Chapter 101: Personality types

For centuries, different philosophers have had the idea that personality types fit into 4 categories. As far back as 400BC, Hippocrates talked about the 4 temperaments. His philosophy was based on how much, or how little, of certain body fluids one had. Yuck.

In 1921, industrial psychologist David Merrill came up with an alternative. Merrill realized we could usually “type” people by watching their behavior. Merrill called his types, “communication styles”, and named them:

Amiable
Analytical
Driver
Expressive

Only listed this way due to alphabetical order. These are all separate, one is not better than the other, this is not a hierarchy, and not a progression. Let me be perfectly clear here: I am going to pick on everyone. I don’t care which personality type you are, some people are going to love it, and some aren’t. Some people are going to think you are great and some will think you are difficult. I am only the messenger to tell you WHY and, most importantly, I am here to have fun with it while we learn! Fasten your seat belt.

I can hear some people saying “ummm Rob, you can’t just categorize people like this. People are complex, multifaceted and everyone has a unique personality.” To those people I say “you are correct, but so am I. So just read with an open mind and all will be clear.”

I have studied this, and lived this, for many years and realized 2 things:

There is a further breakdown of these personality types. They should be broken down into 8 categories. It goes like this:

Unevolved Amiable, Evolved Amiable

Unevolved Analytical, Evolved Analytical

Unevolved Expressive, Evolved Expressive

Unevolved Driver, Evolved Driver

People are PRIMARILY one of the four personality types. Start with that. Your personality type is either evolved or unevolved, which is WHY I break it up into eight personality types. Whether or not one knows how to be their personality type, makes the difference. Ok Rob, what the hell did you just say? I’m saying, you are (one of those four personality types) who you are. If you don’t know WHY you do what you do, then you will just do it in unfiltered and in raw form. Unfiltered and raw = Unevolved.

First, understand (I will define them soon) which one of the 4 personality types you are: Aimable, Analytical, Driver, or Expressive. Evolved or Unevolved doesn’t come into play yet. Then you will begin to know WHY you do what you do. Through understanding, time and training you will get better at being your personality type. I have said several times, and yes I’ll say it again, life is all about technique. Employ the wrong ones and you may have a tough road ahead. Employ the right ones and life becomes easier. Try to open a jar with 2 fingers. You may not be able to. Change the technique and use your entire hand. Now you can open the jar. This change in technique changed the outcome. A small change in technique may achieve the desired outcome in life too. Basically, the difference between Evolved and Unevolved is the Evolved use the right techniques to be good at being an Aimable, Analytical, Driver or Expressive. WHY I am breaking this down into 8 categories? Because an Unevolved Driver behaves much differently than an Evolved Driver. Now is where the fun begins!

The second thing I have realized is:

Everyone has a secondary behavior type and they toggle back and forth!

Your secondary behavior type is one of the same 8 listed above. Example: you could be primarily an Evolved Aimable with a secondary Unevolved Driver or you could be primarily an Unevolved Analytical with a secondary Evolved Expressive. Some combinations are rarer; however, all are possible. Some people, as an example, are primarily a Driver and are secondarily a Driver! Some are primarily an Analytical and are a secondarily an Analytical. If both are the same and both are evolved or both are unevolved, then you may never see the person “toggle” to their secondary.

The secondary behavior type comes out under certain conditions or circumstances. Everyone is different. Sometimes it comes out when one is under stress or needs to focus, maybe when one is scared, or happy, or maybe simply needs to rush to finish a task. Sometimes it can simply come out when the situation calls for it. I will revisit this once I define the personality types.

Hey Rob, wait a minute! Are you saying I chose to have a certain type of job because of my personality type? Yes! Light bulb moment! Que the first epiphany! More correctly it should be said, your job chose you because of your personality type. Now isn’t that going to bake your noodle?!

Here is our goal of what we want to figure out, in this order:

Which one of the 4 personality types are you primarily?
Which personality type are you secondarily?
Is our primary evolved or unevolved?
Is our secondary evolved or unevolved?
What techniques do I need to learn to become evolved?
What makes me toggle back and forth?
Do I have a third personality type that I toggle into?

Once you figure these 7 questions out, the world will begin to open up to you! This is where a WHY focus group can come in very handy. They can help you diagnose yourself and explain WHY. Misdiagnosing oneself is common, so ask for help to get it right. Once we figure out ourselves then we can move on to figuring out others. If you want to practice figuring out people’s personality types, watch kids. Their personality types are completely raw and unfiltered (unevolved.) They will be the purest and most pronounced form of their personality types. It is also easier to see them switch from primary personality to secondary personality.

Once we start to figure out other people’s personality types, then we can understand WHY they do what they do. We can also begin to predict behavior. Knowledge is power (said Tony Robbins) right? This knowledge and understanding is one of the keys to Capacity. More on Capacity later. Once we learn who we are and WHY we do what we do we can blend that with other people’s personality types and behaviors. WHY is this important? Because these are the people we live with, work with, want to get along with and the ones we have to raise, if we have children. Want to be a better parent or have a better relationship with your child? That is coming if you master this chapter. Once we understand who we are and who they are, we can perfect techniques on how to live with people, work with people, grow with people and get along with people. We will now have a common language we can share and use to create boundaries, explain our behavior, and explain their behavior. Understanding creates tolerance, tolerance creates acceptance, and acceptance creates peace. Understanding these will also make it clear which relationships we should focus on and the people we must wish well while we cut them out of our lives. As I mentioned above, create boundaries.

…This ends the sneak peek but there are 15 more pages in this chapter…