Personality Types

In this article, I want to give you a quick idea of how people’s different personality types can have an effect on their interactions.

Have you ever been in a situation where you and the other person did not agree or see eye to eye? Have you ever been in a situation where that lead to argument, feeling of not being appreciated or thinking that the other person had not thought about your feelings? Did you judge or feel judged about what took place? Have you ever had a sense of something and struggled to explain it to somebody else? On the flip side, have you ever tried to explain something and the other person just got what you meant? It was like you were on the same wave length. During the NLP training we look at personality types in much greater detail.

Personality types can impact home life

Imagine a husband coming home from work after a long hard day. His wife meets him at the door with a great big smile and asks, “How was your day love?”
He simply shrugs and says “OK,” and goes to sit in the lounge. She really cares and asks him to tell her more and he just says, “I just want to sit and relax a bit. I don’t want to talk about it.” You see he needs to process by himself.

Now her mind starts to race and wonder what she has done wrong or why he never tells her about his day. This creates negative feelings in her and she starts to get upset. 30 Minutes later he goes and gives her a hug and asks about her day. By now she is a little frustrated with him, due to all the thoughts that ran through her mind. She snaps at him and so an argument starts over nothing.

Have you wondered why your one child often wants to play by them self, whilst the other always wants to be involved in everything? One might be more introverted, whilst the other more extroverted.

How personality types impact work life

An employee comes up with a proposal that can save the company money. He is very big picture and does not go into specifics. To him it makes perfect sense and sees the details as obvious and not relevant. The manager to whom he gives the proposal is not a big picture person and really needs the specifics. They cannot understand the proposal and don’t see how it can work. The manager nit-picks all the things that are not in the proposal and why it would not work. He judges the proposal on the contents and rejects it out of hand. He does not take into account the employees feelings. Now you have a disenfranchised, disappointed employee and a manager that thinks the employee does not think things through.

What about a boss that seems very caring whilst another seems very cold and unapproachable? One might be more a feeler, whilst the other more a thinker.

We look at the impact of meta programs in job assignment, management etc. in much greater detail during the NLP master practitioner course.

Use of opposites

In the case where one person is very “strong” in one type and weak in another, it can be advantageous to work with others that compliment you. An example of this might be a engineer or product developer. They might be great with coming up with ideas of new products and improvements. They might lack skills to deal with individuals on a more touchy feely basis. In this case it would be useful to work with somebody who can relay the more human side of the business.

Even though we have our own natural preferences, each person also has an auxiliary preference, which should compliment the main type. It is possible to gain more skills in the auxiliary preference, so as to compliment the main preference and also to deal with the world around us. An example is an introvert, who needs to still be able to deal with the outside world. Imagine a introvert who learns skills to do business networking.

Understanding other personalities

It is important to understand that personality types do differ and to recognize our own and others’ personality types. This will make for a greater understanding of the people you are interacting with. Let alone a much more enjoyable home and business life.

You see the husband just needed some time to process the day before he could be “present” for his wife. She wants him to share more about his day as that is how she deals with things.
The employee who had a great idea, but did not explain the proposal in the right way to the manager, who needed more detail. If the manager simply asked about the things that were not clearly explained, the employee might have been able to do that in more detail.

These are simply examples of how peoples different personality types can lead to a misunderstanding of another person. This can lead to things like unfulfilled expectations, divorce, turnover of staff, conflict or worse.

I hope you found this brief look at personality types of interest and enlightening as it is often something that is over looked in our everyday interactions.

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Have a fabulous day and remember- If you can believe it, you can achieve it.