Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Personality types

Do you know people who are excessively competitive and always seem to be experiencing a sense of time urgency? If you do, it’s a good bet that those people have a Type A personality. A person with a Type A personality is “aggressively involved in a chronic , incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and, if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things or other persons.

Type A’s

1.Are always moving, walking, and eating rapidly;
2.Feel impatient with the rate at which most events take place;
3.Strive to think or do two or more things at once;
4.Cannot cope with leisure time;
5.Are obsessed with numbers, measuring their success in terms of how many or how much everything they acquire.

In contrast to the Type A personality is the Type B, who is exactly opposite. Type B’s are rarely harried by the desire to obtain a wildly increasing number of things or participate in an endless growing series of events in an ever-decreasing amount of time.

Type B’s

1.Never suffer from a sense of time urgency with its accompanying impatience;
2.Feel no need to display or discuss either their achievements or accomplishments unless such exposure is demanded by the situation;
3.Play for fun and relaxation, rather than to exhibit their superiority at any cost;
4.Can relax without guilt.

Types A operate under moderate to high levels of stress. They subject themselves to more or less continuous time pressure, creating for themselves a life of deadlines. These characteristics result in some rather specific behavioral outcomes. For example, Type A’s are fast workers, because they emphasize quantity over quality. In managerial positions, Type A’s demonstrate their competitiveness by working long hours and, not infrequently, making poor decisions because they make them too fast. Type A’s are also rarely creative. Because of their concern with quantity and speed, they rely on past experiences when faced with problems. They will not allocate the time necessary to develop unique solutions to new problems. They rarely vary in their responses to specific challenges in their milieu; hence, their behavior is easier to predict than that of Type B’s.

Does type A differ from type B in their ability to get hired?

The answer appears to be “Yes.�? Type A’s do better in job interviews because they are more likely to be judged as having desirable traits such as high drive, competence, aggressiveness, and success motivation.

Proactive Personality

Some people actively take the initiative to improve their current circumstances or create new ones while others sit by passively reacting to situations. The former individuals have been described as having a proactive personality.

Pro actives identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs. They create positive change in their environment, regardless or even in spite of constraints or obstacles. Not surprisingly, proactive have many desirable behaviors that organizations covet. The evidence indicates that proactive are more likely to be seen as leaders and more likely to act as change agents within the organization. Other actions of pro actives can be positive or negative, depending on the organization and the situation. Pro actives are more likely to challenge the status quo or voice their displeasure when situations aren’t to their liking. If an organization requires people with entrepreneurial initiative, pro actives make good candidates.

These are the people more likely to leave an organization to start their own business. As individuals, pro actives are more likely to achieve career success. This is because they select, create and influence work situations in their favor. Pro actives are more likely to seek out job and organizational information, develop contacts in high places, engage in career planning, and demonstrate persistence in the face of career obstacles.

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