What is a personality profile? What’s a good profile and whats a bad profile?
You may have been asked to complete a “questionnaire” at some time or other when applying for a job. You may have been given your profile at a team building day.
PeopleMaps is a Jungian based system. But if you are unsure as to what it actually is and if you want to know how you can get an accurate version of it, then keep reading.
Your Personality Profile Is Unique
The first thing to accept is that you are unique. However each report is not. It is a good approximation of you but it is not looking at what makes you specifically unique.
Instead it looks at your preferred behaviours. It looks at what you share with specific groups of others. Here you can read about the science of personality profiling as defined by Jung.
What’s the best (and worst) profile to have?
Over the last fifty years we have become increasingly obsessed with tests. We somehow believe that tests tell us something and that they reveal the truth.
Unfortunately they tell us very little and often hide us from the truth. Many a capable student has failed a test. It’s a very poor reflection of an individuals ability.
However when we are dealing with personality there is no right or wrong answer. There is no such thing as a good or bad personality type. Let’s look at an example to illustrate this point.
Martha is a terrible team player. She has no interest in what anyone else is doing.
At first glance this could be seen as a bad thing. But what if I tell you that Martha competes in marathons and that she is fiercely competitive and self disciplined.
Now you see that her lack of interest in what other people are doing is actually a good thing. These traits help her win marathons. They may make family life difficult however.
It’s about matching the person to the environment or situation. In our example it doesn’t matter about Martha’s lack of team spirit. This is not something she should go and work on and develop. It is something she can use to her advantage as with it comes her strong self reliance and marathon runners needs lots of self reliance.
However if we were to place Martha in an open office where she was having to collaborate with a team of people every day, then she and they would find it pretty stressful.
Tony Robbins talks about the pain pleasure principle however this varies according to our type. What pains Martha may not pain you. Tony forgets to mention this.
Another place where we encounter profiling is in leadership.
It’s true that leading people is all about personality but there is no particular trait that makes for a great leader. Different people lead in different ways. It is important to recognise this.
And if you are to enhance performance then you should work in harmony with each core traits. In other words – be yourself.
We all have a preferred behaviour. Research shows that to realise our potential and enjoy great results, we need to understand ourselves better.
This article was written to help you understand more about the PeopleMaps personality profile.
