Emotional Intelligence

How Does Self Awareness Affect Career Planning?

I’m pretty passionate about this topic. I’ve got a daughter who knew she wanted to be a choral teacher since the 7th grade. I’ve got a son, who has NO IDEA what he wants to do as a rising junior in high school. That’s fine of course. However, most students don’t have any idea the variety of career paths that are out there. Our school has moved away from career fair day to job shadowing day. Most kids just take the day off and are left with no idea about various careers outside of doctor, lawyer, teacher and whatever their parents do for a living.

However, to find a career that will best suit someone, it is important to know what jobs and what environments would work well with a person. Knowing yourself is the key here. We are all a blend of 4 different personality styles: D, I, S and C. Finding out which one is the highest for you will do wonders in choosing which career path you should take.

I will break down four personality styles and what should they do:

D personality style: you belong here along with the rest of 10% of population if you have never found a challenge you can’t face and you like to be in charge. D personalities are risk takers and love to be rewarder for their individual success. If that sounds like you, choose a fast-paced environment and you’re up to a great start in your career!

I personality style is someone who loves influencing others and is oozing charisma all the time. This 25 to 30% of population just wants to have fun all the time. That’s why a great career choice for an I is anything where they can express themselves, like acting, teaching or even sales.

S personality style is supporting, exceedingly kind, a kind of person that is a great friend and excellent listener. So if you recognize yourself in this go after it: your career path should involve health care, counselling, education…. Any position where you find you can lift others up as you will be remarkable at it!

And finally a C personality style: high-level thinkers, people who don’t say much but when they finally do, it is so carefully thought out that listeners are in awe. C’s are all about understanding why and organization so a career as a lawyer, doctor or engineer is a path to consider.

It is important to remember we are all a blend of all four personality types. But one of them is dominant.

That’s why not everyone is wired to go out there and perform on a high level in a pressured environment in a sales department. And that’s perfectly fine! What is important is that you have to understand yourself. If you are an I you cannot compare yourself to a D. Stop comparing yourself to others because you are gifted in areas someone else is not and vice versa.

No one is right or wrong. And I hate the saying “You do you”. But when choosing a career you can’t look at what your mom or brother or anyone else did. You got to find out where your passions are.

Quite frankly, no one fits the career path that you will choose like you will. You are a unique individual, remember that.

And in order to find that job that you would do for free and that makes you tired in a good way (and trust me, that exists!), you need to take it step by step. The first step is self-awareness. And to do that you need a tool that will give you that objective data. It can be done for an adult, teenager, kid…. You name it. Find out more in the Store and take the first step today!

By Alex Swire-Clark

The Dominant High D Personality Style

We all have someone at the workplace or at home who is always leading people around, asking for impossible tasks to be done or seems to never stop, right? Or maybe you have been “accused” of never taking it slow, or being aggressive all the time? All of the mentioned characteristics come from a high D personality style.

It starts with understanding ourselves first, then understanding others and finally adapting our behavior to the personality styles around us. In order to speak the same language, and you want that of course, it’s important to recognize key points of high D personality style: they are outgoing and task-oriented people.

To recognize a high D and understand them better, here are few of behaviors that you will often observe:

DOMINANT: They are bigger than life and they take charge. Reason? They want to be in leadership roles. They have too many good ideas to just follow someone else.

DIRECT: What comes to their mind, comes out of their mouth. They are not trying to be rude, but they cut to the chase and almost never waste time on any extra words. They’ve got places to be.

DEMANDING: They want what they want, when they want it. That’s the reason you can find them in managerial positions so often. High D’s are visionaries and extremely innovative. Think of Walt Disney, a guy who kept getting knocked down but never stopped until he reached his goal. Not just that, but the world he created is so innovative that there was never anyone else like him. Perfect example of a high D.

DECISIVE: If you could describe them through a phrase, it would be one of these: “Put up or shut up”, “Fish or cut bait”, “Do something or move out of the way”. In the business world, they love to get a return on investment, and they can’t have that if they are not really decisive and brave about making every decision.

DETERMINED: They are huge challenge lovers and love to win. A good example is Bear Grills or contestants of Survivor. They are wired to persevere until they achieve their goal. Generally speaking, if you want something done, give a high D a challenge and say “I don’t think you can get it done”. This will be the fuel that will push them to not stop, not sleep, not eat until they achieve the goal.

DOER: People who fall into the high D category tick a lot of boxes on a daily basis. They love to get things done during their long days. Even if you think that’s not a proper way to lead life (getting up before 5am and going to bed after 1am), you have to understand this is their natural habitat and they adore it.

Did someone come to mind while you were reading this? Or you just ticked every box next to this description thinking of your own behavior?

Whatever the answer is, it’s the correct one! The point is to be self–aware and to understand others better.

To understand high D even better, check out my Podcast about this subject to get some practical examples from the high D life and ways on how to communicate with a high D, avoid conflict or how to adapt your high D behavior so that people understand you better.

Find the podcast HERE.

To find out are you a high D, check HERE.

By Alex Swire-Clark

How do high S personality styles avoid conflict at work by helping others?

