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Discover Yourself – Interacting With Our Opposite Types

July 28, 2018/0 Comments/in Blog /by Scott Schwefel

Personality assessments are useful not only for participants to understand themselves better, but also to understand the other people around them. Interacting with people with very different views and priorities can be challenging, but Insights Discovery can suggest ways for people who are opposite types to work together more smoothly and effectively.

Fiery Red Interacting with Earth Green

Fiery reds are action driven, confident, and focused on their goals. Their opposite type are earth greens, who are calm, supportive, and ethical. A fiery red can see earth greens as docile, inactive, resistant, or stubborn. The methodical, careful progress of the earth green can feel frustrating and plodding to the active fiery red type.

To get the most from interactions with earth greens and to avoid losing their temper, fiery reds should practice patience and try to hold back from jumping in to every task head first. There can be great value in pausing to think an idea through before getting caught up in the action, and earth green can help to provide this balance.

A skill that earth greens can offer to fiery reds is the ability to see other’s points of view and to foster consensus. While a fiery red would likely try to resolve a dispute between members by imposing a rule or view onto the whole team, an earth green will try to find a compromise where everyone is happy and where every member of the team feels respected.

As fiery reds are often natural leaders, they motivate and push their team to achieve more. But they also benefit greatly from having an earth green as a fellow manager who can soothe team members and support them when they are stressed. Fiery reds should learn to see the value in this more caring, empathetic approach and learn when to deploy an earth green to smooth over difficult social situations.

Earth Green Interacting with Fiery Red

The patient and caring earth greens can find the forward and assertive fiery red type to be aggressive, controlling, and overbearing. The tendency of fiery reds to take charge and to push others towards goals can chafe the earth green who wants everyone to feel respected and understood. It will help earth greens to remember that democratic relationships are indeed important, but sometimes it is necessary for someone to lead decisively.

If an earth green feels like they or others are being steamrolled by the fiery red, then they can try raising these concerns outside of a high-pressure group meeting situation. A fiery red will be much more receptive if the earth green can voice their issues in terms of impediments to action as opposed to personal feelings.

An earth green can benefit from the push that a fiery red provides, as this can prevent them from overthinking and compel them to action. Also, there may be situations where it is not possible for everyone to be happy, and a fiery red will push for an acceptable solution where an earth green can be paralyzed by indecision.

Sunshine Yellow Interacting with Cool Blue

Sunshine yellows are sociable, creative, and love to dream about the future. Their opposite type is cool blues, who are methodical, analytical, and precise. Sunshine yellows can perceive cool blues to be cold and reserved, and find it strange that they are more focused on rules or data than on people. To a highly people-focused sunshine yellow, it may be almost inconceivable that anyone would not think primarily in terms of social interactions. Therefore, when interacting with cool blues, it can help sunshine yellows to remember that focusing on data over interpersonal relations does not mean a lack of care for other people – rather, cool blues want to be fair to all people, and they express that care in a data-driven way.

A cool blue can make a strong partnership with a sunshine yellow. The sunshine yellow person can imagine great concepts for the future and raise enthusiasm for the project among other people, while the cool blue can come up with the realistic ways to achieve those concepts in the real world. The pragmatism of a cool blue can be an essential reality check on the dreamy nature of a sunshine yellow, as long as the sunshine yellow doesn’t take this pragmatism personally. They should remember that when a cool blue expresses skepticism about an idea, they are not trying to be negative – they are searching for a way that the idea can realistically be achieved.

Cool Blue Interacting with Sunshine Yellow

Conversely, when analytical and logical cool blues have to interact with excitable and dynamic sunshine yellows, they can find them to be hasty and imprudent, or even disorganized and a “head in the clouds” type. It will help cool blues to remember that, unlike themselves who tend to think through an idea carefully before voicing it, other personality types like to think out loud in a discursive manner.

