I mentioned the easy way to determine personality type or the DISC system. To review we covered the graph that outlines the four different personality types.
In this post I'll wrap up by talking about the following
- Some famous examples of the personality types
- What the personality types need to be happy
- What you can do to get on a person's bad-side - quick
Dominant - Donald Trump, Dick Cheney, Gen. George Patton & Steve Jobs - These men are all very task-oriented and driven personalities. They are all leaders or have been leaders of organizations either today or in the past.
Influencer - Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, George W Bush, Ellen DeGeneres, Tyra Banks - These individuals are outgoing and all about relationships. If you had ten of these people in a room they would turn it into a party in under 10 minutes.
Supportive - Princess Di, Johnny Carson, Mary Tyler Moore, Beyonce. - These are the reserved and relationship oriented individuals. These type of people like to go with the flow and get to know people on a very slow and gentle pace.
Cautious - Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Ross Perot, David Letterman & Steve Wozniak - These types like to do their research and therefore like to know the answer and therefore are usually right and will not hesitate to let you know.
What the personalities NEED to be happy/content:
Dominant - Need to be in control and achieving goals. - Dominant personality types live for achieving their goals. They get a kick out of making to do lists they LOVE to be at the head of the table giving orders. If you can help them get closer to their goals or bring them more influence and power over others they will respect you more and more.
Influencer - Need variety and people lots and lots of people - This personality type just gets off on being around people. They love to meet new people, crack jokes and try new things. This personality type also loves to talk. If you can think of your friends who have the gift of gab and are always the center of attention - this is a Outgoing Relationship-oriented Influencer.
Supportive - Need stability - Supportive types love to keep things the way they are. They get annoyed when things change too much or more importantly too soon. They want everyone to get along and to avoid drama in their lives as much as possible.
Cautious - Need to be right - This type is very reserved yet calculating in their approach. They love to think and learn and research. This personality type gets a kick out of learning all the details about a subject - sometimes to the point of overkill.
What you can do to piss off these personalities
Dominant - Try and boss them around and/or waste their time - If you want to see a screaming match - put a bunch of Dominants in a room and then make a Supportive person the boss. They will run over the person in a matter of seconds and then duke it out over who's really in charge. Another way to upset this personality is to him and haw over decisions or tell a long drawn out story about your weekend before immediately getting down to business. If you read the 4-hour work week - +Tim Ferris a definite Dominant type goes into detail on how to get rid of time wasters (likely Influencers and Supportive) while attempting to get work done.
Influencer - Isolate them or embarrass them on a grand scale - These people run on the energy of other people so if you put them on a deserted Island and forced them to get along alone they would likely get really depressed until they discover a scuffed up volleyball to make their new best friend.
Another way you can piss of an Influencer is to embarrass them in front of their peers. Unless you're an Influencer yourself beware of this - this type will likely do an ingenious job of reducing your influence in the world if you come after them. Recently an Influencer I know was insulted behind her back. Within minutes, the person who insulted the influencer was second-guessing her gaffe as the influencer found out from the very person the insult was shared with. The Influencer then went on to gradually change people's opinion surrounding the offending party - including my own opinion - in a matter of minutes.
BONUS - a final way to not so much piss off but definitely disconnect with an influencer is by focusing on nitty gritty details and fine print like a Cautious personality might do.
Supportive - Be rude, insensitive, yell or scream at them - Supportive people like to go with the flow and can't deal so much with insensitive or rude people who might attempt to belittle them. They also really get offended when they are being yelled at.
Supportive types love to "stay the course" so to speak. That being said last minute changes are close to unbearable to this personality type.
Cautious - Tell them that they're wrong about something they know and/or believe in - The Cautious type has done their research or at least all the research they care to do on any given subject their interested in so when you tell them they're wrong about something they will not only be offended that you could possibly think they could be wrong but, they will go out of their way to prove you wrong. This goes for the sports fanatic, the sci-fi movie buff and without a doubt certain fictional, L.A. -area scientists.
So how did me and Nancy finally start to get along - even though we're on the opposite end of the spectrum?
Since I'm mainly a Cautious type, and Nancy is mainly a Influencer it is easy to see how we could possibly disagree. But there were two saving graces:
1) I can get out of my Cautious mood when I'm done with my work
2) Nancy (and most Influencers) have a way of getting people to warm up to them
So we would ride the train home from work since my cautious personality was done doing all the work I had to do. And my friend would sit and crack jokes or tell stories or make friends with strangers before we had to part our ways.
So what does this all mean? Simply that we all have different personality types and to work with opposing personality types we have to accommodate for the wants and needs of the people around us.
If you'd like to learn for sure what type of personality you have - Check out this test from "48 days to the work you love" - one of my favorite podcasts.
If you'd like to learn more about personalities in general - check out these links:
http://www.squidoo.com/staymotivatedpeople
http://www.corexcel.com/articles/html/disc_personality_types.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment
So what do you think? Was this helpful? Informative? Was it terrible? Let me know in the comments below.
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