Entries tagged as ‘Personality Types’
I just took an interesting workshop at work related to determining what my strengths are. As you all know, I’m always up for a personality assessment. I take them all with a grain of salt, but I always learn something from them. This workshop was based upon this book (which you can buy on Amazon)
The online assessment comes included as part of the cost of the book. Yes, that means if you buy the book, you can receive the personal assessment without taking the course. The assessment really is personalized – I compared mine to a couple of coworkers with the same strengths and we received significantly different data.
After some reflection, my strengths were pretty much on target.
- Relator – I develop close relationship with people and my friends trust my judgment when they need advice.
- Learner – I am curious and dig deeply into topics that attract my interest.
- Command – I push people to excel.
- Significance – I need to be be independent and for people to take me seriously.
- Input – I collect information like some people collect shoes.
The one that really resonated with me is the last one – Input. I am currently reading 3 books at once. I have a stack of 4 more on my “to read” list right now and my library due date is looming large. I have more interests than I can count. I’ve always been frustrated when I hear “just take your favorite hobby and turn it into a business and you can be successful.” I think that’s because I don’t know where to start. My short list for favorite hobbies is a crazy laundry list. Weight training and nutrition. Sports cars. Volleyball. Investing. Cooking and using local produce. Business strategy. Leadership and management. Social media. Chronic disease management. Photography. Gardening and landscaping. Birdwatching. Kayaking. Eldercare. Wine. Construction. Green technologies.
This opened my eyes. My favorite hobby is processing information. Weird way of looking at it, but that’s exactly what it is.
The book is small and a quick read and I’d recommend it.
Categories: Book Reviews · Personal
Tagged: Creativity, Personality Types, Relationships
I’ve just finished reading the book “Why now is the time to Crush It! Cash in on your passion” by Gary Vaynerchuk. 
I thought this would be a good book talk about.
First off, this is a quick read, but there are a lot of great concepts in it. I’ve dabbled a bit in my own personal branding so this resonates with me. However, I haven’t spent any time attempting to monetize what I do – I am still doing it mainly for myself. Writing this blog provides a creative outlet and it also helps me focus my thoughts and my thought processes.
What I really like about the book is the concept that no matter what your passion is – there are other people out there just like you. If you’re willing to put in the time and energy (yes, this is hard work – it won’t happen by magic) to share what you know, and to interact with folks who share your interest you can become a well regarded expert in the community surrounding your passion. This means sharing what you read about, answering questions, providing key insights and having online conversations through a variety of social media formats.
Another key point in the book is that it is very important to be yourself. Be authentic. If you try to hide your personality, whether it is serious, outlandish, or sarcastic, you’ll inevitably fail because you won’t come across as genuine. Also, chose the medium that is best suited for your personality. Some people choose the written word, others podcasts, and still others video. If you can’t write, don’t! If you’re uncomfortable in front of the camera – don’t pick that medium either!
And lastly – patience in this space is a virtue. You won’t likely find a big audience or make much money in under a year. It just won’t happen, so don’t expect it to.
Categories: Book Reviews · How Tos
Tagged: Branding, Creativity, Personality Types, Social Networks, Transparency
Recently I had the opportunity to reflect back upon all of the training I’ve received in order to become the leader that I am today. In my career I was extremely fortunate that I received a significant amount of management training before I was even considered for promotion into the role. I find the coaching of potential, junior, and mid-level managers to be critical to longer term success. Even as a senior manager I believe that it is important to continue learning, and to not always fall back on previous experiences.
Early in my career I worked for a company that had a mandatory training and assessment course for all potential managers. It identified if someone was ready to manage people, and the areas in which they were weak and strong. This was a course that could be failed and a person wouldn’t be promoted to a management position if it was. I remember this class as being very stressful. There were timed prioritization of work assignments, interviews, and video taped role playing exercises in which instructors acted as difficult subordinates and customers. This course started my foray into management.
I’ve also had some training that wouldn’t be classified as management training, but it helped me become a much better manager. One form of this type of training that I received is often dismissed by staff as being irrelevant – and that is diversity training. I found it helped me understand how to be sensitive to race, religion, and gender as well as realizing that different people have different motivations for what they do. Engineers may seem to all be very similar but in fact they are not. You can’t expect someone to want to do the same things that you want to do for all the same reasons. Some people care about money, some about life balance, and some about challenging work or career development. I find this to be key to being a good manager because by understanding what a person’s motivations are, you can assign them work that they can be successful at. This training course also was very clear about what is and what is not appropriate in a work environment. In a similar vein, I also took a class that included the Meyers-Briggs Inventory. This was an eye opener for me because it showed how much diversity there is in the various personality types and how the different types are perceived. It also provided suggestions for how to deal with the different types. In engineering there are a few common ones, but there are always some people that are different and harder to read and work with. I happen to be an INTJ in case you are familiar with this method of personality evaluation.