Just because someone says something that is not totally logical or they share an idea which is not fully thought through, it does not mean that the person is silly or vacuous. They should understand that people use discussion as part of their thinking process and try not to judge excited sunshine yellows when they take an idea and run with it.

A sunshine yellow can help a cool blue in tasks like drumming up support for a project. For example, if a cool blue finds a way to make a system more efficient, then they may push for their new system to be adopted and be surprised when they are met with a lukewarm reception. To the cool blue, if the new system is more logical then obviously everyone should support it. But a sunshine yellow knows that they need to sell people on the new system with enthusiasm and a sense of fun, which can be far more persuasive than logic. A cool blue who comes up with a concept and a sunshine yellow who gets everyone on board with the concept can make a great team.

To learn more about Insights Discovery and how it can help colleagues understand themselves and each other, visit www.discoveryourself.com.

Managing the Color Energies

July 20, 2018/0 Comments/in Blog /by Scott Schwefel

Managing The Color Energies

Understanding the different personality types of a team is important for managers not only so that they can build an effective team, but also so that they can gain insights into how to manage the color energies of the team. Today I’ll be discussing tips and techniques for managing the color energies in the Insights Discovery system.

Managing Cool Blues

People who are cool blue in temperament are thoughtful and like to plan out events and activities in advance. Typically, they will be organized and know their processes very well, following instructions exactly. But one challenge in managing them is they are not the most adaptable of people; they need to be given time to consider and process new information and ideas. If a new concept or model is introduced to a cool blue, they may not be particularly enthusiastic about the change straight away. This does not mean that they are rejecting the change or that they will be unable to cope with it, but they may require a few days to adapt to the new mindset required of them.

One practical tip on managing cool blues is to give them a heads up (wherever possible) of new issues that may arise in the future. A manager who can let their cool blue team members know in advance that changes will be forthcoming – for example, that this year an annual process will be changing, or that brainstorming sessions will be moving from regular small meetings to occasional large meetings – will find that the cool blue person has planned and anticipated the change and is more ready for it. This gives two advantages: firstly, the blue person will be able to contribute useful ideas as they have had time to consider and aren’t being forced to respond off the cuff, and secondly, they will be more positive about adapting to change when they know to expect it.

Managing Earth Greens

Earth green people are driven by their values, which often focus around sharing, harmony, and fairness. This means that in order for a manager to win the loyalty of an earth green person, they must explicitly demonstrate their even-handedness and explain their reasoning. For example, if a manger is planning to end a contract with a vendor and to move to another vendor, it would be wise to let the earth green members of their team know about why they are making this change. Even when it is not strictly required for the green person to know about the reasoning to perform their job, they will be more supportive and enthusiastic if they see that their manager has good reasons for making this choice.

This is because earth green people care deeply about personal relationships with co-workers. If the green person perceives their organization as being capricious or opaque about their motives, they will not trust them and will not perform well. And this interest is not self-centered: a green can perceive a colleague being treated badly by a manager to be as damaging as if it were happening to them. To build the best relationship with an earth green, a manager should be as fair as possible and be transparent about that fairness.

Managing Sunshine Yellows

The highly sociable sunshine yellow type is passionate, enthusiastic, and has a strong vision of the future. If a manager wants to sell their team on a new concept or process, then getting the sunshine yellow members of the team on board is key. These people will then cheerlead for the idea and get everyone else in the team to accept and embrace the new concept too. If a person who can drum up energy and get everyone involved is required, then the sunshine yellow is the type to turn to.

However, sunshine yellow types can be distractible and disorganized. When managing such a person, it is important to clearly lay out the essential requirements of a task and not let the person focus only on the “fun” parts of a job. Also, sunshine yellows can have a tendency to overwhelm other less outgoing team members, especially if there are a high proportion of yellows on a team and their visions are closely aligned. In this case, encourage sunshine yellows to pull back sometimes to allow space for others to express their ideas.

