Your Personality Factor refers to those strengths and characteristics you were born with. We rely on our learned skills and attitudes when assessing how we do things or whether we are successful in our relationships with other people including our friends and family, and work colleagues. But how often do we
consider our Personality Factor? Our Personality Factor has a significant impact on the way we live our lives. Along with environmental influences and learned aptitudes, the unique gifts and talents we are born with can have an impact on many things like how we view events; deal with conflict; make decisions; manage stress; communicate; manage relationships; choose careers; work with colleagues; and bring up and teach our children to be the best they can be.
Even though we sense some basic differences, we often believe that everyone else should be like us, because after all, we are right, and we are doing things the right way – for us. We sometimes find it hard to understand why others do not see things the same way as we do and do not seem to hold the same values are we do. Culture and other environmental factors aside, I believe our Personality Factor is a crucial inbuilt part of us which plays an important role in how we go about our daily lives; how we interpret events; how we take in information; how we make decisions; how we communicate; how we manage work, relationships and family.
You can use the knowledge you gain about your Personality Factor to assist you in many aspects of your life.
How often have you been in a situation or around other people where you seem to be the odd one out and you start to believe there is something wrong with you? How often have you been in an argument/discussion with a colleague or friend or partner, and been frustrated by the lack of understanding of your point of view?
If you come to understand your own Personality Factor, you will find that you are right and you are doing things the right way – FOR YOU! You may also then give yourself permission to be yourself and appreciate the differences in other people. You can use the knowledge you gain about your Personality Factor to assist you in many aspects of your life.
You might:
- Understand how you communicate and discover how to communicate with others who do not have the same Personality Factor as you.
- Reduce conflict by understanding that others may not see the world the same way as you do and find strategies to manage any conflict you may have with others with a different Personality Factor to you.
- Be more effective as a parent by considering the Personality Factor of your children and bring them up to be the best they can be – not what you think they should be or behave according to your Personality Factor.
- Become more effective in the workplace by understanding what you are inherently good at doing and find strategies to manage the potential stress caused by the challenges of your Personality Factor.
How do I find out about my Personality Factor?
The best way that I know of to find out your Personality Factor is to use the MBTI® tool to discover some (not all) of your core preferences, tendencies and characteristics and how to overcome some of the challenges you may encounter with your Personality Factor.
The MBTI® instrument is not a measure of your skills or abilities in any area. It is a way to help you become aware of your style and to better understand and appreciate the helpful ways that people differ from one another – I call it The Personality Factor.
Personality type is a nonjudgmental system that looks at the strengths and gifts of individuals. All preferences and personality types are equally valuable and useful. Based on more than 70 years of research supporting its reliability and validity, the MBTI® assessment has been used by millions of people worldwide to gain insight into the normal, healthy differences that are observed in everyday behavior, and to open opportunities for growth and development.
“The purpose of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ® (MBTI ®) personality inventory is to make the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people’s lives. The essence of the theory is that much seemingly random variation in the behaviour is actually quite orderly and consistent, being due to basic differences in the ways individuals prefer to use their perception and judgment.
Perception involves all the ways of becoming aware of things, people, happenings, or ideas. Judgment involves all the ways of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived. If people differ systematically in what they perceive and in how they reach conclusions, then it is only reasonable for them to differ correspondingly in their interests, reactions, values, motivations, and skills.
In developing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator [instrument], the aim of Isabel Briggs Myers, and her mother, Katharine Briggs, was to make the insights of type theory accessible to individuals and groups.
They addressed the two related goals in the developments and application of the MBTI instrument:
The identification of basic preferences of each of the four dichotomies specified or implicit in Jung’s theory.
The identification and description of the 16 distinctive personality types that result from the interactions among the preferences.”
Adapted from The Myers & Briggs Foundation. (2014). MBTI® The Basics. Retrieved 28/06/15, from http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-
mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/