Business growth: What’s your type?
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Personality type that is. “Personality has power to uplift, power to depress, power to curse and power to bless,” Rotary International founder Paul Harris is known to have said. In so many ways, Harris articulated the many different personality types in a few succinct words.
Steve Case, a well known venture capitalist and founder of America On Line, has said, “You have to get along with people, but you also have to recognize that the strength of a team is different people with different perspectives and different personalities.”
Obviously, each person has their own personality. According to Isabel Meyers and Katherine Briggs, researchers from the 1940s, you cannot manage or help to develop a personality unless you are able to identify, categorize, or group it in some way. They developed a questionnaire which focused on certain personality types that were developed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has become the gold standard for identifying various personality types.
When someone takes the MBTI assessment, the results are grouped into a range of sixteen different personality types with letters that represent each type within four groups. According to the Meyers-Briggs Foundation (www.meyersbriggs.org), “There are four different personality aspects explored in the test. Within each of these four categories, there are two different results, meaning there are two different possible definitions of a characteristic the person may have. In many cases, people view these as a sliding scale, for example, between being an introvert and being an extrovert. Experts usually make clear that these different aspects of someone’s personality are not mutually exclusive.”
The four groups are:
Extroversion or Introversion (E-I): This personality type helps in defining how you respond or interact with people. It helps identify whether you are energized by being with other people or are more thought oriented and re-charged after some alone time for self-reflection. While this category is more often associated with someone being outgoing or shy, it is intended to be more directed toward how you formulate or create ideas and the kind of work atmosphere where you are most productive.
Sensing or Intuition (S-N): The second personality type relates to how you acquire and process information. In other words, do you concentrate on information as it is presented to you, or do you strive to interpret the meaning of the information and add to it. While this personality type, like the other types, is not absolute or exclusively sensing or intuition, most people will adjust and adapt their behavior, based upon the circumstances presented. This type reflects what tendency a person gravitates to most often.
Thinking or Feeling (T-F): This MBTI category deals with the process people use in decision making. “Thinking” type people rely on particular facts and more objective information. “Feeling” people, on the other hand, are willing to consider special circumstances, other people, or emotions that could influence the decision making process. “Feeling” category people are usually described as warm, reliable, and someone who does not prefer to confront anyone.
Judging or Perceiving (J-P): The fourth category relates to how people adapt or adjust to various situations. If they are more of a judging nature, they would prefer to deal with more structure. They work well in situations that are planned, deal with specific processes and a straight forward decision. “Perceiving” people are found to be more flexible and able to adjust more quickly to new situations.
Generally speaking, the least common personality type is INFJ (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, and Judging). About 1.5% of people who take the MBTI result in this type. The most common type is ISFJ (Introversion, Sensing, Feeling, and Judging). Approximately 13.8% of people tested reflected the ISFJ type. The Foundation goes on to describe “ISFJ personality types are sometimes known as ‘protectors’ or ‘defenders’ as it is thought that their personality reflects warmth and a sense of responsibility. The ‘sensing’ and ‘judging’ aspects of their personality makes them practical individuals who enjoy learning by doing and who thrive in structured workplaces that help them achieve their best through providing learning and development opportunities.”
Each person in your firm has their own unique personality. Managing their strengths and helping them improve upon their weaknesses is significant for the continued success of your business. One way to do that is identifying their personality types. Regardless of the size of your firm, there are many tools available to help you assess and in the process, grow your business.