Managing Fiery Reds

Fiery reds are active and hands-on, and they like to find the most efficient way of performing their tasks. This means that they can be very adaptable and amenable to change, as long as their manager can demonstrate to them how the new system will create a better outcome than the old system. Unlike cool blues, fiery reds are not interested in considering every small change in depth – they would rather learn by doing and are focused on the present moment rather than ruminating about the past or future. If a fiery red needs to learn a new skill, it is best to hand them the tools and let them puzzle through the challenge for themselves rather than trying to teach them everything in advance.

One useful but occasionally frustrating aspect of managing a fiery red is their pragmatism. They are not the type to be swept up by great oratory or to embrace an idea because it sounds new and exciting. Instead, they want to see a clear and realistic vision with concrete steps outlined that will achieve that vision. When trying to motivate a fiery red, do not focus on abstract concepts or too much big picture talk – instead, give them grounded, actionable steps which they can follow to achieve the desired goal.

This is just scratching the surface of the ways that psychometric testing can help managers interact with and motivate their team. For more information on how Discover Yourself can greatly increase your management effectiveness, contact us today HERE.

Discover Yourself – Jungian Psychology for Teams

June 21, 2018/0 Comments/in Blog /by Scott Schwefel

Personality tests for business

In the past I’ve talked about the basics of Jungian psychology and how psychometric testing can benefit businesses. Today I’ll dig more into this topic to show the practical ways that Jungian psychology can help to form, manage, and motivate a team at work.

Expressing Preferences

One of the most valuable ways that personality testing can benefit a team is by giving team members space to express their preferences on matters such as favored methods of communication, feedback style, motivation, and so on. In the typical workplace, there are processes that are followed and methods that are used across entire departments or companies. But it can help to tweak these processes in recognition of the fact that individual workers have different habits and styles which allow them to work mostly effectively. For instance, maybe one person prefers to always be kept in the loop about a project, even including the small details that don’t directly affect them, so that they can understand the overall project. Other people could find constant updates that they don’t need to be annoying or distracting.

In this way, both performing personality assessments and the process of discussing personality test results with a team are opportunities for team members to express their ideal working situation and setup. A manager might not necessarily be able to meet all of these preferences – for example, if a team member indicates that they prefer to communicate via email over communicating by phone, there might still be a weekly meeting with a client which needs to be done over the phone. But often, preferences can be taken into consideration with no loss of productivity or achievement. In fact, letting people choose the manner and style in which they work can be beneficial to both morale and results.

Different Strengths of Different Team Members

Some people think that in order to be successful, a team needs to be made up of members with similar personality types. It’s common, especially among new managers, to think that a team with similar temperaments will work together more efficiently. However, a team made up of a mixture of personality types is usually more effective. For example, it can help to have one team member who is outgoing and social, who can build bonds with other teams; one member who is detail oriented and will check all work for mistakes; one team member who takes a leadership role and corrals and motivates the others, and so on.

For this reason, it’s good to have a team that is diverse in terms of personality type. What a Jungian style personality assessment can describe is the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, so that tasks can be assigned accordingly. Of course, tasks can also be assigned to someone who is not specifically typed to be good at them. For example, if a team member has a role that requires communicating with customers then they will need to develop strong social skills, even if they are naturally more introverted. It is not impossible for an introverted person to perform this task well, but they may need more coaching and support in this area than a person who is naturally more outgoing and sociable.

Understanding Interpersonal Relations

Another useful way to apply personality data to teams is using it to understand interpersonal conflicts. Even on the most professional teams, there will still be times when the needs or priorities of team members conflict. When this happens, a work issue can quickly become personal and team members can feel bullied, undervalued, or unhappy.

Understanding personality types can help throw light onto these conflicts. For example, it might be that one person values direct, forthright discussions, but another person perceives this communication style as brusque or rude. By educating each person about the other’s perspective, these team members can identify the source of their conflict and adapt to the needs of the other. Or if someone is anxious because they feel they are being left out of the loop, it will help other team members to understand not only that they ought to update the person more often, but also the reason for this action (that the person is someone who likes to keep an eye on the big picture and therefore wants to stay informed).