As my career progressed, I signed up for more intensive training courses that spanned longer periods of time. Another company that I worked for footed the bill for a year long class that required me to travel to San Francisco monthly. This program was designed for high potential women managers with a minimum of 7 years of supervisory experience who were being groomed for senior management positions. The program and others like it are run by an organization called Women Unlimited. If you are a woman manager or if you have one reporting to you, I’d suggest investigating this. I found it to be one of the most useful training programs that I ever attended.
Once I got to Director and VP level positions my training focus changed. Now I find it to be a lot more self-directed and individualized. I continue to read books and articles voraciously to learn about new trends and ideas. For the last few years at my last company I met weekly with a psychologist who works with leadership teams at small companies as a career coach. He taught me to depend not only on my analytical capabilities but also on my intuitive abilities. He also taught the leadership team as a whole to be more focused and to use empathy in dealing with one another as a way to speed resolution of issues. This was invaluable. A lot of times in business we focus solely on the analytic and reasoning aspects of our work and little on the people and relationship issues.
These days I also enjoy sharing the knowledge that I have accumulated. As those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know, last year I presented at the IGDA Leadership Forum. I enjoyed preparing my presentation and sharing my management experiences so much that it compelled me to start this blog and become more active in the Web2.0 world. There are a number of pages on this website that give management instruction through examples. I also frequently post and comment upon interesting articles and topics that are personal growth, business, and management related. I am experimenting with the use of twitter to share additional articles that I find interesting that I don’t necessarily feel the need to comment about. I have a regular following on both of these mediums, and it is growing. This is really cool.
Keep on learning. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like you have enough time or that it is worth the effort involved. Do it, you never know when what you’ve learned might come in handy.
Categories: Leadership · Personal
Tagged: Diversity, Leadership, Learning, Motivation, Personality Types, Stress, Women in Business
Or better known as – what can go wrong will.
Those of you who know me well, know that I have a need for speed. I like fast cars and fast jet skis. I’m not so much about top end as the fun of getting there. I’ve earned the name “Linda Leadfoot”. As I’ve gotten older I’ve really really REALLY tried to ditch the car problem and drive like grandma. Cars are great toys. Cars are EXPENSIVE toys. That money can always go to a better place.
However, we still have one very fun very fast little car in the family. It’s an Audi S4. It’s not a new one, and it is coming up on the 100,000 mile mark, but it still looks and runs like new. 2.7 liters of 250 HP twin turbo joy under the hood, a 6-speed manual tranny, and quattro all wheel drive. My baby is as surefooted as a mountain goat in snow and ice and hugs turns like nobody’s business. However, we’ve been seriously debating selling it because we don’t need it and I’m unemployed. We inherited a nearly new car that gets great gas mileage from my dad and sadly the Audi sits in the garage more days than not. I think that the S4 knew we were going to try and take it to a dealer this week that is running a special “buy your car” promotion (limited time only! – uh yeah, right) to see what they will give us…
Yesterday while rounding a turn and doing some fancy footwork I was alarmed to find the (ABS) and (BRAKE) lights coming on along with a very loud warning beep. Uh oh. What was that? I wasn’t going that fast. REALLY – remember – GRANDMA! I wasn’t sliding and the (ABS) didn’t engage. Then, a little closer to home on a straight approach to a stop sign… there it went again. This can’t be good. This is not something you can have going on when you are thinking about selling a car. It’s like I have Herbie the love bug living in my garage throwing a fit.
I spent this morning diagnosing the problem with a little prodding from my husband who was at work. Gotta love him. He never says – “oh honey I’ll look at that when I get home – don’t worry about it.” He always says – “why don’t you see if you can figure it out?” He expects me to be able to do all of the mechanical and electrical things that he can do. Sometimes I can and sometimes I really screw things up – but that’s a story line for a different time.
So, this morning found me crawling around under the dashboard looking for the connector plug for the VAG so I could hook the car up to my PC and get the diagnostic codes out. Yikes. ABS controller problems. The bad news is that there really is something wrong. It is fairly common. If you take it to the dealer it will be about $2000 to fix. Double YIKES! The good news is that there are aftermarket solutions available that aren’t anywhere near that expensive.
I don’t get it. Why do cars decide to break down precisely when my severance and vacation time pay ran out? Murphy. Good old Murphy. Always have to watch out for that guy.
Categories: Personal
Tagged: Personality Types, Problem Solving
Recently in Business Week What’s Your Leadership Mindset?
“Those with growth mindsets believe they can get better at what they do, that they have reservoirs of untapped potential. They realize that promise by working hard and making incremental improvements over time, whether they are athletes, or writers, or surgeons.
