Personality

Learning Goal: Determine your personality and how it impacts your work, relationships and love of God.

Introduction

For this lesson we are going to be looking at three unique personality tests: enneagram, Abobe Creative, and Myers-Briggs (MBTI). The purpose of this exercise is to help you identify who are, how you act in certain situations, and what your biggest strengths and weaknesses are. There is great empowerment in better understanding your strengths and weaknesses, but also in how you respond in situations of stress and duress.

To bring all this together, we are going to be drafting a document that will highlight the results of each test for you as a person. Then you will write up what this means to you as a learner, worshiper, friend, son/daughter, etc.

Adobe Creative Types

The Creative Types test is an exploration of the many faces of the creative personality. Based in psychology research, the test assesses your basic habits and tendencies—how you think, how you act, how you see the world—to help you better understand who you are as a creative.

The scientific study of the creative process (and the creative personality) has arguably given rise to more questions than answers. But here's what we do know about creativity: It involves a multitude of different personality traits, behaviors, and thinking styles coming together in a single person.

Psychologists say that creative people have a tendency to avoid habit and routine—which means we're constantly changing. We often feel misunderstood because we see the world differently from others—and indeed, neuroscience shows that our brains are literally wired differently.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi concluded that a defining characteristic of highly creative people is complexity. “They contain contradictory extremes,” he said. “Instead of being an individual, each of them is a multitude.”

While creative people are master shape-shifters, we do tend to have one particular shape that best expresses who we are at our core, with a unique set of perspectives, motivations, gifts, challenges, and ways of engaging with the world and other people.

A new test called "Creative Types" aims to identify the core personality in each of us. The test's goal is to shine a light on the inner workings of different creative personalities types in a way that might help us better understand ourselves, our creative process, and our potential.

Overview of the Creative Types

OverviewCreativeTypes.pdf

Enneagram (of Personality)

The Enneagram of Personality, or simply the Enneagram, is a categorization tool that classifies human personality into a typology of nine interconnected personality types.

The symbol of the Enneagram is a figure composed of three parts: a circle, an inner triangle (connecting 3-6-9), and an irregular hexagonal “periodic figure” (connecting 1-4-2-8-5-7).

Although the classification system varies, the most commonly used typology is as follows:

  1. Type 1 – The Reformer (The Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic)
  2. Type 2 – The Helper (The Caring, Interpersonal Type: Demonstrative, Generous, People-Pleasing, and Possessive)
  3. Type 3 – The Achiever (The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious)
  4. Type 4 – The Individualist (The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental)
  5. Type 5 – The Investigator (The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated)
  6. Type 6 – The Loyalist (The Committed, Security-Oriented Type: Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious)
  7. Type 7 – The Enthusiast (The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: Spontaneous, Versatile, Distractible, and Scattered)
  8. Type 8 – The Challenger (The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational)
  9. Type 9 – The Peacemaker (The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent)

The 3 Centers

The Centers refer to one of the primary triads or fractals within the Enneagram. This triad breaks the nine points into three centers that are potentially expressed in three different ways for each individual.

Each of the centers offer us a point of contact through our sensations which enables us to be present. This requires a deepening of our relationship with all three of our centers of intelligence. As we become present to the intelligence of a center, we integrate and express ourselves at a higher level of development. At this higher level the center is transformed from the expression of action, feeling and thinking to a higher-order of body, heart and head centered intelligence.

ACTION CENTER

Doing

Hands

Instinct

Body

Gut

FEELING CENTER

Believing

Heart

Emotion

Relationships

Purpose

THINKING CENTER

Knowing

Head

Logic

Brain

Information

The Wings

The wings refer to the two types adjacent to your core type on the Enneagram circle. These close neighbors influence, but do not change your core type. If core type is like ice-cream in a bowl, the wing indicates the kind of sauce you add to your ice-cream. It is not a second type of ice-cream that you add, just the flavor of the adjacent types. We all have access to both of our wings, and each has a different set of resources and characteristics that we find helpful at times. At time, one of these wings is more familiar, or predominant. Some people don’t like to add much ‘sauce’ at all (true type or light wings), others add a lot (strong wing/s) and some add both (balanced double wing).

Lines

The Enneagram is described in a series of lines of movement or influence. These lines indicate the influences and interactions between Enneagram types, patterns of energy movement or flow. While our core type remains constant as a ‘home base’, we are also capable of travelling, or even being pulled, along these connecting lines. Each Enneagram type or number is related to those on the other end of the line, as a polarity or paradox to be lived into.

Line of Reach

- a positive response -

The line pointing away from one’s core type can be seen as the direction of security, possibility or release. Moving along this line allows us to explore the higher aspects of the connected type, opening the doorway to increased health, self-actualisation and the release of stress.

Line of Stretch

-not a positive response -

The line pointing towards one’s core type can be seen as the direction of stretch, challenge or stress. Under pressure, you may revert to the ‘lower’ or less-healthy aspects of this type, opening the doorway to potential unhealthy expression, neurosis and the magnification of stress. However, an intentional move to the high or positive side of that type may create positive stress and stretch, balancing the less-effective tendencies or reactions of the core type.

Overview of the Enneagram Types

Enneagram Types

Myers-Briggs

Introduction

Myers-Briggs personality test is an introspective self-report questionnaire with the purpose of indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world around them and make decisions.

The purpose of the test is to better understand yourself and the people around you. This personality test will help you become more aware of the gifts people hold and how to best work with them in life.

The Historical Detour

Personality is just one of many factors that guide our behavior. Our actions are also influenced by our environment, our experiences, and our individual goals. Myers Briggs describes how people belonging to a specific personality type are likely to behave. MBTI outlines indicators and tendencies, however, not definitive guidelines or answers. Significant differences can exist even among people who share a personality type. This information is meant to inspire personal growth and an improved understanding of yourself and your relationships – not to be taken as gospel.

