How to Use Personality Tests for Conflict Resolution

Not my results.

.

Can a personality test really  be that accurate?

After being intrigued by descriptions of the Myers-Briggs Personality tests written by Hunter Nuttall and Derek of iWillNotDie, I decided to take one myself.

The Test

Dereck linked to two tests, and for the sake of accuracy, I decided to take both.

.

Both tests  labeled me an Extrovert, Intuitive, and Feeling.  Once test found me Perceptive, while the other found me Judgmental.  And though I was surprised with that divergence, I shouldn’t be as there are times when I am either. 

The Results

“Idealist Portrait of the Champion (ENFP)

Like the other Idealists, Champions are rather rare, say two or three percent of the population, but even more than the others they consider intense emotional experiences as being vital to a full life.  They see life as an exciting drama, pregnant with possibilities for both good and evil, and they want to experience all the meaningful events and fascinating people in the world.

The most outgoing of the Idealists, Champions often can’t wait to tell others of their extraordinary experiences. Champions can be tireless in talking with others, like fountains that bubble and splash, spilling over their own words to get it all out. And usually this is not simple storytelling; Champions often speak (or write) in the hope of revealing some truth about human experience, or of motivating others with their powerful convictions.

Fiercely individualistic, Champions strive toward a kind of personal authenticity, and this intention always to be themselves is usually quite attractive to others. At the same time, Champions have outstanding intuitive powers and can tell what is going on inside of others, reading hidden emotions and giving special significance to words or actions. Far more than the other Idealists, Champions are keen and probing observers of the people around them, and are capable of intense concentration on another individual. Their attention is rarely passive or casual. On the contrary, Champions tend to be extra sensitive and alert, always ready for emergencies, always on the lookout for what’s possible.”

Analyze This

Hunter is engaged in an interesting experiment; he is trying to embody the opposite characteristics of his personality type.  (And having, I might add, a much harder time than he anticipated!)  Me, I am just trying to process these scant 3 paragraphs.

It’s, I would say, freakishly accurate.  Freakishly freakishly accurate. 

And, yes, you would be right – that is not exuberant joy you are reading, rather dismay. 

The Platinum Rule

In Friday’s comment thread Breanna made a fascinatingly succint observation.  The Platinum Rule, she says, is the rule of ‘doing unto others as they  would have you do unto them’. 

The mistake, she posited, is in assuming that an other wants what you want.

My experience on Friday was an exercise in the Platinum Rule, a crash course in perception.  That what I value is not what is necessarily valued by others.

An ‘ENFP’ is passionate and full of conviction and, as such, expresses and shares and teaches from this place of personal certainty.  (And, good lord, even my wedding vows talk about ‘the fortitude of the certain’!)

Conflict Management

I am not my personality; we are not our personalities.  A personality is simply a intermediary ‘program’ between our a true selves and the world that translates, filters, and communicates from one ‘world’ to the other. 

Our personalities are often a learned ‘coping’ mechanism for dealing with life.

So what truth can be gleaned from the fact that after a childhood of abuse and pain, my coping mechanism is ‘idealism’?  That my personality tends toward ‘championing’?

And how do those personal values interfere, for example, with communicating with someone whose coping mechanism is superior analysis and cold, hard facts?

Lost in Translation

Our lives will often intersect with the life of someone who is in a rough patch, having a hard time, and struggling to keep it together.  Many people when confronted with such a situation will want to help.  But if our ‘help’ is based on The Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, then you are not necessarily giving them the help they actually want.

There is nothing so painful as opening up your heart or your wallet to help another, only to be staunchly rebuffed.  Enough years of that and one would be tempted to think that people are ungrateful whiners.

Our political system is an incredible example of how differing values can create conversation that always works at cross-purposes…leading to antipathy and aggression.

Take, for example, abortion.  The arguments themselves  are labeled with the prevailing value.  Pro-Choice.  Pro-Life.  Does it mean that someone whose highest value is choice doesn’t value life?  Or that someone whose highest value is life doesn’t value choice?  No.

Could you imagine two sides coming together to find a solution  that encompasses both values?  Perhaps by making the choices better?  Imagine a girl who is pregnant and completely unready and unprepared to have a child.  What if she was presented with the opportunity to have the child, to have expenses paid and access to counseling, the opportunity to choose the adoptive parents and to work with them towards creating a home for the baby?  Choice.  Life.

Fortunately that opportunity is out there, albeit sporadically. 

The point is that the abortion debate is no debate.  It is the equivalent of two people yelling at one another.  “Choice!  Life!  Well you’re evil!  Well you’re fascist!”  And so on.

Be the Change You Want to See

We have a chance to communicate better, more fully with our spouses, our coworkers, our friends. 

1.  Understand your ‘personality’ and be congnizant of your highest values. 

2.  Realize that others will not always share those prevailing values.  That they will use the facts to bolster their understanding of the world.  That we are all, in fact, ‘narrow minded’.

3.  Identify their core value. 

4.  Then speak to that value, to their understanding and belief.

We can connect instead of clash.  We can engineer solutions instead of demanding the moral high ground.  We can finally understand that perhaps our sibling doesn’t want to be rescued, that they instead value being a victim. 

Or that our friend values having someone to take care of, someone who needs them, and thus will not cease being a sugar momma until her bank account is wrung dry.

Not every conflict can be solved with a simple value exercise. 

But can we truly understand that conflict unless we have the clearest vision of what we are fighting for?  And in so doing, understanding the real  choice before us?

The challenge is not in removing conflict from the world, but in facing that conflict with the clearest vision and unimpeded understanding.  To boldly go where personality fears us to tread.