“I’m normal.”
It was a thought of complete shock and deep unyielding relief. I spend my time in middle and high school thinking there was something completely abnormal with me. I needed my alone time, I wasn’t interested in small talk, and I was driven to succeed academically but desperately did not want to be in the spotlight. Hence, no cheerleading, no dance, and definitely no 4-H modeling! This was against all the ideals we are fed when we are growing up. We are taught that a certain personality type is ideal. Outgoing and friendly with 100 friends= ultimate happiness. This was NOT my key to ultimate happiness. Give me a few close friends to relate to and talk to and then a GOAL. This GOAL is what pushes me as hard as I need to go to achieve it.
As I was sitting in that classroom at The Ohio State University in Leadership class, staring at my Meyers Briggs results and saw that I was a category that was normal…. I was a defined category! And other people that I knew were also a defined category and our interactions began to make sense like a web. It was like someone shown a light into a room that I didn’t even know existed. If I know that these are my strengths and weakness and I can recognize someone else’s strengths and weakness… than it may explain why people respond to a situation or to me for a REASON. They aren’t just doing it to annoy me (maybe), but because of their perception of their world.
If this is the case with individuals we come across, than isn’t this true with those you manage or work with? Why is it that something that you hate a work, is something else that someone else loves? Can you anticipate that when planning your team or creating a job description or setting up the day? Can we learn how to anticipate potential complications and work around them?
Take a look at the following paradigms and see what is applicable to you:
- DISC
- Most basic one to explain and easy to use. Good starting point.
- Meyers Briggs
- Very technical and more cut and dry. Still a division of the personality categories and gives a basic framework.
- The Four Tendencies
- What motivates people? How do people respond to requests and how can you convince someone about something based on how they respond to motivation?
- Enneagram
- How people think through things. A good understanding of why you make the decisions that you do and what underlying emotion feeds your decisions. However, it may be harder to identify what category each person is under because you are not apart of the inner dialogue that they experience.
- Learning Styles
- Sometimes when we explain something, the other person doesn’t get it. Sometimes when someone else explains something to us, we don’t get it. This may not be because of what someone says but how they say it. Do you like to read or listen or do to learn? Other people have those preferences as well when learning a new task!
Let me know what works and what doesn’t! Good luck on the journey!
Pigs and People 