Drive

Where it sits

Drive is one of five facets, and it covers across both. The five are arranged along two lines: reading versus handling, and yourself versus other people. The territory as a whole is mapped at what emotional intelligence is.

It is measured by 8 items in the questionnaire, five keyed positively and three reversed. The full method is here.

What a high score looks like

You can put a feeling to work, and you notice when one is quietly making a decision for you.

What a low score looks like

Motivation tends to arrive and leave on its own schedule, and a strong mood can carry a decision with it.

Low here is not a character verdict. It describes what tends to happen, and it is the part of the profile most worth working on, which is why the practical recommendations start from the two lowest facets rather than the highest.

The part nobody tells you

Running on feeling works until the feeling goes. The test is what you do in the flat weeks.

Every facet has a cost at the top end as well as the bottom. A report that only describes strengths as good is describing a person who does not exist.

What this facet cannot tell you

It is a self-report figure, so it measures how you see yourself on drive, which is useful and is not the same as how you come across. It carries a margin of about 9 points either way, so a small difference between two facets is not a difference at all. And it is not clinical: it cannot identify a condition and must not be used to decide anyone’s job, place or care.

The other four

• Self-Insight: noticing, naming and tracing your own emotions.
• Composure: staying functional under emotional load, and how quickly you recover.
• Attunement: reading other people accurately from words, tone and behaviour.
• Repair: cooling a conflict down and putting a relationship back together after it.