Knowing Your Personality Type & Love Language to Be a Better Business Owner
Episode 098: Show Notes
Ever wondered, “How do they work together?” Well, this is a question we get asked a lot on the show and the answer may not be as simple as you think! How do we divide tasks? How do our personalities work well together and where do we struggle? How do we deal with stress? Today, we are embarking on a journey of self-discovery – digging into personality types, astrology and just a bit of “woo-woo-ness.”
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Knowing how your brain, body and personality work can be an empowering tool to strengthen yourself, your team and your business. So we hope that by the end of this episode you might have learned something about your own self; your characteristics and how they affect the way you make decisions and interact with others in your business. If you are looking to improve your relationship with yourself and with others, then this episode is for you! Take a listen.
Personality Types
We are huge fans of the Myers Briggs personality tests. We like to take them ourselves, and get our team to take them as well so that we can better understand the people we are working closely with. This information can be really helpful in understanding people and why they do the things that they do. Surprisingly, we are both the same personality type, which is INFJ. However, we are both varying degrees of INFJ. When it comes to astrology, Abbie is a Virgo and Emylee is a Libra. We are both September babies but we fall under different signs. This is what helps differentiate our INFJ personality types. We are also both firstborns and we’re obviously both women. All of these things might make us very similar, but on the other hand, our love languages are polar opposites. Abbie is more words of affirmation and then physical touch. Whereas Emylee is an introvert at heart and needs less physical contact. Taking a simple personality test can help us on our journey of self-discovery and give us a jump-start into understanding the minds and emotions of those we work with.
Dividing Tasks and Assuming Roles
Although we are so similar, things manifest in us differently. Where one of us is really strong, the other may not be, and so fitting into our different roles in the business came almost naturally. Where Emylee might be working on writing and words, Abbie might be setting up systems and technology. Abbie, in her Virgo-ness, is confident in making decisions after doing tons of research on her own, in order to investigate every aspect of an argument or decision. Whereas Emylee, in her Libra-ness, is confident in making decisions off-the-bat, trusting that she will just “make it work” because, well, she has to! Both decision-making processes have been beneficial to our business. There has to be a balance between taking time to think something through and making snap decisions. And both of these methods have been important in the success of our business.
The Neuroscience of Decision-Making
We all know that the more you hang out with someone, the more you start to emulate them. The people we surround ourselves with affect our moods, our thought patterns and ultimately, our entire environment. This affects our entire reality even more than we think. For us, the question we had to ask ourselves was: “How do we take the features or characteristics of the other and use them to benefit my life and work methods?” Your level of happiness is determined by the people you are surrounded by – not your job, your paycheck, or a nice fancy house. Leaning on these people, whether they’re a life-partner or a business partner, relieves us from decision-fatigue. Constantly making decisions can be pretty draining. But if the decision-making is shared, over-time, you feel lighter. It takes some of the weight and pressure off. If you are able to minimize those low-level decisions, you are able to conserve your energy for when you have much bigger decisions to make. Decisions that have higher stakes. Decisions that are going to move your business forward. This is the power of a partnership!
How Different Personality Types Deal With Stress
Knowing what stresses your business partner out and how you can help them feel less stressed can radically improve your relations in times of crisis or high stress. When some of these stressors occur, there are a lot of tell-tale signs. Both of us, at some point in our lives, have had eating disorders and the article we refer to in this podcast specifically talks about binge-eating and excessive exercising. To quote from the article, “If they are under chronic stress they may fall into the grip of their inferior function: Extroverted Sensing. When this happens they may engage in indulgent, self-destructive habits like binge-eating, watching too much TV, over-exercising or drinking too much. This often feels like an out-of-body experience to them and provides no pleasure whatsoever.” Spot on. “After this occurs, they dwell in self-hatred, guilt and become uncharacteristically angry, unreasonable and irrational.” If this sounds at all familiar, we highly recommend taking a Myers Briggs test. You will learn so much about yourself and your partner. If you begin to understand these things it becomes so easy to spot these behaviors and support one another during stressful times.
Managing Conflict in the Team
As kids, we are taught to “treat others the way you want to be treated”. But as adults, we are dealing with so many levels of complexity, that perhaps we need to treat others the way they want to be treated. For example, you cannot expect to help your partner in the way you would prefer to be helped, because that is not going to work for them. And vice versa. You are just too different. If there is conflict in the team, by taking a bit of time to understand, research and be observant of your team members, you can be better equipped to deal with the situation at hand. It’s about taking the opportunity in a crisis to learn more about your team members, their personalities and their love languages. It’s about recognizing what they need out of the situation, rather than what you need.
Dealing With Stress
We often believe that being uncomfortable automatically means “bad”, but it actually means “aware”. Once we are aware we have so much more control and can make so many more connections to things. Being open to and aware of your own body, what’s going on in your life, what’s going on in your head, your emotions, and different energies will play a part in your relationship with yourself, others and your business. Even something like knowing how your gut health affects your mind and your decisions can be important. All these “woo-woo” things? Yeah, they’re important, because understanding where your stress is coming from and how you deal with stress is the first level. Abbie does acupuncture for stress, and Emylee uses essential oils. Find what therapy works for you to change your inner-channels. You have to conquer the root of stress and this is something you need to constantly be working on, by making small changes to your lifestyle and to your thinking. Taking the time to be more consciously in-tune with yourself and others on multiple levels is a great way to open up communication channels and manage stress more effectively.
Quote This
Learning how we work internally is just as important as how we work together.
Highlights
The Value of Personality Tests in Any Business Partnership. [0:03:15.1]
Dividing Tasks and Assuming Roles in a Business. [0:08:35.1]
The Neuroscience of Decision-Making and How We Affect Each Other. [0:12:30.1]
How Different Personality Types Deal with Stress. [0:21:35.1]
Managing Conflict in the Team by Learning About One Another. [0:29:08.1]
Dealing with Stress Through Understanding and Keeping an Open Mind. [0:03:15.1]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
Personality testing, Assigning roles and tasks, Decision making, Personality types and stress, Managing conflict, Dealing with stress
