Personality and Professionalism

This is a slight turn in the direction of my usual blogs but I thought it was an interesting topic to discuss. I’m hoping for my first comments, so speak up!

Have you ever taken a personality test like Myers-Briggs? If you haven’t, I highly suggest finding an on-line version. Try this site http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp. While these tests are not a firm definition of who you are, they can be interesting especially when thinking about it in terms of your professional life.

So, is your curiosity building? Would you like to know my own Myers-Briggs results? Well, here you go. ISFJ: Introversion, Sensing, Feeling, Judging. Basically this means, I’m a fairly quiet person, who likes having a small group of friends. I am responsible, conscientious, painstaking, loyal, and work very hard to have an orderly and harmonious environment at home and work.

I have often thought about these traits and how they impact my professional career. My transition to consultancy has shown me just how well-acquainted my personality is for this profession. Because I thrive in an organized environment, what better place to work than my own home? My attention to detail and conscientiousness works well with keeping track of my own projects and basically working on my own most days.

On the flip-side, there are aspects of my personality that challenge me (sometimes on a daily basis) in my professional life. Being an introvert requires me to push myself in large groups and networking situations. Additionally, grant writing is often like putting a puzzle together and my trait of “feeling” is more concerned with the person or circumstances than uncovering the logic. Now while this trait helps me with telling the story and appealing to emotions, there are times when I struggle with exerting analytical and logic skills. So, I have to push myself in this area, reminding myself to act and think more like my husband!

My encouragement for the day is to take the test or dig up your results if it has been a while. Then think about how these personality traits impact your professional life and how you may be challenged in some areas or motivated by others. Work with confidence in who you are!