Week 1 - learning about Understanding your personality and how it impacts your work, life and relationship

There are, I'm sure, many people in the world who go through life in quite simple and uncomplicated terms.  I am not one of them.  I am someone that is terribly over-analytical of myself, constantly worrying about what people think of me, dreadfully aware of my shortcomings and always trying to better myself.  Phew - is that how I really want to begin the year and introduce myself to you?!  Well yes I do.  I am forever on a voyage of self-discovery and to that end I always want to be as honest as open as I can.  Most people would agree that you never stop learning about yourself and so even with quite a good level of self-awareness, I was very interested in my first talk of the year, understanding about personalities.

This was a talk organised by the Guardian Masterclasses and led by business and personal coach Gavin Aubrey and the whole lecture was underpinned by the Myers-Briggs personality test (MBTI).  This is the most widely used personality test in the world and is essentially something that tells us about our cognitive preferences in everyday life.  It is based on Carl Jung's theory of psychological type and Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Briggs developed the test in the 1940's to make the insights of type theory accessible and essentially a good way of understanding ourselves and others.  So very quickly, for those who don't know what the MBTI personality test is, I will try and explain what you need to know: 

There are four scales (or four psychological functions) on which we are tested and each of those four scales represents two opposite preferences.  These are:

1.  Where do we get our energy in the world from? - Is it extroversion (E) or introversion (I)?

2. What kind of information do we prefer to use? - Is it sensing (S) or intuition (N)?

3. What process do we use to make decisions? - Is it thinking (T) or feeling (F)?

4. How do we structure the world? - Are we judging (J) or Perceiving (P)?

Obviously everybody is a bit of both but you decide which one you are most of the time and when you pick your preference in each category, you then get your own personality type which can be expressed as a four-letter code.

This is just me giving a VERY basic overview of what the MBTI is, from being in the lecture last night - there are a whole load of words, phrases and sentences to look at and questions to answer in helping you to decide which side of the scales you are and therefore which of the 16 profiles you are.  But, I don't want to make this an overly-scientific review.  You will have to look at each of the eight preferences yourself here.

I really struggled to work out two of the four scales and even now while writing I am still quite unsure.  This is because I am very in the middle with both the Sensing/Intuition dichotomy and also the Thinking/Feeling dichotomy.  I think anyone that knows me will agree that I am definitely on the extraversion scale, rather than the introversion.  So this means that I get my energy from other people, I have lots of friends, I often talk loudly and I am seen as more outgoing than reflective or reserved. 

I also know that I am definitely judging rather than perceiving because I prefer things to be organised, planned and tidy.  A good example of this is thinking about when you pack to go on holiday and how you do it. I'm someone that packs two days before my trip and plan my outfits rather than throwing everything in there two hours before leaving for the airport!

But the middle two I really struggle with - am I someone that likes to work things out based on facts and reality or or am I more concerned with impressions and meanings?  Do I make decisions with my head or with my heart?

You can do lots of tests on the internet to see which ones you are - I've just done two now and they have come out different.  I pretty much hover between ESTJ, ESFJ and ENFJ.  You can look up all the profiles here.  Apparently my corresponding Simpsons characters are Krusty, Apu or Ned Flanders. Or, what I really like is what Breaking Bad character would I be.  Apparently Walt, Badger or my favourite, Wendy, the crack-whore.  Nice.

The point is, knowing what profile you are and what other people are can be very helpful in creating rapports with people both in everyday life and in the work place.  MBTI is based on "how" we say things, not the actual words and actually its the "how" we say things and our non-verbal communication that we all pay attention to.  Apparently, the ratio between words, how we say them and our non-verbal communication is 7% vs 38% vs 55% so how we say things and what our body language is doing is the most important.  So, knowing what someone's type is and also knowing that body language and how we say things is so important means you can mould yourself to become more like the other person in creating a good rapport, for example mirroring the way they are sitting, mimicking their body movements or matching the volume of their voice level.  A tip for extroverts when talking to introverts is to make a question concise and then shut up after asking it!  Apparently introverts like to think for a few seconds before speaking, whereas extroverts are very instant in their replies and so might feel a bit uncomfortable with a momentary silence and then just ask more questions, talk over the introvert and then appear rude to them.

After us all working out our profiles, we talked about our behaviour and how we all react to other people's behaviour.   But it is always best to try and understand why someone is behaving that way - another good reason to understand the MBTI.  We might all have similar preferences but we are all so different because we are all influenced by our environment, how we've been brought up, our relationships and our values.  These all impact our behaviour.  

But, can we change our behaviours?  Is it easy to control how we all feel if say, we're having a crappy day and feeling negative?  The one thing I've learnt over the years is that if you want a different outcome or response to something then do something different.  If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.

I don't smile enough in the day so to change my behaviour,  I'm going to try some smile therapy.  Apparently, putting a pen horizontally in your mouth for 30 seconds at the beginning of each day is clinically proven to make you more happy.  How do I look?