What comes to mind when you think of “return on investment?” For most of us, our mind jumps to calculations of costs and revenues. The end goal, no matter the project, is for the last cell in the spreadsheet to be black or green—not red.

In this column, I want to encourage you to expand your thinking about ROI. Measuring the ROI for pursuing a goal should extend beyond financial metrics. Look at the capabilities you've created, the reputation you’ve developed, the insight you've gained, and the relationships you've nurtured to get the complete picture.

Getting a positive ROI on these nonfinancial metrics has a lot to do with your personality type. Knowing which dimensions of ROI are most productive for you to pursue has to do with your unique strengths and challenges for growing each of your four nonfinancial sources of capital.

Before we move on to maximizing ROI using the strengths of your personality type, let's review the five sources of capital. These are: our financial capital (money you really have—not credit cards), social capital, knowledge capital, brand capital, and infrastructure capital.

 …