Personalities and Work

Personalities and Work (hereinafter, the Lectio) is the second lesson part of the Nature of Occupations lesson that introduces its participants to occupations and related topics.

WorldOpp Pipeline

This lesson belongs to the Introduction to Employment session of the CNM Cyber Orientation. The Orientation is the second stage of the WorldOpp Pipeline.

Content

The predecessor lectio is What Occupation Is.

Script

For a long time, psychologists have been approaching various ideas to match personalities and occupations. Logically, artists tend to be more disruptive personalities than accountants. Vice versa, accountants tend to be more conforming personalities than artists.

No single personality framework fully describes a personality and no one can predict one's productivity at the workplace depending on the personality only. There might be no need. A successful sport team, for instance, should be a mosaic of personalities regardless of the fact that all of them would share the same occupation.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was originally developed to identify students' aptitudes toward various professions. Today, some employers collect MBTI data to match mentors and protégés.

This personality test taps four characteristics and classifies people into one of 16 personality types.

Every characteristic contributes one letter from the following pairs:

• First letter is either E for Extraversion or I for Intraversion depending on onward or inward focus,
• Second letter is either S for Sensing or N for Intuition in acquiring information,
• Third letter is either T for Thinking or F for Feeling in making decisions,
• Last, fourth letter is either J for Judging or P for Perceiving in living outer life.

For instance, ISFP would stand for a sensing, feeling, perceiving introvert.

In another attempt, American psychologist John Holland matched two personality dimensions, disruptive versus conforming and individual versus collective, with six groups of occupations. Holland's groups are artistic, conventional, enterprising, investigative, realistic, and social.

This model is called the Holland Occupational Themes. The Occupational Information Network utilizes this model in its Interests section.

Key terms

Personality, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Closing

Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or any other personality test? --Yes/No/Let's move on

Occupational Interests is the successor lectio.