Skillset Blog

At last week’s Periodical Publishers Association Magazines 2008 conference, the revered/reviled (delete as appropriate) former Blair spin-doctor, Derek Draper, took part in a session named “The Personality of the Perfect Editor: What Can Psychology Tell Us?”

He took the delegates through a psychometric profiling test (supplied courtesy of Psychologies Magazine) and much fun was had by all, as we sent our answers through to a real-time SMS server, which showed the live results during the session (it’s not often you are instructed to keep your mobiles ON during a conference).

Adapted from Daniel Nettle’s book, Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, the test identifies a “Big Five” of personality dimensions:

1. Extroversion (”Wanderers”) - ambitious and motivated by recognition and acclaim, enjoy a level of unpredictability in life and work
2. Neuroticism (”Worriers”) - pay attention to detail, work hard and spot potential problems, which keeps you awake at night, but makes you driven and likely to be successful
3. Conscientiousness (”Controllers”) - efficient, organised, consistent and successful, you like a structured environment but don’t respond so well to change
4. Agreeableness (”Empathisers”) - thrive in the caring professions, but may sideline yourself in supporting others
5. Openness (”Poets”) - successful in the creative industries as you think - and use - language in a different way, but could be seen to have strange or irrational beliefs.

Most people demonstrate a tendency towards one or two of these dimensions. But what did our group of magazine editors score high on? Well, there were a lot of “Controllers”, “Wanderers” and “Worriers”. The general consensus was that as an editor, you are the one that has to maintain the quality and vision for the publication, but have to influence, and depend on, a team of staff to help deliver that vision on time and in profit.

There were some inherent contradictions in some of the findings: can you really like an unpredictable work life, but prefer to be in a structured environment? One thing was clear from the session: being an editor is a tough, challenging and lonely job, where you need a multitude of skills to be effective. However, the reward of a successful magazine with a great team of staff running it, makes it all worthwhile.

Derek is a BT MIND journalist of the year. You can find more advice on his website  

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Publishing. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but we reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.