Those with fixed mindsets, however, believe they can only go as far as their natural abilities will take them. They think talent, rather than hard work, is the fundamental component of success. They are often scared to challenge themselves because they are terribly afraid of failure—which, in their minds, is an indictment of their abilities rather than an opportunity to learn and do better next time. “
Maintaining a growth mindset is a difficult thing over a long career. It is hard work to always be on the lookout for the next thing to learn about and to figure out how to apply it to improve what you do. Sometimes picking the wrong “new thing” can make you look pretty silly in the long run – however you will learn something from it anyway. I do wonder about the applicability of twitter for instance. I see it as a pretty good marketing tool, but people have to want to follow you and your message. It’s actually pretty easy to get people to unfollow you if they don’t like something that you tweet. In fact there are all sorts of tools you can use to see who stopped following you. But, I digress.
It is easy after doing a job for a few years to sit back and rest, and stop being hungry. I know that I’ve had that happen to me a few times. I recognize it, but it is oh so difficult to do anything about it. Typically I’ve found that a large change will reenergize me and get me learning and growing again. Sometimes this means learning and growing at work, sometimes it means learning and growing outside of work. New companies and new jobs are great for ramping up that growth. It can be scary to make a leap like that for some people, but frankly I enjoy it a lot. Those first few months are my favorite. Getting to know all the players, understanding the technology, figuring out where the problems are as well as the opportunities. It is a lot harder once you are entrenched in an organization to keep up the growth mindset. This typically involves challenging the people, the existing processes, and sometimes even the culture. Depending on the organization and your role in it, that can be a losing battle. In those cases you’re better of working on an incremental approach. What little thing can you do that makes things better? Ok – did someone else notice this and appreciate it? Good. What’s the next little thing you can do? Repeat. Also, don’t forget to keep delivering on what you’re supposed to do in the first place. Sometimes the incremental approach isn’t appreciated though. That is unfortunate.
One aspect of the quote above that I really liked was that failure should be seen as an opportunity to learn and do better next time. I actually try not to even use the word failure. I call those episodes – “learning experiences”. I think that anyone who has tried something new or difficult has had one or two of them. I know that I have. With every one that I have I find that I bounce back faster than the last. I prefer to stand up and dust myself off and say “well, I didn’t expect THAT to happen! I guess I need to be careful of it next time!” Into the mental file cabinet it goes.
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Learning, Personality Types
I recently came across this article on the Harvard Business Journal site. Boy did this resonate with me.
This topic is one of my pet peeves. Over the years I have heard so many people complain that they aren’t getting to important tasks in their home or work lives. Quite frankly they aren’t setting their priorities correctly. Usually it goes something like this: “Right now I don’t have time to eat right and exercise – but once things settle down at work I’ll get to it.” or “I should get some training or learn more about that, but I barely can get through all of the tasks in my day job right now.” or “In order for me to be more effective I need to start doing ‘x’ but I am too busy trying to get ‘y’ done.” That last one is my personal favorite. It has bitten me more than a few times now and I vow that it isn’t going to happen to me again. Typically the thing that I should be doing is something that I’m not comfortable with. It is a new skill or it is hard for me based on my personality type. Sometimes it is a lack of confidence that holds me back. I think that the best advice I ever got in those instances is to “fake it”. Yes, seriously, pretend that you are competent and capable in that area and do what you think someone who is would do.
Something else that I thought was valuable in this article is that you need to make a conscious decision about which items to pursue and which to just let go. There’s no point in beating yourself up about not getting to something that you know is highly unlikely. It is a fantasy if you think you’ll get to it. Who needs to drag along that baggage for years? The amount of stress that adds over time is just not worth it. I worked with a career coach who had a favorite saying – the best way to let something go is to visualize it. Put the thought in a bubble and visually pop that bubble. How do you feel once it is gone? Relieved? Happy? Sad? That first feeling you have is key to the issue.
So – two things.
1. GET TO IT! This is for those items you really just need to incorporate in your life. Stop procrastinating.
2. LET IT GO! Stop carrying around unwanted items in your head that you know you’ll never prioritize to the top of the queue.
Do both and you’ll feel much better.
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Confidence, Motivation, Personality Types, Priorities, Procrastination
I’ve left a number of jobs. The excitement about what comes next is always electrifying and I’ve always been a person to look forward to the next thing. That is the fun part about leaving. Hopeful optimism as I step into the unknown. Good thing I am a “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” person and not a “stick with the evil you know instead of the evil you don’t”.
One thing that has never changed for me is that it is always so hard to say goodbye to the good folks that will be sorely missed. Once someone isn’t a coworker anymore I tend to lose my “game face” and my emotions leak out. It’s hard not to feel sad when I get a big hug from someone I really liked seeing every day. When I leave I always try and say goodbye to every person I worked with. Every single one. It is a taxing day, and this time I didn’t quite manage it. There were a few folks (and some of you read this blog) that I missed. It wasn’t intentional, our timing was just off. Goodbye – it’s been fun – best wishes – may we meet again.
