Background
Established in 1976, Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC) is a world-class Brazilian business school that develops strategic-thinking skills of executives, entrepreneurs and public-sector managers. FDC, a nonprofit institution, was created out of the Extension Center at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (Brazil).
Approximately 35,000 executives from midsize and large companies attend FDC programs every year – on business-school campuses in the cities of Nova Lima and Belo Horizonte (MG), São Paulo (SP) and Rio de Janeiro (RJ).
FDC has strategic alliances with foreign teaching institutions such as INSEAD and Skema Business School in France and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in the United States. In addition, FDC has cooperative partnerships with schools in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, China, India, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Russia and Spain.
As well as offering a renowned MBA programme, FDC has developed its own tailored business-centric degree course. One module of this, originally known as the Individual Development Plan, has evolved into the Career Development module. As part of this course, FDC was keen to use a personality profiling tool to help students develop their self-awareness and understanding of team dynamics. While MBTI had been used in other areas, they wanted to use something different and more personalised: Facet5 was the perfect choice.
The main objective was to generate a transformation in the participants, demonstrating how insight and self-awareness can not only influence a person’s actions and interactions, but also their career paths in the long term.
Tools & Approach
The course was established 11 years ago, and as long as they decided to use Facet 5, it was a good opportunity to create a Brazilian norm, which was possible because they were going to use it ongoing across a significant number of people. FDC was keen on the idea of Facet5 because of its accessibility, how easy it is to understand, and its accuracy and depth of results. FDC therefore worked with Facet5 Brazil to tailor the content to be exactly right for the culture it was being used in, and they provided a translated copy for them to use, incorporating Brazilian norms rather than European.
As students would be initiated onto the course, they would be given an introduction to Facet5, and instructions for completing the questionnaire. Once submitted, students typically wait around a month for feedback while they begin the course.
When the initial feedback is given it is done collectively, as a team, so students can see how the overall dynamics work and how different each person is to one another. They are given tips on how to read the report, and crucially, on how to apply it to their learning and development plans. They then have the option of having a one-to-one feedback session to go through their individual profiles in more depth, which some choose to do, while others are happy with the group results. Generally, those students who agreed with their profiles did not see the need to follow up in greater detail.
Results
Facet5 has been used as an integral part of FDC’s business course for over 11 years, testament in itself to its success and popularity. It is seen as easy to understand, because of the straightforward wording and visual emphasis.
The longevity of the partnership and the feedback of students and teachers shows the success of the programme, and Facet5’s ability to increase self-awareness. This in turn is profoundly important for students’ ongoing training, development, and life choices.
Feedback suggests that while a deeper understanding of an individual’s areas of strength is incredibly important, awareness of potential areas of challenge is equally as useful. In identifying areas where individuals are less comfortable and less naturally inclined, they are better able to shape their development and longer term career plans to suit their innate tendencies and strengths, as well as address any further development required to succeed in other areas.
Continue the conversation
If you would like to learn more around how Facet5 can be used to support career planning, let’s arrange a time to talk! Drop us a note and we’ll come back to you.