Know your personality type



As I have trained in different forms of coaching over the last four years and become more confident within my leadership skills one thing that has had a huge influence on me is really understanding my own personality type. Coaching helps us understand ourselves more thoroughly and assists us to grow and improve in our approach to our life generally. I am a huge believer that we all need a coach within our life  and as I reflect on my passion for coaching the coaches I have had in my own life have had a huge impact. I've always had a coach when I think back - when I was playing top level table tennis, when I was cycling, running half marathons, within my workplace and my gym coach. Each coach has a different approach and I have taken a little part of everyone to make me the coach I am today. When I look back at the times that I have "lost" it's when I haven't had a coach. 

Knowing our personality type can have huge benefits to our growth. It helps us see our strengths and our weaknesses. I don't particular like the word weakness - instead I see it as something that I am not particular good at YET. But we all have our traits that make us who we are, and once we really know those strengths we can work on the other side of our personality that needs development. We may choose to not work on those things, however if we want to develop a growth mindset then we do have to have a good hard look at ourselves and put ourselves in the uncomfortable zone. We only grow when we are uncomfortable. 

My favourite personality quiz that you can take is the 16 personalities quiz. I've attached my outcome at the top. This particular quiz is very accurate. It is important that we take them in different stages of our life as we grow and change though and not believe that because this is what is showing currently is not a set point. Remember we looked at last week about Who are we becoming? 

There is such a lot of information about personalities out there but my favourites or suggestions where to start would be the following two web based ones - both of them are free to log into and give you excellent profiling. 

16 Personalities

Know your strengths

My favourite book to read (a short easy read and particularly amusing in places) is Surrounded by Idiots - a best seller and easy to find on the book shelf. This book is especially helpful as it helps us understand how to give feedback to those people who are different colours from us and how we can be more understanding of those we work with (I'm the colour Red - most def. Red which means I am headstrong but also can get frustrated when I feel that I am "surrounded by idiots) 


Have a go at one of these. By doing all 3 I have a really good understanding of who I am, how I can improve and how others around me are. Knowing these things about the people I deal with makes me think more carefully about how I approach certain people, or makes me understand why they do things the way the do. I have my personality picture on my wall in my office to remind me to take a breath and think about my actions on others and how others affect me.

Until next week (I'm posting early this week as I'm on holiday). 
Know your personality! 




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