Profiling tools – background

A brief history of Facet5

Facet5 was developed by Norman Buckley and Rebekah Williams.

Norman Buckley graduated in psychology in Sydney and gained his initial experience with a consulting organisation in Australia. From 1978 he ran his own company in the UK, during which time he pioneered the use of custom-built assessment and development processes and worked extensively on biographical and personality data analysis. He then built on ten year's research in personality theory by developing Facet5, which was the first major advance in personality assessment in the EU for a decade. In 1999 he returned to Australia and is now applying his experience in the Australian market through his own firm, Redfield Consulting. He continues to lead the development of Facet5 and is focused particularly on extending the range of national versions of Facet5 to take account of different cultural norms.

Rebekah Williams has a background in clinical psychology. She transferred to the field of business psychology in 1987 and completed a second Masters, in Organisational Psychology, at UMIST. She then worked as a consultant on major organisational change and restructuring programmes, developing specific expertise in the design and delivery of corporate climate surveys and team leader assessment and development programmes. Rebekah joined Redfield Consulting in 1996 to work on the development of a unique range of personal development processes. Redfield moved its operations to Australia in 2000 and Rebekah relocated to Sydney as a Director, where she continues to be involved in product development, training and consulting to a growing number of Australian clients. She travels extensively to support Redfield’s work in Europe, South America and the USA.

The first step in creating Facet5 was to review the relevant literature in order to define the domains to be covered and to review the existing questionnaires to establish their relative strengths and weaknesses. This produced a large selection of items for inclusion, which were repeatedly culled and refined in association with a team of psychologists and non-psychologists. This resulted in 106 items, upon which there was general agreement, being assembled for trial. The prototype questionnaire was then trialled in 1987-89 with around 4,500 British managers from a range of industries to produce a final version for commercial use. This produced the core Facet5 product and work has continued ever since on developing its application in the light of experience with more than 1,000,000 managers in over 20 countries.

For more on the development of Facet5 please download this extract from the Users Manual (here). For a full technical explanation of the Facet5 tools, download the technical review here.