Personalities and Relationships

Many authors have described four basic personality styles but each has used different names and developed slightly different descriptions and analysis.  My two favorites are Florence Littauer and Robert Rohm because they define the styles better and provide more details for understanding the four personalities.

Florence Littauer wrote Personality Plus: How to Understand Others by Understanding Yourself.   Robert Rohm calls his book Positive Personality Profiles.  While Littauer’s names for the four types sound like they are from feudal times, her analysis of each personality includes a way to overcome our personal weaknesses and a path to improve our relations with others.  Dr. Rohm has a simpler approach that is easier to understand but harder to put into perspective.

No matter who we are, we have something to learn from each of these types.  ~Florence Littauer

Before you read a very brief description of the four types, you need to answer two simple questions.  Please don’t belabor these answers.  Go with your gut and choose the one that fits the most, even if it’s only 51% to 49%.  It may very well be different at some other time but go with what you think today at this moment.

First, are you more of outgoing or are you more reserved?  Do you think of yourself as an extrovert or an introvert?  Do you love to be around people and express yourself or are you more comfortable on your own or watching the party from a quiet corner?

Second, are you more task oriented or more people oriented?  Do you focus on getting things done or do you worry about how everyone is getting along?  Do you take an apparent consensus as a firm decision and run with it or do you check to see if anyone’s feelings might be hurt if they don’t get a chance to say something?

Now put those two together to determine which quadrant you are in.  Outgoing, task-oriented people are in the "D" quadrant.  Reserved, task-oriented are "C"s.  Outgoing, people-oriented are the "I"s and reserved, people-oriented are the "S"s.

The following table summarizes the terms and my short description of each personality type:

YOUR ANSWERS	LITTAUER	DESCRIPTION	ROHM
Outoging/Task	Choleric	Doer, always right	Dominant
Outgoing/People	Sanguine	Talker, fun	Inspiring
Reserved/People	Phlegmatic	Watcher, get along	Supportive
Reserved/Task	Melancholy	Thinker, analyzer	Cautious

Before you get hung up on these four types, I have used this with many groups of people and they are pretty accurate.  The point, however, is not to stereotype people but to understand that we respond to events in different ways.  It doesn't mean we’re better or worse, just different.  Understanding the four types helps us accept the different ways that people act.

When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.  ~Anonymous

That’s the first rule of relationships:  seek first to understand, then to be understood.  If we can accept that others act differently than us, it is much easier to accept them as they are and build a relationship from there.  If this makes sense and you wish to learn more, buy one of those books.