Understanding Personality Types

UNDERSTANDING PERSONALITY TYPES

Knowing people is one thing that most of us commonly do but understanding who they are is another thing that we as individuals also need to develop not only to our family members, friends but also with organizations on where we are working. As individuals, we all have our unique characteristics that makes us different from one another and as we learn to meet other people we learn to know diverse personalities that are somewhat the same as who we are or almost different from our personalities. Whether you are a manager or a regular employee who is aspiring to become a manager someday, understanding personality types is very significant in managing people.Through the use of the most popular personality typology, which is the Enneagram someone who wants to get the best out of people, to allocate right jobs to right people and to develop them would be able to do this by knowing whose are in each type and what describes each personality. You will be able to know what motivates a person, what he or she loves to do and he or she does not want to do, his or her behavior, how do they execute responsibilities that were assigned to them and why there are conflicts among people. And also great managers are the result of knowing how to manage people by understanding their personality types.

As what was mentioned earlier, one of the most common used typology for human types was Enneagram in which it identifies nine basic human personality types numbered from ONES to NINES, having its own corresponding characteristics on each type. From every type that was mentioned and describe on the Enneagram model, we had able to recognize and know who they are. Ones want to work with a purpose and a goal. They want to be right as always and they are the perfectionist type of persons. The Twos on the other hand are the ones who enjoy working with other people. They are like people-oriented type of persons and can easily relate and contact with others. While twos are the helpers and givers, Threes are the types of personality who want other people to be liked and admired of who they are. Fours are the talented persons who usually stands out among the crowd because they seem to have a distinguishing characteristics that can be easily differentiate from others. Opposite from twos are the fives, if twos love working with other people, fives are the types of person who prefer to think thoroughly rather than to act. Sixes are the pessimistic kinds of people who are usually afraid of the things that are going on but are considered to be the most loyal among other types of personality. Sevens are the cheerful persons and the explorers, they always want to see and experience new things that excites them to act and to do them all at once. Second to the last type are the natural fighters which are the Eights. These are the strongest and dominant among personality types. And lastly, Nines are the ones who do not value themselves as important in the organization. They are the average type of persons who are just contented of who and where they are.

Although there are positive and negative characteristics that each personality type has, a manager who knows and understands each type that his or her employees possess would help him or her what to do when it comes to managing them and in coping up to their differences. And each typology type can still be improve or change as long as there will be a cooperation and right communication between managers and employees to achieve their goals as individuals and for the organizations as a whole.

From this different types of personality comes with the generational differences that can create a lot of issues in the organizations. Each generation is distinct from each other base on the time that they were worn and what they had experienced in those ears or generations they were belong to. These generations are divided into four, which is the Veteran, Boomers or what others call Baby boomers, Generation X, & lastly Generation Y. To describe the difference of each in the organizations, Veterans are the traditional ones who were born from Great Depression and Word War II eras. They are the persons who respect authority and those that are loyal. They are the ones who feel lucky being part of an organization because they know that their skills are common. While Boomers are the ones next to Veterans who loves to socialize a lot. They are the ones who experience to innovation and the start of changing trends in the environment. They love to interact with other people but they don’t want conflicts and they always expect to get along with everyone. Generation X are the children of Boomers they are the independent ones. They tend to be self-reliant and like to do things on their own ways. They are the creative ones and easily adopt to changes. Lastly, Generation Y’s are the product of Generation X. These are the happy, cheerful & optimistic people. They are driven by their desires and enthusiasm to contribute in the organization. They are also the most innovative among the four generations because of their exposure to the new trends and fast pace changing technologies at present. These four generations may be different on what and who they are as to what they had experience and had been through in the seasons of their lives. There may be conflicts and issues that would arise but still they have the a greater impact and positive benefit to each and every organizations.