Did you know that there are 16 personality types?
There are 4 major types – the “Analysts”, the “Diplomats”, the “Sentinels”, and the “Explorers”.
And then within each of the 4 major types of personalities, there are 4 sub-types within each one, for a total of 16 personality types.
Each personality type is a combination of four pairs of personality traits.
The four personality train pairs are:
- Introversion (I) or Extraversion (E)
- Intuition (N) or Sensing (S)
- Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
- Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)
From these four pairs, the possible combinations become:
Analysts
- INTJ
- INTP
- ENTJ
- ENTP
Diplomats
- INFJ
- INFP
- ENFJ
- ENFP
Sentinels
- ISTJ
- ISFJ
- ESTJ
- ESFJ
Explorers
- ISTP
- ISFP
- ESTP
- ESFP
How to Determine Your Personality Type
There’s a really cool, free online personality test available at 16 Personalities that you can take to determine which of the 16 personalities you are.
It takes less than 12 minutes to complete the test and everyone I know who has taken the test swears by it’s accuracy.
When I took the test I found out I was an INTP personality type.
The cool thing about the website is that it also gives you a much more detailed analysis of what that personality type means.
For example, the website gives you an analysis of your strengths and weaknesses generally speaking in every area of life, as well as what your personality type generally behaves like in relationships, friendships, as a parent, on their career path and your workplace habits.
It’s pretty amazing how dead-on the personality typing really is.
You can learn a lot about yourself, and how and why you behave certain ways by understanding your personality type.
16 Personality Types And Blogging
One of the cool things about figuring out what your personality type is, is that you can gain a lot more clarity as to what kind of blog to start.
Meaning, one of the key differentiating factors to YOUR Blog, which can make it very successful, will be YOUR personality.
For example, the INTP personality type that I have is pretty rare. They say less than 3% of the population are INTPs.
That means that even if there were 100 Bloggers out there writing the exact same blog posts on the exact same topics as me, 97% of them would write from a completely different perspective than I would because their personalities are different.
What this also means is that if you have any doubts or reservations about your ability to build a successful blog, because you’re worried that maybe there’s too much competition out there, stop worrying about that.
There are VERY FEW successful bloggers out there who are going to have the exact same personality type as you, and who are going to be blogging on the exact same topics as you.
Then if you factor in the fact that everyone has a different set of reference experiences in their life, and you start to realize that there really is NO COMPETITION out there for you!
In other words, there’s NOBODY out there like YOU, with the exact same opinions as you, with the exact same personality type etc.
The other thing is that most bloggers out there are NOT aware of their personality type, and so many of them struggle because they are trying to COPY someone else’s blogging style.
For example, I love a lot of the stuff that Gary Vaynerchuk does, and I watch his videos and read his blog posts.
He’s an awesome guy.
However, Gary has a completely different personality type from me.
So even though I think a lot of the stuff that he does is just awesome, I would completely fall flat on my face if I tried to COPY him exactly.
I can learn from him, and I can apply what he teaches in my own way, that is congruent with MY personality type, but if I try to COPY him exactly – trying to pretend that I have the same personality as he does – I’ll seem completely unauthentic to my audience and I won’t ENJOY the process of Blogging.
You can’t pretend to be someone you’re not.
That is why I think it’s a great idea to find out what YOUR personality type is, and then to study your strengths and weaknesses and then use that information to help you become a better blogger.
16 Personality Types and Your MLM Team
Another area where knowing your personality type can be of great value is when you’re building a team inside an MLM organization.
Knowing YOUR personality type and the personality types of your team-mates can help you better understand them and what motivates THEM.
In most cases, what motivates YOU and what motivates your team-mates will NOT be the same thing.
For example, there are certain personality types who just LOVE social gatherings.
So for example if you are building an MLM team, and you have someone on your team who is that personality type, and you’re thinking of putting together a team event, like a pot-luck or any type of social gathering, those people will most likely ENJOY putting that event together more than other personality types like mine for example.
In my life I almost NEVER put on and organize social events. That is my wife’s specialty.
She ENJOYS doing it because it matches her personality type. It doesn’t match mine, so I do NOT enjoy doing it.
By knowing who you are, and who everyone on your team is, you can become a much better leader and team-mate.
Want to Learn More About the 16 Personality Types?
If you really want to dive into understanding the 16 personality types, you’ll want to pickup this book called “Please Understand Me II” by David Keirsey.
It’s not as “pretty” as the 16 personality types website, but it does go into a lot of depth on teach of the personality types and the interactions between them.
I bought the book about 8 years ago, when I was still working in the corporate world, and once I realized that all of my employees had completely different personalities than me, I started to better understand them.
Instead of getting frustrated with how they would act or think or what would and wouldn’t motivate them, I started to UNDERSTAND them.
This was a HUGE “aha” moment for me as a manager.
The same awareness can be applied to Blogging, or building a team within an MLM company or even your relationships with your spouse, family, friends etc.