Using Personality Data to Build a Team

There are many ways that psychology insights can be used to build a team. One of the most common uses of personality assessments is during recruitment, where candidates are given personality assessments as part of the hiring process. These assessments can be a great source of information, but they should be used carefully. Too often, a hiring manager has an idea of what type of person that they want on their team – for example, that they want a new hire to be of a similar age and background to other team members, with similar interests and experience. This can lead to an overly narrow focus in which excellent candidates are passed over because they do not fit the narrow scope of what the hiring manager is looking for.

Like the concept of “company culture,” personality assessments can be used in a way that is discriminatory if they are not approached with care. A personality assessment should give information about the potential strengths, weaknesses, and preferences of a candidate, but hiring managers should remember that a diversity of personality types on a team is a key to success. Managers should not be afraid to hire a great candidate with relevant experience just because they are not the “right” personality type.

More Ways to Use Personality Data

Other ways that learning about personality types can benefit a team include as part of team building exercises so that team members can learn more about each other and how to interact, in personal and professional development such as identifying current weaknesses, or mentoring and coaching to improve on those weaknesses. But perhaps the most valuable use of personality information is the creation of a space in which a team’s communications, processes and brainstorming can be improved.

In the next post I’ll discuss how to effectively lead a team with a post on self-aware leadership, so come back soon for that!

Discover Yourself – Cultural Implications on Personality Types

June 14, 2018/0 Comments/in Blog /by Scott Schwefel

Cultural implications in personality testing

One important issue in the area of personality research is how universal personality traits are. Is it really true that people from Germany are more organized than most, or that people from Canada are more polite? Are US Americans naturally better leaders? These questions are part of a field called cross-cultural psychology, which is about examining how universal personality constructs are. For those interested in personality testing, it’s worth learning about the degree to which information from personality tests can be applied to people from other cultures as well as our own.

Personality Assessments and Culture

Most personality tests are developed in Northern America or Western Europe, and this affects how questions are conceptualized and framed. It might seem like a personality test should work equally well for different people across different cultures, but sometimes that is not the case. The first step in applying a personality test across cultures is to translate the test into another language, but this is already a challenge. The exact translation of particular words can cause difficulties, such as trying to decide how exactly to translate a question about happiness – which could refer to contentment, joviality, positive outlook, or overall life satisfaction. Depending on how exactly the word is translated, it affects how people answer the question. This means it is often hard to compare results of personality tests across cultures, even when the same test is used. This can be done correctly, however, if approached very carefully.

A further problem is with the way that personality tests refer to certain conditions or experiences. If a test asks someone whether they “feel under the weather”, for example, this idiom will not be equally understood everywhere and will be interpreted differently by people of different cultures. Therefore, personality tests are designed to be as clear as possible while still capturing the essential features of experience that are relevant to personality.

Cultural Limitations of Personality Tests

More recently, personality assessment tools from other cultures have been developed and shared internationally, such as the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory which was developed in Hong Kong in the 1990s. This test is specifically aimed at assessing personality among Chinese people by referring to specific constructs which are important in Chinese culture but are not addressed by Western personality tests, such as harmony, modernization, graciousness versus meanness, and face.

In clinical terms, one construct that is present in the CPAI but absent in most Western scales is somatization, which refers to the tendency to manifest psychological symptoms through physical pains, ailments, or disabilities. Somatization is a fairly rare symptom in Western psychiatry and psychology and so is often not included on clinical scales, while it is relatively common in China and so an important factor to measure when looking at personality in this culture.

The reason that we find different expressions of personality, and especially different expressions of mental illness and distress, in different cultures is due to social norms around the expression of emotions and experiences. In China, there is still a degree of stigmatization of mental illness and a general aversion to describing negative psychological experiences. Therefore, when people feel bad they are more likely to say that they have a headache or that they are tired.

