Do What You Are

A new year is fast approaching and with it mixed feelings for many people. Some people are excited about what the new year may bring, whilst others feel trapped and frustrated in their work. As one lady said to me recently, “I’m so sick of the word passion. If I hear that one more time I’ll scream.” What was alarming that this lady was a career coach, and what was even more alarming was that she had lost her enthusiasm for her work, yet continued everyday to go to work, grit her teeth and bear it.

Every year researchers map levels of job satisfaction across the nation, and odds are next year will be no different from other years, where researchers confirmed that over 43% of people dislike their jobs and over 85% of people would leave if a better offer came along. Better offers, however, are not like no.7 buses. They don’t drive past every 10-15 minutes, sweep you off your feet and carry you to your destination. Job seekers must take a proactive, focused approach to job hunting, or risk ending up in a place they never wanted to be.

Personality tools and psychological assessment can really help in the quest to determine what you want to do and where you want to be when it comes to transitioning into a new career or rekindling the passion for the role you currently have. Based on the premise of “doing what you are,” good quality assessment tools can help people gain more objective insight into they key strengths and talents, values, and motivators. Knowing what is under the bonnet makes it much easier to fine tune your high performance engine, and therefore navigate yourself in the direction that best energises you.

In addition, the more you know about yourself the better your decisions will be and the more chance you will have of presenting yourself and your natural talent in the best light to employers.

Ashley sought career coaching to help him gain more satisfaction from his current role and to think laterally about future career options. He had been in the same organization for over 15 years, and during that time had received very little feedback and recognition for his efforts. He wanted to better understand his strengths and weaknesses, areas that he could develop, and ways to better apply his skills to gain more leverage in his current role. Because he had been with his current organization for so long he also wanted help to identify how his skills applied outside of his current organization and help to be able to communicate these to a prospective employer.

Ashley was apprehensive at first about using personality profiling because of his negative experience with psychological assessments used for recruiting purposes. His Worklife Coach explained that the tools differed in that they had a developmental focus and instruments such as The Myers Briggs Personality Indicator were based on the philosophy that people know themselves best. Ashley was surprised at how accurately the results matched his own sense of self. Seeing his results in writing helped him to better appreciate his strengths and to recognize his unique talents. It also helped him to identify the key areas that needed to be fulfilled to gain more job satisfaction, and to identify alternative career paths and areas for development. “I now have a better idea of who I an and what makes me tick. I realize that by changing a few things I could be achieving so much more.”


Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI.
There are many personality assessment tools around. One of the most popular is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI.) This is a world renowned and powerful personality inventory used extensively to help people develop greater awareness of both their own personalities and those of others.

The MBTI was developed in the United Stares by a mother-and-daughter team, Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers. The Indicator is based on the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. It simplifies what can be a very complex area and provides a useful, easy to understand method and language for understanding people. By looking at eight personality preferences that everyone uses at different times you will learn more about how to get the best from yourself and also others.

These preferences influence behaviour and are divided into 4 areas:
• How people get and use their energy – through interaction with the world or inner reflection(extraversion or introversion)
• How people gather and take in information – a preference for factual, concrete information or ideas, theories and future visioning (sensing or intuition)
• Make decisions – through a logical “head” process or a personalized “heart” process (thinking or feeling)
•Organise their lives – in a planned, organized, scheduled way or in an flexible, open, spontaneous way (judging or perceiving)

While we all use each of these parts of our personality, just like we use both our right and left hands, according to MBTI theory, people prefer one of each pair over the other and will instinctively operate in this way unless they are consciously working with their non-preferred preferences. For example, if you prefer being planned and organized it is less likely that you will be comfortable going with the flow and “winging it” unless you are consciously making an effort to.


What makes you tick?
Most people struggle to work out what makes them tick and what energises them. The MBTI questionnaire guides you through a series of questions designed to help you uncover your preferences.

The questionnaire can be completed via the internet and takes about 20-30 minutes to complete. Once you have completed it the results will be complied into an extensive report.

This report is an invaluable personal and professional development tool, which provides insight into your personality preferences including:

• Characteristics of your personality type
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Natural gifts and talents
• Careers and work environments suited to your personality type
• Blind spots and areas for development.
• Communication preferences and relationship management skills
• How other people see you
• How you react under pressure and stress
•Conflict management

Only you know yourself best, and unlike other personality tools the MBTI is not considered an accurate assessment of your personality until you have had the opportunity to confirm and verify that the tool has accurately “captured” your personality. This feedback session can occur in several ways including face to face coaching sessions, email coaching and during career and/or life coaching discussions.

Personality tests and typing aren’t cast in stone but are a useful way of increasing your self awareness of self, others and of the way you naturally, and instinctively tend to think and work - and then building on that base to help you with your ongoing professional and personal development.


Take the test!
Personality profiling can bring added objectivity and clarity to the career planning process

Are you interested in learning more about your personality type? Check out the Worklife Solutions website:
or contact coaches@worklifesolutions.co.nz. Take a look at the sample report and see how detailed it is.

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