Many people are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality test.  It is a tool to help people understand themselves and others. Companies often give them to their employees in order to learn about the ways different people approach each other and the best way to utilize their talents and proclivities when working together on projects.  Others, like me, are intrigued by such an analysis.

There is another, different personality assessment, in which I participated, from the book, Please Understand Me by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates.  In this book, there is a Temperament Sorter, which is a test to find your personality type.  There are four major types which are then put into sixteen specific profiles that give the reader a pretty accurate portrait of how a person thinks and what character traits they possess.

Once one finds out more about oneself, a person can get an idea about what makes the people in one’s family tick.  By reading the types in detail, a person can guess the type of those people in their lives with whom they have intimate contact.  It is only a guess and perhaps not totally accurate. The best way is for each person to take the test and then read the profiles of the people in their lives together.

In the workplace, this personality test can be especially helpful in choosing assignments for groups of people who will not clash, but instead, work well together in those specific tasks.  It also allows an employer to make the best use of each person in the individual job they perform.

I was so jazzed by this book, I encouraged many friends and family members to take it.  Sometimes it was not received well. I may have overwhelmed some of them. But many of the people I asked to participate were just as curious I had been about assessing myself.  We enjoyed the experience together and found out why we were attracted to each other.

All in all, we can benefit from knowing each other better as people.  After all, like it or not, we are all in this together. How we interact with each other in a society is an indication of our world view.  Besides, isn’t it better to live in harmony? I, for one, think so. And maybe a personality test could be of help. I think it’s worth a try.  It sure couldn’t hurt.