“What’s your Myers-Briggs type?”
“Has your office used CliftonStrengths?”
“What did your IDI results show?”
For many international educators, these questions are familiar. Our profession has embraced assessment tools for years, often to support team building, leadership development, or student learning. Yet many of us rarely apply those same tools to one of the most important questions we face:
What kind of work will allow me to thrive?
As professionals across international and global education reconsider their futures, psychometric assessments can provide valuable data—not as labels that define us— but as lenses that help us better understand ourselves. They are not career predictors. They are career design tools.
Beyond Personality Types
International educators have access to a remarkably rich ecosystem of assessments.
Some illuminate motivations and patterns of thinking (MBTI, Enneagram, CliftonStrengths). Others reveal leadership tendencies and derailers under stress (Leadership Circle, Hogan). Tools such as DiSC and Five Behaviors provide insight into communication preferences and team dynamics. And the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), widely used to support student learning, can also offer powerful insights into our own leadership and professional relationships.
No single assessment tells you who you are or what job you should pursue. But taken together, they help answer more meaningful questions:
- What kinds of work energize me?
- Where do I naturally contribute value?
- Where are my gaps if I want to advance?
- How do I respond when uncertainty or stress increases?
- What strengths have I underused in my current role?
These questions matter because career satisfaction is about far more than job titles. It is about alignment–particularly in a values-driven field such as international and global education.
From Self-Awareness to Career Design
Too often, people use assessments to describe themselves.
“I’m an Enneagram 2.”
“I’m high D on DiSC.”
“I’m an INFJ.”
Such statements may be interesting, perhaps, but not particularly useful.
The real value comes from these translating insights into career decisions.
For instance, someone with strong relationship-building strengths and a high support orientation may discover they gain energy from managing, advising, or developing students. Another person with strategic and influencing strengths might thrive in partnership development, institutional strategy, or fundraising.
Neither profile is better. The goal is not to fit yourself into a predetermined box. The goal is to understand where your talents, motivations, and work environment intersect.
Three Ways to Put Assessments to Work
1. Think About Fit, Not Type
Instead of asking, “What am I?” ask, “What strengths or characteristics does this role require?”
Examine positions that interest you. What skills, relationships, and stressors define the work? Then compare those demands with your assessment results.
Where do you see natural alignment?
Where would you need to stretch?
This exercise often reveals that your skills are more transferable than you realize. International educators routinely possess strengths in relationship building, project management, communication, change navigation, and intercultural competence—capabilities valued far beyond higher education.
2. Look for Patterns Across Assessments
No single instrument captures the complexity of a person.
The most valuable insights emerge when several assessments point in the same direction. Perhaps your CliftonStrengths emphasize learning and connectedness, your DiSC profile highlights collaboration, and your IDI results reveal your level of adaptability to complexity and difference.
Together, these patterns tell a richer story about the environments and work that may be most meaningful.
Tools such as AI can also help synthesize multiple assessments and generate questions for reflection. Rather than asking AI, “What job should I do?” ask:
- What themes emerge across these results?
- What kinds of environments would allow these strengths to flourish?
- Where might I encounter friction or burnout?
- How do these insights align with a potential role that interests me?
AI cannot make the decision for you, but it can help you see connections you might otherwise miss.
3. Pay Attention to Stress Patterns
The best career decisions are made not only by understanding ourselves at our best, but also by knowing how we operate, relate, and lead under pressure.
Many international educators have spent years adapting to enrollment declines, budget pressures, restructurings, and changing institutional priorities. Sustaining that pace indefinitely can be exhausting.
Assessments such as DiSC, Hogan, or Leadership Circle can provide clues about how we react when demands intensify. Do we over-function? Avoid conflict? Become overly cautious? Take on too much responsibility?
Understanding these patterns helps us perform better in a current role, or explore roles that are not only interesting, but sustainable.
Designing a Career with Intention
Career transitions are rarely solved by asking, “What should I do next?”
A better question is:
“Who am I becoming, and what kind of work will allow me to contribute meaningfully?”
Psychometric assessments cannot answer that question for you. But they can provide valuable data, language, and perspective. Combined with reflection, experimentation, coaching, and honest conversations, they become part of a larger process of career development.
And perhaps that is the most important lesson for international educators considering their future:
You do not have to start over.
You simply need to understand yourself well enough to recognize where your strengths, values, and experiences can create the greatest impact. And to confidentially decide if that path remains within international education or leads somewhere entirely new.
Gateway International Group’s Professional Training & Coaching Services are there to support international educators in tackling these important questions. Contact Gateway to learn more.
