 Do you know your personality type? Is it even that important? Stick around to find out! Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step for becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. We're exploring getting to know ourselves a little better at Evil Genius Leadership this month and today we're going to talk about personality testing and personality types. There are a lot of different kinds of personality tests and a lot of opinions on the subject of using personality testing as part of our leadership toolkit. Today we'll mostly stick to how we can use personality types to get to know ourselves better and how that can improve our relationships with other people. Learning our own personality type is a great way to get to know ourselves better and there are a lot of personality tests that can help us find out more. If you really want to get to know your personality type you can go online and find Myers-Briggs tests, Big Five tests, Color Type tests, almost anything you can think of. What's important to know about most of these tests is they're almost all based on personality art types from Jungian psychology. If you're looking for an online test you can take for free you can go to psychcentral.com and take their test. We also got a lot of the personality trait definitions for this discussion from their site. As I mentioned earlier most personality tests are based on Jungian art types and as a result you'll find that most of these tests will show you how you score on a continuum of traits. The areas that you're scored on vary from test to test but they're almost always a variation of these five traits. Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Some tests may give you results for fewer traits or have them organized in a little bit different way. For example the traditional Myers-Briggs test scores on four continuums that are aligned a little bit differently but still mainly give you the same information about yourself. Extraversion reflects a person's preference for certain kinds of social situations and how they like to behave in such situations. People high in extraversion or energetic seek out the company of others. People low in extraversion, what some might call introverts, tend to be more quiet and reserved. Agreeableness describes how we tend to interact with others especially in terms of altruism and friendliness. People who score higher in agreeableness tend to be more trusting, friendly, and cooperative than others. People who score lower tend to be more aggressive and less cooperative. Conscientiousness is how organized and persistent a person is in pursuing their goals. People who score high in this trait tend to be more methodical, well organized, and dutiful than others. People who score lower tend to be less careful, less focused, and more likely to be distracted from tasks. Neuroticism shows the tendency for a person to experience negative thoughts and feelings. People who score high in this trait tend to be more prone to insecurity and emotional distress. People who score lower tend to be more relaxed, less emotional, and less prone to distress. Openness to experience indicates a person's open-mindedness and interesting culture and art. People who score high in this trait tend to be imaginative, creative, and to seek out cultural and educational experiences. People who score lower in this trait tend to be more down-to-earth, less interested in art, and more practical in nature. When you take a personality test, you'll get a score in each of these areas which will tell you how extroverted or not you are, how agreeable or not you are, etc. Looking at all of these scores together will give you an idea of how all of your personality traits work together to make you who you are. If you get the results of your test, it doesn't seem like it really describes you accurately. Ask someone who knows you're really well to take a look at it. Sometimes it's hard for us to accept our scores when we see them black and white, but when someone we really trust reminds us of how we've approached life in the past, we can see it a little more clearly. When it comes to leadership, there's really no personality type or combination of traits that makes someone a better leader. There is some research to show a little bit of correlation, I mean a very small one, between extroversion and leadership ability. But looking back through history, many of our greatest leaders would have qualified as introverts on these tests. So if you're not extremely extroverted, don't worry about it, you can still be a great leader. The first thing to remember about personality types and personality tests, especially if you take a self-test online, is that they're not a psychological evaluation, they're just a guide to give you some more understanding of your own personality. Next, it's important that we use these tests to give us insight into our own personality and how we can grow to become great leaders, not to predict others' behavior or put them in a box that limits their potential based on their personality type. Finally, as leaders, it's also important that we don't use our personality type as an excuse to keep us from stepping out of our comfort zone or taking out new challenges or let anyone on our team hide behind their personality type. The excuse I often hear is, I'm not extroverted, I shouldn't have to do public speaking. We shouldn't let anyone, including ourselves, use this information as a crutch to avoid developing our skills. I hope this gave you a little bit more insight into the traits that make up our personalities. We should never use this knowledge as an excuse for bad behavior or an action, but it can be useful in knowing why we might be feeling some resistance to doing something we know is important for our team to succeed. Just like we explored who we are, who we want to be, and what we want out of life, knowing our personality type is another tool in our Leadership Toolbox that helps us know ourselves and develop our own unique leadership style. If you found this helpful, please share it with a friend or co-worker, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and click off on that globe to the right. That'll get you subscribed to our email list and that'll bring all of our content direct to your inbox. If you have any leadership or business questions you'd like us to answer, reach out to us on social media or email us at info at EvilGeniusLeadership.com. Thanks for watching, I really appreciate it, and remember, the future is out there. Lead the way.