In Western cultures, where there is more of an emphasis on psychological self-examination and sharing, people would be more likely to describe themselves as depressed or unhappy. This means that the same experience (such as low mood, lack of motivation, lack of energy) might be described as a physical affliction by a Chinese person (“I have a headache”) but as a psychological issue by a US American person (“I am feeling depressed”). This shows that personality can’t be studied as removed from culture – because culture has a huge impact on not only the formation of our personalities but also the way that we talk about our experiences.

How Culture Affects Personality Tests

Beyond the methods and wording of personality assessments, there can also be big cultural differences in personality types. For example, consider the question: “Do you prefer to work on your own or as part of a group?” In cultures which emphasize individualism, such as the US, people will be more likely to answer that they like to work on their own. In cultures which emphasize collectivism, such as Japan, people will be more likely to answer that they like to work as part of a group. This is both because norms of each culture suggest that one answer is more appropriate than the other, and because people will likely have more experience in working in a style which is concordant with their culture.

This gets at part of the fundamental issue with personality testing, in that it may be true that more US Americans like to work independently and more Japanese people like to work in a group. However, this doesn’t mean that there is something inherent in being born in a particular place which means that a person will develop a certain personality type. Rather, it means that culture affects personality by making some choices more common and acceptable than others.

All Personality Types Can Be Found In All Cultures

Another important thing to realize about personality differences across cultures is that this refers to trends, not exclusive categories. For example, the people in one country may tend more towards introversion and the people in another country may tend more towards extroversion. This means that there will be a higher percentage of either introverts or extroverts in a given country – however, there will always be a mix of both personality styles in any large enough group. Similarly, there are some differences between the distribution of personality traits between men and women – but we could never say that “all men are like this” or “all women are like that”. When working with personality data, we are identifying traits, not rules.

To learn more about how personality assessments can help at work and elsewhere in life, and how the Insights Discovery profile has addressed these cultural assessment issues, visit www.discoveryourself.com. And next time I’ll be discussing how to use insights from Jungian psychology to work more effectively as a team, so check back soon for that!

Disc vs Discovery Comparison

April 26, 2018/0 Comments/in Blog /by Scott Schwefel

When you’re looking for a personality assessment to use in your workplace, you’ll find that there are lots of different assessments, based on different psychological theories and providing different kinds of information. Two of the most popular assessment tools are Discovery (also known as Insights Discovery) and Disc (also written as ‘DISC’). In Disc vs Discovery we’ll talk about the similarities and differences between these two assessments so that you can see which one might best suit your needs.

Similarities between Disc vs Discovery

Both Disc and Discovery are psychometric tools that are used in business environments. They both sort people into simplified personality types based on self-reported answers to a range of questions, which can be both a strength and a drawback. Self-report allows for people to share their own perspectives on their own life, however, it also means that results from these assessments are only as reliable as the person who submitted the data when completing the assessment.

The tests work by giving the test taker a series of questions or statements for which they will choose the answer that feels most appropriate for them from a list of multiple choice options. These answers are then collated together and analyzed to produce a profile of the test taker. Often businesses will get teams or even whole departments to take the assessments at the same time so they can discuss the results together.

The Disc assessment

The Disc assessment is based on the work of psychologist William Moulton Marston, also known as the creator of Wonder Woman. The assessment determines people’s emotional style based on four traits: dominance (D), inducement or influence (I), submission or steadiness (S), and compliance or conscientiousness (C). Each individual will have one of these traits as their default approach, so you’ll hear people who have used this tool describing themselves as “high D” or “high I” and so on.

As well as these four traits, there are two dimensions provided by the Disc, which refer to the ways in which these traits are expressed in the world. These dimensions are firstly about personality traits (i.e. whether people are more reserved or more outgoing) and secondly about behavioral style (whether people are focused on goals and tasks or on other people). It is worth noting that the Disc is generally understood as a behavioral assessment and not a personality test – so it gives information about traits or behavior, but not about other aspects of personality such as values and beliefs.

