What sets the Meaningful Work Inventory apart from other personal development assessments? The answer lies in that often-elusive first word: meaning.
What sets the Meaningful Work Inventory apart from other personal assessments? The answer lies in that often-elusive first word. Naturally, what makes work meaningful is different for everyone. But with its unique framework, the Inventory (or MWI) offers something a personality test doesn’t: a way to clarify what’s more—or less—meaningful to you in your work.
In contrast to many personal assessment tools, the MWI measures an aspect of your lived experience, rather than an aspect of your identity. Because experience is never static, the Meaningful Work Inventory does not employ the same approach as personality or career tests, which assume your identity will remain unchanged over the years.
“The MWI asks exploratory questions," explains Bill Felty, a MeaningSphere Guide who is also certified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Strong Interest Inventory. “It creates a framework for contemplation about MEANING (which neither the MBTI nor the Strong tackle). It's an inventory that opens the Explorer up to a multitude of possibilities, rather than trying to put them into a box or provide specific conclusions or advice.”
Instead of operating from a model that is based on archetypes or forced binaries, the Inventory works by locating your experience along the intersecting spectrums of a framework called the Map of Meaning (more on this below). For this reason, you’ll likely find your MWI results to be, in Felty’s words, “MUCH more open ended, much more exploratory, and much more user-dependent" than a typical assessment. The course you take based on your results is up to you, he stresses.
“It doesn't really provide them answers or ‘type’ them, but rather the inventory results become a framework for contemplation and discussion,” he continues. “The report allows them to explore their results more (without dictating specific outcomes or actions) so they can use the results as a jumping-off point for reflection.”
Given these differences, the Inventory is not intended to undermine popular assessments like the Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, or CliftonStrengths tests. In fact, with its unique focus on meaning, the Inventory may prove complementary to other frameworks or tools you already employ in your self-knowledge or career journey. Here’s an in-depth look at the differences between traditional assessments and the Inventory.
How do most personality and career tests work?
The goal of most career aptitude tests is to match test takers with a suitable job based on things like their interests, strengths, and temperament. Personality tests, while having implications in the workplace, are taken for a wide variety of reasons beyond job placement. They can be used for general self-knowledge, for learning about others’ personalities in order to better appreciate or engage with them, or even for research purposes by psychometricians and academic researchers.
By the middle of the 20th century, it became clear that many of these assessments had underlying factors in common. These were captured in frameworks such as the Big Five (also called Five Factor) which comprises five major personality traits, and the Holland Codes, also known by the acronym RIASEC, which entails six “work personalities." These two scientifically accepted frameworks are often used as a rubric by which to compare other personality and career tests, with some assessments built directly on these existing frameworks. The Strong Interest Inventory is an example of a career aptitude test which relies in part on the Holland Codes, for example.
Some assessments exist outside of these two main frameworks. The Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI), for example, is built on nine core personality types developed over time by a series of 20th century philosophers and psychiatrists. The Myers-Briggs is built on a system of binary pairs derived from Carl Jung’s philosophy. Out of these four pairs, which include “introversion vs. extroversion" and “judging vs. perceiving," there are 16 possible combinations or “types."
When taking most career or personality assessments, the test taker can expect to be categorized based on their responses to a series of questions or prompts. Their results might be expressed as an archetype (such as “The Peacemaker” or “The Optimist”), as a four-letter code as in the case of the Myers-Briggs, or even as a list of career options in which the assessment taker might thrive based on their temperament and interests. A key assumption of these assessments is that a person’s core personality remains stable over time (though research shows that our personality is in fact more malleable than previously thought.)
How is the MWI different?
The Meaningful Work Inventory doesn’t evaluate your personality, strengths, or aptitudes. Instead, it helps you demystify an aspect of human experience that is constantly changing and difficult to pin down. Your experience of “meaning”—that feeling that lights you up, connects you to others, and fills you with purpose—will likely remain in flux throughout your working life. As such, there are no types or labels to assign to you based on your responses to the 31 statements, which include items like “I don’t like who I’m becoming at work” and “My stress level keeps me from enjoying the good things in life.” Your answers will be used to create a holistic picture of your current work situation through that powerful framework we mentioned earlier: The Map of Meaning.
Developed through rigorous research by Dr. Marjolein Lips-Wiersma, a leading meaningful work scholar, the Map’s design reflects an understanding of meaning not as a static goal, but as an ongoing balance between opposite fundamental needs, such as “Being and Doing” and “Self and Others.” During our workdays, for example, we need to rest, pause, think, and reflect (Being) but also to be active and get our work done (Doing). It's also important to look out for ourselves, learn, and achieve (Self) as well as to acknowledge how we love to work with our colleagues and need them to make a difference (Others).
On the Map, these two central tensions are visualized as intersecting in an X-axis, creating four quadrants. Known as “pathways,” they represent four key areas in which we experience meaning: Unity with Others, Service to Others, Expressing Full Potential, and Integrity with Self. Finally, by placing “Inspiration” at the center of this X-axis and inscribing the entire image within an outer circle representing “Reality of Self and Circumstances,” the Map frames our quest for meaning within the context of an additional, overriding tension: between our goals and dreams, and the realities we must work within.
The results that Inventory takers (we call them Explorers!) receive are expressed as a spider graph on the Map, allowing them to quickly spot the areas of their working lives where they experience a high degree of meaning as well as the areas that are low. Seeing your results visually organized like this helps you to translate what you've been feeling inside into something more tangible, as Lips-Wiersma herself shares in a recent interview.
“You know your life is meaningful, but you often experience that as an emotion,” she says. "What the Map does is it helps you to see it outside of yourself. I think it's only when you see it outside of yourself that you can make conscious decisions about it.”
Bill Felty, the MeaningSphere Guide, also noted this effect of the Inventory report: “It also looks at the various places we derive meaning from,” he says. “If ‘meaning’ is nebulous to the Explorer or a word that has a specific, simplistic understanding, the assessment allows them to further understand the complexities of the concept of meaning and just how they can apply it in their own, specific life.”
The same people who might balk at the question, “What makes your work meaningful to you?” may find clear, actionable answers this way.
The results also provide a detailed breakdown of your responses in each area and reveal how your self-reported levels of meaning compare with those of others around the world. The goal of the Inventory is to allow the Explorer to honestly appraise the meaningfulness of their work.
Once this is made clear, the Explorer may be empowered to make the necessary adjustments to establish and maintain better balance between the interdependent drivers and tensions that make up a meaningful worklife. (And for Explorers who feel they would benefit from discussing their results, take heart! MeaningSphere Guides like Felty can work with you to turn these insights into an action plan.)
The complement to your meaningful work life
The Meaningful Work Inventory is not intended to replace traditional assessments, which can be exceedingly valuable: Career aptitude tests can point you toward fantastic opportunities you would have never considered, while personality tests can provide a helpful way to understand your preferences, behaviors, and disposition in relation to others. Rather, with its singular focus on meaning, the MWI is well-positioned to work in harmony with a variety of frameworks and systems you already find helpful in your ongoing pursuit of self-knowledge, balance, and fulfillment in your working life.
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