Do you have a Sally in your office? You know, just someone whose name you hear very often through the day. Usually in this manner:

– Hey Sally, can you do this for me?
– Absolutely! 100%. I got you.

Two minutes later you hear someone else going:

– Hey Sally, can you help me with this presentation to make sure everything looks good?
– Sure! Glad to help you.

It’s not about the name though. Not all Sally’s are super helpful. That person might be called Jane, or Bob, or Derek. But one thing is for sure: it’s a person you can rely on to help you at any time you need them to.

Did you ever wonder why they do that? The reason is they are building a relationship with you by helping you. The ancillary benefit to them is that they create advocates within their organization so that when stress comes along for them, they will be more likely to ask for help from others. But don’t think their help is false: they are actually super helpful and super kind. A typical example of an S personality style.

Being an S personality style is not easy, though. They so often suffer from analysis paralysis. They feel the conflict in themselves: who to help first? Where to start? I also have my things to do. How can this be solved?

If you want to “help the helper”, make sure that the S’s in your organization; whether you’re working with them, or for them, know what’s on the plates of the people that they’re working for.

It is (well, not just because of S styles) important that it is known in your department who’s reporting to who and what time they’re supposed to be doing what, what are the parameters, what’s their job description.

“Sally” in your organization will benefit tremendously from this. “She” wants to help everyone, but can’t necessarily do that all the time. Giving that little bit of clarification for that S personality style in the means of prioritization will go a long way both for them, and your team as a whole by working together. Teamwork makes the dream work, right? Cheesy? Yes, but it is true. Find out more about finding that perfect balance of having an S style finishing their job and helping others as well HERE in my podcast, or on my YouTube channel.

_{Featured image source: Business photo created by yanalya – www.freepik.com}

By Alex Swire-Clark

What is a DISC Personality Test?

The DISC personality ASSESSMENT is the only test where there are no right or wrong answers. It is actually an assessment of your observable, predictable, fully measurable behavior.

You see, some of us move fast, and some of us move a little bit slower, some of us like to organize things and some of us love having fun with others. Regardless, it’s all about being self-aware. The key point is to remember is: EVERYONE IS A UNIQUE BLEND OF ALL 4 OF QUALITIES THAT DISC ASSESSMENT SHOWS.

If we want to look at where it all started, we can go way back to 400 BC and Hippocrates. But to keep things more modern, let’s jump ahead to 1921. Carl Jung wrote the book, Psychological Types. He suggested a human behavior model that has four types of personalities in terms of who we are and how we do what we do.

Move ahead then to 1928 and William Moulton Marston. He published a book, Emotions of Normal People. He described the 4 personality style theory, he sharpened the concept that these 4 personality styles define who we are, and that they are measurable, predictable patterns in terms of how people do what they do on a normal daily basis. This is the model we use today.

DISC personality assessments became even more popular during WW2. The US Army used this as a tool to hire and to put the highest performing people in officer positions and others where they would be the best fit in the organization. From there, the Government leaked that information in the business world and businesses have used that info in HR since that time.

How does this transform our everyday life? Let me share an example from my personal life that gave me decades of happy marriage and blessed my life with five crazy kids:

Back in 1997, I was a teacher, working at a summer camp. One day I came home and found my wife crying at the edge of the bed. The reason? She said: “Alex, I just don’t understand you.” It struck me as odd, but I asked her to give me an example. She said, “Why I can’t get all the groceries from the grocery list that she gives me. There are only 10 items.” It was a fair point. I then was curious why she couldn’t be a bit more flexible and spontaneous? We had this exchange back and forth asking more and more questions over the next few minutes. We got to the point where we were only two years into our marriage and realized we didn’t know each other as well as we thought we did.

In the midst of it all, that summer in the camp I met Dr. Robert Rohm. He handed me a personality assessment and said it would change my life. I didn’t really think it would, but I still filled it out. I found out that I am a people-oriented person who likes to have fun with tons of different people. I care about others’ wants and needs more than my own, and I really enjoy life. But that wasn’t the point. What really struck home with me was: that’s me but that’s not my wife! So I took the assessment home and gave it to my wife. We found out she is a task-oriented, very driven individual. A polar opposite of me and my personality style!

Having that knowledge allowed us to adapt our behavior and meet in the middle; not to have a conflict there but to mesh, get along better and understand our roles better. In short: it made us tremendous marriage partners. We are perfect complements of one another!

Would you like to stay married for 25 years with your spouse? Understand your children better? Do you want to help your aging parents in difficult times even if they think of money and security differently than you do?

If those things sound good to you, you need to take a DISC assessment.

It’s an assessment that is above 90 percent accurate in terms of predicting behavior. To get that above 90 percent accuracy you need to get a quality assessment. A link to my assessment store page is HERE.

If you would like to research a bit more, find all the information on my Podcast or YouTube channel.

By Alex Swire-Clark

How Can High I Styles Avoid Conflict At Work?

How do High I styles avoid conflict at work? By getting their party on of course!! Check out this week’s podcast to find out more and help your High I styles be successful!!

Emotional Intelligence

Concise Adult Version