Who Are You?

The first step toward collaboration is to truly understand yourself. When you are aware of your strengths, weaknesses and how you interact with people, you open the whole world of understanding who you are and how others perceive you.

The key to understanding yourself is to have a basic understanding of psychological types. There are many books and assessments that are extremely valuable in helping you get a clear understanding of your personality, and if you haven’t taken an assessment lately, I recommend that you do.

If you’ve ever taken any personality assessments, you are probably familiar with Carl Jung’s four basic psychological types, based on the attitudes of extroversion and introversion and the thinking and feeling functions. The four types are expanded into more subtypes types when sensing and intuition are taken into consideration. But, to keep this simple for my newsletter, I’m going to stick with the basic four.

All types are great. No one type is better than the others, and we need all types in this world because each one has great strengths.

You will find that you have some of each of these types in you, you just prefer to use some more than others. Some people are very strong in one, but most people use a combination of two or more.

Here are Jung’s four basic types and with a brief description of their general characteristics.

I suggest you print this newsletter and do a self-assessment by giving each type a number from 1-10, using a different number for each one.

Save this sheet so you can refer to it for my future newsletters.

Rate Yourself	TYPE	Characteristics
	Extroverted Thinking	Efficiency is key. You are usually assertive, strong-willed, competitive and like to be in control. You set a goal for a project and begin work quickly with a mindset to reach the goal in the most efficient manner. You love tough challenges and are vey focused on the task. You demand a lot of yourself and others.
	Extroverted Feeling	Enjoying what you do is key. You are usually cheerful, outgoing, and enthusiastic. You like interacting with people in large groups. You shine at brain-storming because enjoy throwing out lots of ideas without filtering them and tell long, colorful stories, painting an image of what things will look like in the future. You have lots of people you consider friends when you may know them only casually. You love to juggle lots of projects at once. People see you as a cheerleader, giving out positive, enthusiastic compliments and encouragement.
	Introverted Feeling	Doing what will please others and creating harmony is key. You are usually patient, caring for others and calm and your values drive your actions. You are a great listener and put other’s needs before your own. In a group situation, you strive to make sure others are heard and are comfortable. You make deep, lasting relationships and are very loyal to friends and co-workers. People see you as friendly, sincere, and someone quietly supportive that they can count on when they need you.
	Introverted Thinking	Accuracy and logic is key. You are objective, deliberate and analytical. You have a preference for structured, organized situations. You work best alone, in a quiet environment with few distractions. Your worst fear is making a mistake so, you do lots of research, analysis all possibilities and check everything several times and make sure it’s perfect before you consider it done. You ask the difficult questions to make sure you have all the information you need before you share your ideas or begin to accomplish a project. People see you as very thorough, knowledgeable, analytical and quiet.

There are many assessment tools. Some are based on Jung’s four basic types, and others are not. This is how the most popular assessment tools coordinate with Jung’s types.

I will be referring to the Insights Color energies in my other newsletters since that is the one I feel is easiest to relate to because of the colors.

Jungian Type	Insights Discovery	MBTI	Wilson	DISC
Extroverted Thinking	Fiery Red	ET	Driver	Dominance
Extroverted Feeling	Sunshine Yellow	EF	Expressive	Influence
Introverted Feeling	Earth Green	IF	Amiable	Steadiness
Introverted Thinking	Cool Blue	IT	Analytical	Compliance