One of my favorite topics to study is that of personality types and personality profiling. I have found it to be invaluable in allowing me to get a read on the people I am speaking with as well as gaining introspection to myself. I am one of the unusual types who has one very overwhelming personality style. Most people are a close blend of a couple but I am firmly in one quadrant.
As entire books have been written on the subject of personality profiling, I am going to break this down into a series of articles so you will have to keep coming back :)… what a shame I know. One of the first lessons that I learned was that if you are not able to put yourself in the shoes of a person you are speaking with you are really only able to communicate with about 25% of the population. Or the group of people who share your personality style.
There are many names given to the personality styles, some prefer to give them colours. I use the names in which I first learned them from a book called Personality Plus by Florence Littauer. She calls them 1. Powerful Choleric 2. Perfect Melancholy 3. Peaceful Phlegmatic 4. Popular Sanguine.
Stay tuned and I will talk about the 4 types and how to best deal with each one.
Cheers,
CB