"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree. It will live its whole life believing that it is stupid"
I love this quote from Einstein and I remember having it going around in my head, and coming to the conclusion I was the fish being judged against skills & behaviours that weren’t natural to me, whilst my awesome swimming and fishy skills got ignored.
Have you ever felt like a fish out of water? (Ok I’ll stop with the metaphors now!)
Understanding more about who you are, and how you naturally like to work gives you that inner confidence to adapt, not change, setting yourself up for success.
One tool I love to share with my clients to help with this is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTi) personality profiling test. This test splits the world into 16 personality types and uses a four letter acronym (such as ENFP) to describe the qualities of that personality.
Letter 1: Extroverted (E) or Introverted (I)
How do you gain your energy, being alone (I) or around others (E)?
Letter 2: Intuition (N) or Sensing (S)
How we take in information, using our senses (S) or looking for patterns (N).
Letter 3: Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
When making decisions do you mainly use logic (T) or emotion (F) ?
Letter 4: Perception (P) or Judging (J)
How you see the world, structured & planned (J) or open ended (P).
I love the free version at https://www.16personalities.com. The test takes about 10 minutes to complete and identifies your personality type and lots of information about natural tendencies, motivations, typical career paths, strengths and relationships.
And don’t just do the test yourself, get your team (and even your other half) to do it too, it helps when we know those around us a little better or what they need from us too.
NOTE OF CAUTION: Remember any profiling test or personality sorting exercise has limitations. There are 7 billion people in the world and sorting into 16 groups is not going to be perfect. However, understanding our natural tendencies and those of others around us, help us to acknowledge and appreciate each others' strengths and ways of being.
What's your MBTi profile?