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Factor 3: Your Personality Type

Without understanding your personality type, you risk landing in roles that don’t fit your strengths. Leading to frustration, poor performance, coming in at the bottom, being sacked for underperformance and frequent periods of unemployment.

Other implications include being passed over for promotion, seeing others around you excel, hitting a plateau in your working life, and experiencing stalled earnings.

Ultimately, knowing yourself means unlocking your full potential rather than feeling stuck, overlooked, or under-rewarded.

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Simply put, leading organizations achieve stronger leadership and people performance by integrating personality assessments throughout hiring, promotions, selecting project leaders, change managers and transformation consultants, and employee development. Furthermore, taking a personality profile test and understanding your own traits can be even more beneficial to you, as an individual, empowering you to develop yourself and realize your career opportunities more fully.

Personality Types

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Different people and organizations define personality types in various ways, often using four or five key traits. Despite the differing terminology, most approaches describe similar characteristics. The image below shows one of the most widely recognized models. Which of these traits resonate most with you?

What These Traits Mean

Introversion or Extroversion

Extraversion

Characteristics at work:

  • Energized by group interaction, teamwork, and visible collaboration

  • Enjoy open communication, networking, and sharing ideas out loud

  • Thrive in fast-paced, dynamic, and social settings

Typical job activities:

  • Leading meetings or group discussions

  • Networking, sales presentations, client-facing roles

  • Taking part in team projects and cross-functional task forces

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Introversion

Characteristics at work:

  • Prefer solo work or small, focused teams; value concentration and depth

  • Thoughtful, reflective, and reserved in communication

  • Excel when given space for independent research and analysis

Typical job activities:

  • Individual projects, research, and planning

  • Deep work—analytics, coding, writing, technical tasks

  • One-on-one consultation, mentoring, or specialized expert roles

 

Sensing or Intuition

Sensing

Characteristics at work:

  • Detail-oriented, practical, and systematic

  • Rely on proven methods, past experience, and concrete evidence

  • Excel in roles with clear procedures, instructions, and factual data

Typical job activities:

  • Managing operational tasks, auditing, quality assurance

  • Data entry, record keeping, technical maintenance

  • Implementing established processes, following guidelines

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Intuition

Characteristics at work:

  • Innovative, strategic, and big-picture focused

  • Enjoy solving complex problems, brainstorming, and envisioning possibilities

  • Thrive on variety and new ideas, drawn to future-oriented projects

Typical job activities:

  • Ideation, product development, strategic planning

  • Creative writing, marketing campaigns, design-thinking

  • Research into future trends, vision setting, change leadership

 

Thinking or Feeling

Thinking

Characteristics at work:

  • Logical, objective, and analytical decision makers

  • Value efficiency, facts, and direct feedback over personal feelings

  • Prefer roles prioritizing problem-solving, systems, and technical competence

Typical job activities:

  • Data analysis, engineering, finance, IT

  • Making decisions using pros/cons, logical frameworks

  • Leading process improvement, negotiations, and project management

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Feeling

Characteristics at work:

  • Empathetic, supportive, and people-centric

  • Value harmony, morale, and interpersonal connection

  • Excel in collaborative or service-oriented roles

Typical job activities:

  • Conflict mediation, coaching, HR, counseling

  • Team building, client support, teaching

  • Community engagement, arts, and creative projects

 

Judging or Perceiving

Judging

Characteristics at work:

  • Organized, dependable, and structured

  • Prefer clear expectations, plans, and deadlines

  • Thrive in environments valuing goal-setting and punctuality

Typical job activities:

  • Project management, law, accounting, operations

  • Leading teams through processes, ensuring deliverables

  • Creating schedules, checklists, and progress reports

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Perceiving

Characteristics at work:

  • Adaptable, spontaneous, open to change and ambiguity

  • Work well when multitasking and improvising

  • Prefer jobs with loosely structured, evolving responsibilities

Typical job activities:

  • Freelance work, creative projects, journalism, advertising

  • Crisis management, troubleshooting, event planning

  • Brainstorming new solutions, working in rapid-response teams

A Bit Of Both!

