This is one of my most-visited pages on the mmusgrove.com website, and I think when people visit it, they are searching for more than what originally appeared here, which is my Predictive Index and DISC assessment results. They’re still here, down below, but I think what people are looking for is more of an insight into my life, rather than my mind. Employers may want both, but websurfers and stalkers usually are more interested in the former. So to satiate that desire, I’ll add a little bit about that. As I often tell people, I choose to live my life as an open book, since I have nothing to hide. I’m human, just like anyone else, and I’ve learned that I seem to have a lot less to be embarrassed about and, more importantly, more to be proud of at my age than a lot of people.
I’m not going to use this as a space to write my biography. If I ever have the urge to do such a rather egotistical and Herculean endeavor, I’ll probably use a different tool like GitBook, which is a great, underutilized (free) webapp.
So here’s me, in a nutshell:
I was born in Atlanta Ga, when it was a much different place than today, to parents and a relatively small family from Albany, Ga. We moved a couple of times before settling in South Carolina, which I consider my home-state. It’s where nearly all my closest friends still live and I have my best memories. I learned to surf, fish, pilot a boat, shrimp, eat lots of oysters and crab and enjoy the outdoors there. Today it seems like a completely different life.
I went to a very small private school that had 250 students from k4 through 12th grade and eventually went off to boarding school in Virginia to Woodberry Forest School. I made some of my best friends there and learned a lot about honor, respect for others, sportsmanship, discipline(despite not being a military or reformatory school, which most people wrongly assume all boarding schools are, for some odd reason) and received an above-average education.
My college years weren’t unlike many others. I began at a small private liberal arts school in Florida, Rollins College, and ended up graduating from a large state school in my home state, The University of South Carolina with a degree in English. I was in Kappa Alpha Order and lived in Charleston, SC afterward for about 10 years.
I moved to Atlanta, Ga, my birthplace, and worked there for about 4 years before moving back to SC. Atlanta, like most cities, has its nice aspects, but overall was too populated, spread-out, crime-ridden, expensive and far from the coast for my tastes to make it a permanent home. I moved back to SC for about two years, and eventually Asheville, NC briefly, before heading to Montgomery, Alabama, where I have some close family. I ended up marrying a girl from there and also earning my MBA from the University of Alabama before heading up to Lousiville, KY, where I currently live.
Louisville isn’t the South, despite some people claiming, or wanting, it to be. It’s as far North as you get, sitting on the Mason-Dixon line, and as far West as you can go without being in Central time. It’s kind of a no-mans land. It’s where I had a beautiful daughter I’m raising as well.
My interests have been very diverse over time, as I”ve moved around and have the type of personality that is curious about everything. If I see someone doing something, I immediately want to learn how to do it. That’s led me to have a pretty good grasp on how to do many, many things in life. But some of the things I’ve gravitated towards and have become good at doing, or a major part of my life, are playing guitar, cooking, woodworking/carpentry/engineering, animal welfare, design, marketing, and being as good of as a parent and caretaker of my daughter as possible. I also have a long-standing interest in computer programming and writing. I’ve published a book on using Bootstrap for web development, in fact. I know a lot about web design and psychology as well, which has been helpful in my professional life as a marketer. I know a lot about WordPress, and have been using it tons since 2010. I’m careful not to get sucked up into the rather cultish aspect of it, however, which I’ve discussed on this very site.
My professional goals involve using marketing, design, both my creative and analytical abilities and leadership. Over the years I’ve led teams, developed others to be leaders, and find all of it very fulfilling. I’m excited about new technology and am eager to embrace cutting edge tools and systems to push the human experience into the future.
As part of an interview process, I recently took a predictive index behavioral assessment evaluation. I appreciated the people looking at me taking the time to evaluate me in more depth than just my resume and a phone call. Most people are familiar with the Myers-Briggs test, which precipitated from Carl Jung’s work and slots you into four categories, eg: ENTJ. I love these types of assessments and have always been fascinated by human psychology. I considered majoring in psychology for a while in college and took enough classes in it to nearly do it. And I read a lot of books that dissect the mind and tinker around to see what make us tick and causes us to behave the way we do and make the decisions we do. As a marketer, I’m passionate about consumer behavior, aka human behavior, which bumps up against sociology as well. It’s fascinating to study people as individuals and how we act collectively in certain situations, in certain cultures. It usually leaves more unanswered questions than answered ones, but it’s fun and fulfilling to know how we’re wired and engineered. I also find it helps interact with others more easily, which is also why I suppose I was asked to take the test. They wanted to know who they were dealing with.
Most of these types of tests ask you the same questions over and over in different ways. And you sort of know what they’re getting at. In other words, you can easily manipulate them. But that’s not advised. Unless you truly just don’t care about your results and the purpose for which you’re taking it. Answering them honestly and thoughtfully will yield some interesting insight as to who you are and how you work, and people being people, everyone loves to know about themselves.
This Predictive Index test is different, however. I did a bit of research on the company and history of the test and how it’s built, because it’s only a 2-page test, with a list of adjectives. All you have to do is indicate how you think others view you and how you view yourself, or how accurate the words are to that end. Many of the words are synonyms, and being an English major, I also found this test to be even more interesting for the choice of adjectives used and their subtleties. The test has been in use since 1955, which is a LONG time ago, for the psychological field, so one would expect accurate results, right? Here’s how they developed the form:
Adjectives for our form were field tested with results from more than 136,000 people and went through content review, psychometric review, and fairness review. The assessment was then given to a global norm group of more than 10,000 people. Norm tables and scoring models were updated and verified before finalizing the form and sending it through a multilevel translation process and regional review.
I found my results to be surprisingly accurate, inasmuch as I know myself and consider how others describe me.
I later took a DISC assessment, which is a 24 question “test” in which you arrange a series of adjectives in order of how you feel they define you, from most to least. The adjective sets that you must arrange sometimes have nothing to do with one another, which makes you choose a hierarchy of traits. As with the Predictive Index, you can tell the words were carefully chosen, and what the exercise is aiming at. But I take them seriously, since trying to game the thing is pretty poor form and will end up only hurting me and the company.
Not surprisingly, it reflects the results the Predictive Index found. I’m results-oriented, care a lot about quality and details, have high standards, can communicate well, am careful and deliberate, and don’t have much patience, which I’ve always struggled with. The funny thing is, I consider myself patient. Our perception of ourselves and how others view us being different isn’t news to me, though. That’s the case with nearly everyone, I’d imagine. It’s like hearing your voice for the first time compared to what you think you sound like.
