Who are you?

Discovering your true personality style and accepting its strengths and weaknesses is part of the key to having healthy self-esteem.

By the time a child is 18 months old, he or she has a basic nature. One of the worst things we can do to children is to judge their personalities. For example, if both parents are analytical personalities and have an expressive child, they may not understand their child's creative expression. An expressive child will appear to be messy and have no sense of order. An analytical person has a strong sense of order and may not understand the whimsical expressive. In fact, expressives are often called "flakes" by analyticals. If expressive children grow up being called names because of their basic nature, it will affect their self-esteem. At the right, you will find a self-evaluation, which will help you determine your personality style.

We know that determining one's personality style is one of the tools that helps us understand each other, both at work and at home.

Many professional teams would be much more successful if they understood the thinking patterns of each personality. Unfortunately, a colleague may think another colleague is a "jerk" simply because they get to a solution in a different way. Henry Ford said, "The secret to success is to understand another person's point of view." One of the reasons it is so important to know another person's personality style is to make our work and personal lives easier.

One way to tell whether you are accurate about your own personality is to ask two or three people who know you to also evaluate you. Compare their results of the personality evaluation with your results. If they are radically different, you may see yourself differently than others do.

Even knowing all of this information, it is important to remember that knowing one's personality style is only one tool to human understanding. Each personality has an important place in society and one type is not inherently better than another. Some personalities are better suited to certain professions, however. The personality style is not an indicator of loyalty or dedication.

Personality evaluations in business should only be used as an aid to help us discover the best use of the employee. Understanding one's style helps us know how a person will approach people, situations, problems and decisions.

There are many ways to solve a problem and different personality styles will get to the solution in different ways. It does not mean that there is a right way and a wrong way.

Jane Boucher is an author and professional speaker with offices in Reno. You can contact her at 853-0226 or through jane@janeboucher.com.