If you don’t understand yourself, you can’t expect others to understand you either.

At our annual meeting for Copow yesterday, I had our team go through Jordan Peterson’s Big Five “Understand Myself” assessment. I did it as a fun, engaging exercise but also for a much deeper reason. It is critical to your success in life, and in this instance our success as a company for people to understand themselves and also understand those they work with. If I want people to work well with me and others on our team, they have to understand what personality traits drive their behaviors and what drives others around them.
(If you haven’t done this exercise I highly recommend it!)

I was sure to explain to my team that this wasn’t some sort of critique of their personalities but rather a way for them and all of us to know who they really are. It is far too common to label certain traits as “good” or “bad” which is a really dumbed down way of viewing human beings. We are complex creatures and slapping positive or negative labels into our traits is an insult to who we are.

Take for instance the fact that I score a 0 in politeness (I know, I know, big surprise;) What this means is out of a room of 100 people, I am less polite than 99 of them. At first glance someone may label this as “bad” and envision some rude, unmannered bitch who should be avoided at all costs. In truth, politeness has nothing to do with manners, which is proven by my exceptional attention to manners and being gracious to others. My lack of politeness is what allows me to challenge and confront authority, and refuse to be blindly compliant. Hmmm…that’s proving to be quite useful in our current worldly circumstances wouldn’t ya say? My extremely low level of politeness also keeps me pushing towards the top of power and dominance positions which is absolutely critical as an entrepreneur. Proving I would be miserable punching a clock at a 9-5 job working at the bottom of a corporate hierarchy. It explains why I am comfortable with conflict, which can be detrimental if I don’t use this trait as a means for resolving conflict and merely use it to seek conflict out.

My husband, in stark contrast scores a whopping 81st percentile in politeness. Explains why he avoids confrontation and is overall more agreeable. These polarities in our personality is probably a big factor in why we’ve been successfully married for 25 years. (Nearly all our traits are this extremely opposite by the way.)

There are advantages and disadvantages to every aspect of our personalities. If we understand this, we have so much to gain in life. We stop beating ourselves up so much, we stop being hyper critical of others, and we place ourselves in the right careers and around the most complimentary people. We can set ourselves up to use the best of our talents and learn how to control those parts of us that take us down the wrong path. As an employer, this allows me to match people’s nature to work that will help them thrive and avoid dying a slow death from performing tedious, soul-sucking work day in and day out. Bottom line-when people know who they are, they’re happier, more at peace, pleasant to be around and build really great shit! Like Copow;)

Unfortunately, most people have no idea who they are. They know what they DO, but they don’t have a clue as to who they are outside of what they do. Take away the role you play as…stay at home mom, financial consultant, lawyer, restaurant owner….fill in the blank and ask yourself who you are. What makes you happy? What drains you of energy and what lights up your soul? What sort of people do you enjoy being around and who makes you want to poke your eyeballs out?

If you can’t succinctly answer these questions, you have some work to do. Get to know yourself and you’ll be surprised just how much better others will understand you too.

Copow.com
Understandmyself.com