A great deal of the research dates back to early 20th century and is the brainchild of Carl Gustav Jung, the father of analytical psychology. Jung’s theory of psychological types is perhaps the most influential creation in personality typology, and it has inspired a number of different theories. One of Jung’s key contributions was the development of the concept of Introversion and Extraversion – he theorized that each of us falls into one of these two categories, either focusing on the internal world (Introvert) or the outside world (Extravert). Besides Introversion and Extraversion, Jung coined the concept of so-called cognitive functions, separated into Judging or Perceiving categories. According to Jung, each person prefers one of these cognitive functions and may most naturally rely on it in everyday situations.

In the 1920s, Jung’s theory was noticed by Katharine Cook Briggs, who later co-authored a personality indicator still used today, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®). Briggs was a teacher with an avid interest in personality typing, having developed her own type theory before learning of Jung’s writings. Together with her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, they developed a convenient way to describe the order of each person’s Jungian preferences – this is how four-letter acronyms were born.

The Four-Letter Acronym

Extroversion

  • Cannot understand life until they live it.
  • Attitude of relaxed and confident.
  • Minds outwardly directed, interest and attention following objective happenings, primarily those of the immediate environment.
  • Go from doing to considering to doing.
  • Conduct in essential matter is always governed by objective conditions.
  • Understandable and accessible, often sociable.
  • Unload their emotions as they go along.
  • Weakness lies in a tendency toward intellectual superficiality, very conspicuous in extreme types.

Introversion

  • Cannot live life until they understand it.
  • Attitude reserved and questioning.
  • Minds inwardly directed, frequently unaware of the objective environment, interest and attention being engrossed on inner events.
  • Go from considering to doing to considering.
  • Conduct in essential matters is always governed by subjective values.
  • Subtle and impenetrable, often shy.
  • Bottle up emotions and guard them.
  • Weakness lies in a tendency toward impracticality, very conspicuous in extreme types.

Sensing

  • Feel life observantly, craving enjoyment.
  • Admit to consciousness every sense impression and are intensely aware of the external environment. They are observant at the expense of imagination.
  • Are by nature pleasure lovers, enjoyers, and consumers. Generally, contented.
  • Seek to possess and enjoy, and being observant, they are imitative, wanting what other people have and do.
  • Willing to sacrifice the future for the present.
  • Prefer the art of living in the present.
  • Are always in danger of being frivolous, unless balance is attained through development of a judging process.

Intuitive

  • Face life expectantly, craving inspiration.
  • Admit fully to consciousness only the sense impressions related to the current inspiration. They are imaginative at the expense of observation.
  • Are by nature initiators, inventors, and promoters. Generally, restless.
  • Seek opportunities and possibilities, and being very imaginative, they are inventive and original.
  • Willing to sacrifice the present for the future.
  • Prefer the joy of enterprise and achievement.
  • Are always in danger of being fickle, changeable, and lacking in persistence, unless balance is attained through judging process.

Thinking

  • Value logic above sentiment.
  • Are usually impersonal, being more interested in things than in human relationships.
  • If forced to choose between truthfulness and tactfulness, will usually be truthful.
  • Are stronger in the executive ability than in social arts.
  • Are likely to question the conclusions of other people on principle - believing them probably wrong.
  • Naturally brief and businesslike.
  • Are usually able to organize facts and ideas into a logical sequence that states the subject and key points in order.
  • Suppress, undervalue, and ignore feeling that is compatible with the thinking judgements.

Feeling

  • Value sentiment above logic.
  • Are usually personal, being more interested in people than in things.
  • If forced to choose between truthfulness and tactfulness, will usually be tactfulness.
  • Are stronger in the social arts than in executive ability.
  • Are likely to agree with those around them, thinking as other people think, believing them to be right.
  • Naturally friendly.
  • Usually find it hard to know where to start a statement or in what order to present what they have to say.
  • Suppress, undervalue, and ignore thinking that is offensive to the feeling judgements.

Judging

  • Are more decisive than curious.
  • Live according to plans, standards, and customs not easily set aside.
  • Make a very definitive choice among life's possibilities, but do not like the unplanned.
  • Being rational, they depend on reasoned judgments, their own or borrowed from someone else.
  • Like to have matters decided as promptly as possible.
  • Think or feel that they know what other people ought to do about almost everything.
  • Take real pleasure in getting something finished and out of the way.
  • Are inclined to regard the perceptive type as aimless drifters.
  • Aim to be right.

Perceiving

  • Are more curious than decisive.
  • Live according to the situation of the moment and adjust themselves easily.
  • Are frequently masterful in their handling of the unplanned, unexpected, and incidental.
  • Being empirical, they depend on their readiness for anything and everything to bring them a constant flow of new experiences.
  • Like to keep decisions open as long as possible before doing anything irrevocable.
  • Know what other people are doing, and are interested to see how it comes out.
  • Take great pleasure in starting something new, until the newness wears off.
  • Are inclined to regard the judging types as only half alive.
  • Aim to miss nothing.

Lesson Information

Student Activity

Questions

Part 1: Who are you (personality) and who do you need (matching personality)

    • State your Adobe Creative Type.
        • Strengths/Weaknesses
        • Ideal Collaborator
        • Overview
    • State your Enneagram type.
        • Center
        • Type/Wing
        • Line of Reach/Line of Stretch
        • Strengths/Weaknesses
        • Ideal Collaborator
        • Overview
    • Myers-Briggs (MBTI)
        • Personality Type (4 letters and name)
        • Strengths/Weaknesses
        • Overview
        • Ideal Collaborators
    • Overview of your findings for your personality type. How do these three world collide?

Sources