There are people from each and every company that I’ve worked at that I wish I could still work with. They are all different. Some are quiet. Some are loud. Some are always serious and business-like. Some are always looking at the funny side of work. Some really pushed my buttons but they made me a better person in times of confrontation. Some are sensitive and helped me to realize when I might be stepping on toes. I’ve tried to keep in touch with most of the people I developed a connection with. Sometimes it is difficult because work was the only common interest. Other times old coworker became lifetime friends. And, one of my favorites is when old coworkers become new coworkers under different circumstances. It’s so nice to see a friendly face that I know I can trust.
When my old coworkers and friends found out that I lost my job, I received a huge outpouring of support. Frankly, I was shocked. I got notes and phone calls from people all through the span of my career. I heard from people in CT at UTC where I worked fresh out of college, I heard from IBMers from 15 years ago that I haven’t seen since, I got great support from ex-Nortelers, those that went through the Caspian days, and of course from some ex-coworkers from my recent position. Thank you everyone – I hope to see you all again in another company someday!
Categories: Personal
Tagged: Culture, Job Search, Personality Types, Relationships
Well, I think that I understand why I feel such affinity to the “Conscience Police”. I recently took another personality survey called the Enneagram. Here you can find a reasonable free one. Once I got the results there was a link for a more detailed version of the test – also free. I was convinced that I was going to test out as one of the “thinking” types – but I am not – I am an “instinctive” type. I am type 1 
– also known as the reformer. The Enneagram Institute has good “brief” descriptions of the types. For a detailed description you need to pay to take their test. I did not – your mileage may vary.
“Ones are conscientious and ethical, with a strong sense of right and wrong. They are teachers, crusaders, and advocates for change: always striving to improve things, but afraid of making a mistake. Well-organized, orderly, and fastidious, they try to maintain high standards, but can slip into being critical and perfectionistic. They typically have problems with resentment and impatience. At their Best: wise, discerning, realistic, and noble. Can be morally heroic.”
The thing that I found most interesting about reading the descriptions is reading the unhealthy behaviors that come out for my type. I think that we’ve all had our bad days – I’ve had mine that’s for sure. Talk about making me squirm. I definitely recognize some of the tendencies of my type that I struggle to control at times. Thankfully as the years have made me wiser it takes more and more to push me into these unhealthy behaviors.
Categories: Personal
Tagged: Personality Types
Work: When Personalities Clash
One thing we all bring to the job is the self, making conflict inevitable. Seize it as a sign to look inward. By: Judith Sills Ph.D.
“In the end—no matter how we refine policies and procedures, no matter how well we train managers or finely construct a job description—we still have to deal with other people. And, as Sartre noted, other people are our hell. Surely he was referring to other people’s personalities.
Personality, that quirky grab bag of traits, tics, reactions, and beliefs that distinguish one person’s projected self from another’s, is the wild card of the workplace. Whereas most of the stressors we encounter at the office can be scheduled, delegated, avoided, or at least reimbursed, the personalities of one’s coworkers remain the uncontrolled variable.
True, that variable largely recedes, swept under by the conforming tsunami of office culture, professionalism, and sheer workload. Still, our selves sneak out, and when they do they often offend someone.
Of course, some selves are more offensive to us than others. Predictably, at one time or another you will share a work team, a cubicle, or a reporting relationship with one of those that offends you. Then you will get to experience first-hand that most commonly reported office problem: the personality conflict.”
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Personality Types, Relationships
I’d like to recommend a visit to a website:
The nonprofit VIA Institute on Character was founded to create a scientifically rigorous classification of character strengths (the VIA Classification) and a way of measuring them (the VIA Survey).
I recently took this survey based on a recommendation of a speaker at the IGDA Leadership Forum. I found it quite interesting and not exactly what I was expecting. Let me share my top two character strengths with you as they are described:
Curiosity and interest in the world – You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.
Perspective (wisdom) - Although you many not think of yourself as wise, your friends hold this view of you. They value your perspective on matters and turn to you for advice. You have a way of looking at the world that makes sense to others and to yourself.
Needless to say, I was surprised that these two ended up on top. However, upon further reflection I have to agree. I have always been interested in all sorts of things. Some of them are “normal” others are oddball. I guess what always is most important to me is discovering something new and having new experiences. I love to travel and I love to play and learn new skills. I guess that all of that curiosity has given me a slightly different perspective on the world than others might have.
A key facet of my curiosity is my desire to learn more about myself. Give me a test, give me a survey or a personality inventory and I am excited to dive right in. This one isn’t my favorite, but from an overall perspective it gives a lot of information across all parts of my life and lifestyle. It is not purely a work style related questionnaire.
Categories: Personal
Tagged: Personality Types