One important thing to know about the Disc assessment is that it is not controlled, owned, or overseen by any one company or person. The theories of Marston that the tools are based on are publicly accessible, and anyone can use these theories to develop their own assessment tools. For this reason, you might find quite some variation in style between various Disc-based assessment tools.

The Insights Discovery

The Insights Discovery assessment is based on the work of Carl Jung and sorts people into four colors which represent four outlooks and corresponding goals. The four colors are cool blue (precise, exacting, and deliberate and seeking understanding), earth green (caring and patient and seeking harmony), sunshine yellow (fun and sociable and seeking recognition), and fiery red (driven and confident, and seeking achievement). These four aspects form the basis of the Insights Discovery assessment. Further assessment is then provided through looking at each person’s personality type based on the work of Jung. He proposed that there were four primary cognitive functions that people use when thinking and acting in the world. These cognitive functions include rational judging functions (thinking and feeling) and irrational perceiving function (sensation and intuition), and each one can be expressed in an introverted way (directed inside towards oneself) or an extraverted way (directed outwards towards others and the world). From these four functions and two expressions, eight psychological types can be identified which map onto combinations of the four colors described above.

Unlike the Disc, the Insights Discovery concept is owned and managed by one organization, so there is a specific format to the questions used in the assessment and the report created for each person. The Discovery tool is geared towards business scenarios so the results report includes information on the body language, verbal style, work strengths and weaknesses, and communication style of each person. One useful aspect of Discovery in team building is its focus on how a person of a particular color or type would interact with people of different colors or types. The exercises can include information about identifying types in others and using this information to tailor your communication with them for better teamwork.

The report is in depth and includes information on managing that person and also how that person will be as a manager of others. This report format makes the Discovery a popular tool for departments who want to foster teamwork or understand the team dynamics of their staff more thoroughly.

What these assessments are and aren’t meant to be used for

If you are thinking about using one of these assessments for your business, it is important to know what they can and can’t tell you. One mistake that is commonly made when looking at psychometric tests in a business context is thinking that an assessment can tell you who will be a good performer in their role and who will struggle. These assessments do NOT tell you about a person’s ability to succeed in their job – instead, they tell you about how a person approaches their work and how you can support that person in their development and communicate with them effectively.

Also, remember that these assessments only give you information about how the person perceives themselves, which is only as accurate as the person knows themselves to be. You should avoid stereotyping people or making assumptions about their abilities or aptitudes based on these assessments. Remember that the assessments give you suggestions about communication style and approaches, but not information on skills or values.

After reading the Disc vs Discovery Comparison, click here to check out another comparison of a very popular assessment, the MBTI.

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Jungian Psychology: The Eight Function Attitudes

April 25, 2018/0 Comments/in Blog /by Scott Schwefel

The Eight Function Attitudes

In the last post we talked about the four colors approach to personality, and how these four colors relate to eight personality types. Today we’re going to dig into Jungian Psychology, the work of Carl Jung, to learn more about the eight personality types and the cognitive functions that they are based on, also known as the eight function attitudes.

The Types of Cognitive Function

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung worked on the topic of psychological types back in the 1920s, and much of the field of personality types today is still based on his work. He looked at the essential cognitive functions, and proposed that there were two diametrically opposed pairs: rational, judging functions of thinking and feeling, and irrational, perceiving functions of sensation and intuition. The idea behind this distinction is that the judging functions are matters of assessment that require decision making, while the perceiving functions are related to gathering information from the world.

