The power of self-awareness – really knowing yourself – is a wonderful thing. Being able to know how you tick and what your preferences are for tackling life can make it easier to make choices. The understanding of your personality type can also offer enormous clarity on ‘why you do what you do’ and what course of action might suit you next. There are plenty of tools using Jung Personality theory on the market with which you can uncover your Extraverted or Inverted preferences and your Decision Making and Situational Assessment preferences but I work with a tool (Discovery Insights) where you can also find out about your opposite type and how you operate best with a team or individual whose preferences are different to yours.
Adapting to others is the key to leadership work, career development and the creation of any new action plan because in most cases the emotional intelligence gains of knowing thyself need to work in tandem with knowing how to adapt to others in order to make a difference for yourself and for the greater good of the team or family goal.
Uncovering your personality type at any age can help clients tell their stories with renewed confidence in how they approach life. Working with the Discovery Insights tool helps clients feel comfortable with their position in a wheel of 72 personalities types and when they truly identify themselves they tend to start to express what they want and can achieve. This has been vital in coaching students and graduates who feel parental pressure and expectation during higher education pathway or work entry conversations. Being able to share with their parents their personality preferences for their choices is often the biggest breakthrough in increasing both parties’ motivation for achieving their goals.
Psychometric tools uncover what you know about yourself and what you may need to find out about other people in a new situation. This understanding opens doors to new solutions and possibilities. Leaders can assess how to tackle problems from new angles, perhaps based on the perspectives of others by simply accessing people in their team who display opposite preferences to them. An alternative is to work with their 'undiscovered self' as the real trick is to be adaptable enough to use our less preferred personality preferences to make a difference – it’s a powerful thing for a leader to know how to do that to win the hearts and minds of others.
Want to take the first steps into getting unstuck and succeed with a new purpose driven plan then why not start with experiencing a session of coaching where you will truly know yourself. I can’t think of a better way to start planning a change for 2018!