When you look at personality types, you’ll probably spot parts of yourself in both sides of each dimension.
That’s completely normal — none of us fit neatly into just one box.
You might enjoy people and connection, yet still value time to think things through on your own.
Or you may prefer structure most of the time but show flexibility when the situation calls for it.
The key is that while you’ll lean more strongly toward one side than the other, you still carry traits from both — and that mix is what makes you unique.

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Your Watch Outs

Even your strongest personality traits can have hidden downsides if you rely on them too much, while low scores in some areas can leave you vulnerable to blind spots.

Stay curious about what you may have missed—talk to people who know you well and ask how your behavior comes across, both positively and negatively.

Sometimes what you view as a strength might also create challenges you don’t see, so it pays to look a little deeper.

Unpacking Personality

What your profile means for your career choices and success, and shortcomings!

Your natural bias shapes the type of work you prefer – and how well you perform it. If you’re an extrovert, you’ll thrive on interaction and may be drawn to roles with plenty of people contact such as leadership, sales, consulting, or training. Conversely, if you’re an introvert, you’ll prefer working independently in roles such as research or analysis. Whatever your type, you’ll have your own mix of strengths and shortcomings. ​Extroverts, for example, may excel at influencing but can be more error-prone than their introvert counterparts. Some people are superb with detail and accuracy, while others prefer structured processes. Then there are the big-picture thinkers and change-makers — great at generating ideas, but not always consistent at seeing them through. ​The point is: there’s a place for every personality type. Whether you lean more toward extrovert or introvert, sensing or intuitive, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving — every strength is needed. You have your strengths, and so do the people around you. Where you fall short, they can support you — and where they fall short, you can support them. ​If you’re a manager, the key is to build a team with different types of people. Assign them to work that suits their natural style, and encourage collaboration so they complement each other’s strengths, bridge skill gaps, and perform better together. ​Understanding personality types in your team enables you to harness individual capabilities and close any gaps — turning diversity of style into collective strength.

What next?

Jot Down In Your Note Taking App
What's your personality type?

  • Record your key traits in your note-taking app.

  • Your traits will likely resemble some of those listed below.

  • Most people aren’t 100% one trait, such as an extrovert or introvert, but tend to lean toward one side more than the other.

  • Note your main tendencies and, if relevant, add a few personal observations.

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The most widely used personality models and their associated traits include: Big Five Personality Test – Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) – Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I); Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N); Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F); Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P). DISC Assessment – Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness

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If you haven’t taken one before, try a free test online—or consider which traits describe you best.

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AAA. Key reminder for author of this site, to update links in the 12 Factors Program User Guide to this test once ready for release.

 

Ready to proceed to the next of the 12 Factors?

Your Competencies
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BTW. This is where this program starts to get interesting

Because your personality type shapes your Gravitas, Impact & Influence.

These being qualities that shape your effectiveness at work, your success, your career growth and ability to lead, and inspire people.

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The way you communicate, lead, and influence is strongly shaped by your personality type.

 

This shows up in dimensions such as:

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  • Extrovert, Ambivert, or Introvert

  • Intuitive, Hybrid, or Analytical

  • Too Strong, Balanced, or Too Weak

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How well you apply these traits will directly affect your status, performance, and readiness to pursue new career paths or promotions.

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You may also wish to revisit our guidelines on Gravitas, Impact, and Influence. For most professionals, applying even a few of these principles can create a powerful step-change in career progress.

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For now, your priority is to keep working steadily through the 12 Factors framework.

NB. There's A The Subtle Overlap: Personality Types and Competencies

Personality types and competencies often overlap since both shape how we behave and perform at work, but they’re not the same. Personality reflects stable preferences—how we naturally think and interact—while competencies are measurable skills that can be developed over time. Personality provides the foundation; competencies show what you consistently deliver. Understanding both reveals where your strengths lie and where focused growth can make the biggest difference.

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