The Person in Personality

Abraham Lincoln was a man of many quotes, and this one I think highlights the main idea about personality and how it relates to people as a group: "Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed."



In a group, it's inevitable that there'll be people with vastly different personalities, such as the extremely social extrovert or maybe the reclusive and meditative introvert.  Also, as a leader, one's own personality will have wide-ranging consequences on both leadership style and how one is perceived by his/her peers.  For example, a leader with a strong leaning towards the feeling side of their personality might be lenient with punishments from mercy and reward minor achievements, whereas a strong thinking leader would instead hand out punishments based on how severe they believe the error was and reward people only based on the amount of work the follower did.  Therefore, it's important that when personalities clash to work around and accommodate each other's differences, which is basically the purpose of personality theory.  For example, an extrovert would allow the introvert more chances to speak their mind, and feelers would remind thinkers to not always adhere to such a rigid style of thinking.

As an interesting side-note, when I was taking courses in Florida Virtual School, I was in the Leadership Service Program, which was basically the high-school version of LEAD.  There, I took a test similar to the personality test taken here.  However, it was different in that the test not only gave you a four letter code describing your personality, it also gave you a total rundown of all your high and low stats, from assertiveness to empathy to even what careers you might be most comfortable with.  That, and it was also slightly longer, consisting of 485 questions.  I've included the link below in case anyone wants to try it out!
http://www.funeducation.com/Tests/CareerTest/TakeTest.aspx