The Four Cognitive Functions

Jung went on to define in depth the four cognitive functions – two judging functions and two perceiving functions. The essential characteristics of the four functions are as follows:

Sensation – This is what you probably imagine when you think of the word ‘sensation.’ It refers to perception through our senses, such as us absorbing information about the world through touch, taste, sight, etc.
Intuition – This refers to background processes of our mind that we may not be aware of, such as unconscious drives or intuitions about the beliefs, desires, and motivations of other people. It is a “knowing” of information
Thinking – This refers to the rational analysis of data and the applying of logic to questions in order to draw meaningful conclusions. It is related to intellectual cognition, meaning the use of logical analysis.
Feeling – This is not the experiencing of emotion that you might expect, but rather refers to subjective estimations and the making of decisions about value. The function is still considered rational in that it is a form of assessment, but the object of that assessment is a subjective state. It is making decisions based on feelings, and relationships.

Introversion and Extraversion

Another key aspect of Jung’s model was the distinction between introversion and extraversion (sometimes spelled as ‘extroversion’). Jung believed that these two attitudes represented the ‘direction’ in which each of the four cognitive functions could be turned.

An introverted function is one that is turned inward, meaning that it operates within the interior world of thoughts and reflection. An extroverted function is one that is turned outward, meaning that it operates in the realm of the exterior world of behavior, actions, things, and other people. People who tend towards introversion gain energy from time spent alone, are thought oriented, and like to contemplate first and act later. People who tend towards extraversion gain energy from being around others, are action oriented, and are more likely to act first and reflect later.

Eight Psychological Types

The concept of eight psychological types (the eight function attitudes) comes from combining the four cognitive functions with the two attitudes. Each function can be expressed in an extraverted or introverted form, and people will be led by one function and one attitude to form their dominant personality type. This gives us a total of eight psychological types:

Extraverted Sensation – Someone who lives in the moment, taking information from the world and acting on concrete data. They pay attention to opportunities to act and they value new experiences. They tend to notice details and work with what is available to them.
Introverted Sensation – A person who takes information from the world but compares it to past experiences before acting. They rely on the past to guide them and look for links between past and present experiences. They tend to have good memories and store information for later use.
Extraverted Intuition – Someone who isn’t constrained by the current way of doing things – they look for how the world could be instead of accepting how it is. They value meaning and look for flashes of insight that tie together ideas from different contexts, and they see connections in the external world.
Introverted Intuition – This person will follow their own internal framework and fit ideas and thoughts into this framework in a consistent way, though their thoughts may be hard for someone else to follow. They think about how the future will unfold and use intuition to plot future outcomes from current situations.
Extraverted Thinking – A highly logical person who likes structure and seeks consistency from others and the world. This person follows the rules and sets boundaries, and they use guidelines to assess whether something is working or not. They organize efficiently and according to parameters.
Introverted Thinking – This person is also logical and seeks consistency, but they are far more concerned with adhering to their internal framework than with external rules. They analyze and categorize, identifying inconsistencies and they achieve precision through careful definitions of terms.
Extraverted Feeling – A person who values harmony and connection with others, who likes acting as part of a group, and who values social ties and promotes the comfort of others. They care about maintaining the values of groups and organizations and are willing to adjust in order to accommodate the needs of others. When they make decisions they take into mind what is acceptable and appropriate.
Introverted Feeling – Someone who cares deeply about values and who strives to act only in ways that are in line with their personal values. They review and evaluate actions and thoughts based on their underlying truths and are willing to stand up for truth and accuracy.

Naturally, all of us have the potential to use all these different attitudes depending on the context and our training and background. But Jung believed that each person has a dominant function which they prefer to use when thinking and acting. To find out more about how these attitudes are used in practice in personality testing, come back soon as our next post will compare two popular personality assessment tools. And you can always learn more at www.scottstedtalk.com.

Practical Applications of Personality Analysis

February 2, 2016/0 Comments/in Blog /by Scott Schwefel

Personality can be tricky. There are hundreds of tests and analyses designed to piece out the individual characteristics and behavior patterns that make us who we are. Discovering the intricacies of personality has fascinated scientists and individuals for hundreds of years, and in some ways, we are nowhere near knowing exactly why we are the way we are.

