decides on the fly).
- Leadership: Bernard Bass (1985) formalized the distinction between transactional leadership (a clear exchange of expectations and rewards) and transformational leadership (inspiring a shared purpose beyond the immediate exchange).
- Team role: Robert Bales (1950) observed small groups at work and classified each contribution as oriented toward the task or toward sustaining the group's socioemotional climate, identifying two kinds of informal leadership that usually get split between different people: the task specialist and the social specialist.
No one style outranks another
No result is better or worse than another: each style has a context where it performs best and another where it struggles more. Our tests are a popular-science, informational take inspired by this research: they don't replace a professional psychological or organizational assessment.
Sources
- Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: a meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The 'what' and 'why' of goal pursuits: human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry.
- Scott, S. G., & Bruce, R. A. (1995). Decision-making style: the development and assessment of a new measure. Educational and Psychological Measurement.
- Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. Free Press.
- Bales, R. F. (1950). Interaction Process Analysis: A Method for the Study of Small Groups.
Frequently asked questions
Do these tests tell me if I'm good at my job?
No. They measure style, not performance or talent: how you tend to decide, stay motivated, or relate to your team, not whether you do it well or poorly.
Is procrastination just a lack of discipline?
Not according to the research: it's more closely linked to emotion regulation (avoiding the discomfort a task brings up) than to willpower itself.
Can I have a different style depending on context?
Yes. It's common to act one way at work and another at home; these tests reflect your general tendency, not a fixed label for every situation.
Is there an 'ideal' leadership or decision-making style?
Not universally: each style has advantages depending on the team, the task, and the moment. The research talks about fit with context, not one style being superior to the rest.
Do these tests replace a professional development assessment?
No. They're an orientation-only, informational approximation, not a certified psychometric or organizational assessment.
Can an employer use this test to screen me during hiring?
It shouldn't: this is an informational test meant for personal self-knowledge, not a psychometrically validated instrument for hiring decisions or performance evaluation.
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