Personality types are the way forward
Thereare approximately 7.6 billion people in the world, and we are all different and unique. Just think about how different you and your siblings are from each other.
However, there are some personality traits that transcend a person's cultural background and are very similar across the world.
So how can we group them? One of the most commonly used systems to categorize different personality types is "The 16 Personalities" (you can take the free test here if you're curious). The model divides people into 4 major groups, i.e. Analysts, Diplomats, Guardians and Explorers, which are respectively organized into 4 sub-categories based on specific traits.
This not only means that people have different personality types, but also that they communicate very differently. In this way, their personalities affect, for example, how they relate to the people they communicate with and how they interpret signals. You've probably found yourself expressing your emotions very differently than other people. For example, let's say you're angry with your wife and you might prefer to talk about the problem, whereas she might prefer to stop talking to you and give you the "silence treatment" for a few hours.
Ergo, to achieve effective communication, it's important to understand who the other person is and adapt the dialog in terms of tone of voice, scope of information, etc. Some people prefer to communicate information in a sensory and logical way, whereas an emotional and conceptual way is more effective for others.
Weare all different individuals
Thisdifference stems from Carl Jung's Extraversion-Introversion Personality Theory(1971), where people's attitudes depend on how they prefer to use their mental abilities. His theory is: "that each individual seems to be more energized by either the external world (extraversion) or by the internal world (introversion)". In addition, he has introduced a pair of judgmental functions to process inputs such as thinking and feeling- rational people, and a pair of perceptive functions such as sensing or intuition- irrational people. A person's extroversion or introversion influences whether they are more likely to interpret the world through thoughts and feelings or sensations and influences.
Based on Jung's personality theory and the "16 Personalities" system, the Human Metrics diagram below summarizes how we can best communicate with different personality types. The first letter in the diagram stands for the preference of general attitude such as "S" for Sensual or "N" for Intuition , while the second letter is the preference of sensual-intuition: "T" for Thinking and "F" for Feeling. If you want to know more about the different personality types, click on the link above.
So next time you want to communicate more effectively, think about who you're talking to and whether you should make a joke before introducing the topic you want to talk about, or whether you want to get straight to the point and show your colleague a graph.
Read also: meeting management
"The 16 Personality Types" are effective to use when giving feedback to others because it's easier to give feedback to someone whose personality type we know. We get our message across better and it's easier for the recipient to understand our intention with the feedback as it becomes more targeted. It's all about learning. It's about learning how to communicate appropriately so that we can pass on impressions.
Situations where it might be smart to focus on this; when we receive feedback from our employer, at the annual MU interview or when we spar with each other at work, etc.
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