Thankfully we do have ways of knowing what influences peoples’ actions and behaviors. Empirical evidence about the human brain connected with first-hand observations and assumptions have allowed us to compile information about personality and temperament. Scientists and researchers like Carl Jung, Myers-Briggs and others have used this knowledge to create tests to label personality types for a mass audience.

Labelling temperament

Creating personality tests and labelling temperaments for a broad audience can be challenging. Most tests are designed with the empirical data backing them up in mind; they make the assumption that personality is something genetic, that we are born with. In many ways this is indeed true- we are a product of our DNA. In other ways, our surroundings, or our environment, influences our personalities. Factors like cultural tradition, family, and religion can also affect how a person thinks and behaves.

Planning for all these eventualities explains some of the differences and abundance in personality tests and temperament analyses that exist today. Each of these tests were created for a purpose based on a preferred psychological theory, of which there are many to choose from.

Some tests were set up to assist with personnel hire for companies. Human Resources departments are looking for the right people to place in the jobs where they will be the most effective. Certain personality types are suited for different kinds of work; for instance, an extremely detail-oriented person may find themselves quickly frustrated in a job where projects are open-ended and their role isn’t clearly defined. Likewise, highly creative and artistically strong individuals might have trouble adapting to a job that is rigid, not allowing them to utilize their creative thinking skills to do their job well.

Practical application

Understanding the strengths and unique qualities of different personality types isn’t just the arena of company hiring squads. Psychologists use their knowledge of human temperaments to assist with therapy to tailor what they know about their patient to make treatment plans more effective. Personality types are important when training sports teams, when teaching students in classrooms, and when traveling the world and engaging with new people.

Jung opened up an entirely new world with his discoveries, and discoveries into the psychology of personality and the self are still being made today. Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves and others. Schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker, and I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!

Analytical Observation: The Benefits of People Watching

September 22, 2015/0 Comments/in Blog /by Scott Schwefel

Many of us enjoy people watching- we like to see how people live, how they interact, and how they deal with everyday situations. The same factors that make people watching so intriguing to many of us can also make office environments that much more interesting as well. Observers, or the Cool Blue thinkers, rely on better than average observational skills and discipline to get things done both in their personal and professional lives.

Observers are very rational. They rely on facts and logic to make sense of the world and to make sense of the tasks they are given in the workplace. They depend on consistency and offer deep insights into the characteristics and behavior of the people around them.

The strengths of Observers

Observers are:

Precise
Cautious
Conscientious

They are also:

Worriers
Slow to act
Avoidant

Observers are observant of themselves and the people around them. They are good at discerning other peoples’ motivations and strengths, in addition to their weaknesses. Observers have a tendency to hire individuals who are also observers, which isn’t always beneficial. Observers are critical to a fault and, although they may be correct, often miss answer because they are afraid to be wrong. Observers are very fact oriented, but may hesitate to express their feelings or thoughts as an employee or if they are in a leadership position.

Working with an Observer

Working with an Observer as a coworker or as your boss can come with its benefits and challenges. Observers are independent and often prefer to work on their own, but create functional and interpersonal work environments. Observers are logical and seek to influence others using facts and proof, which may make them come across as uncaring or impersonal at times. However, they value others’ opinions and are typically very engaging in the workplace.

Observers, like many of us, feel pressured when they are rushed. They crave consistency and will return that consistency to their employees and coworkers when given the chance. Observers resist change, but can be brought around to the idea of new changes based on logical reasoning. When they feel like they don’t have a handle on a situation they can worry, but it is rarely about their jobs or reputation. Observers worry about how others will see them, what they are being judged on, and how they are perceived by those they respect the most.

Working with Observers is an exercise in patience and logic. Observers are stretched by social interactions and must remember that a lot can be learned when they put themselves in relevant social situations.

If you would like further help in identifying yourself or someone you know who may be an observer, schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker. I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!