Hi, I'm Jan König 👋. I'm one of the founders of Jovo, 28 years old, and live in Berlin. < Go back to learn more.

Personality Types: How to better understand yourself and your team

Wow, it's been a while. My last newsletter (Default to Open) was sent out more than 7 months ago. It has been a few turbulent months with quite some ups and downs for me both professionally as well as personally. More on some of these things in upcoming episodes.

As challenging as the last few months were, they also helped me get to know myself better, which tasks and activities are exhausting for me, and from which I am able to draw energy.
 

Meet: Personality Types

I've come across a website called 16Personalities about a year ago, and although I've done the test back then, I didn't look into it that much. A few weeks ago, I started to dig deeper and get fascinated about how much you can learn from it.

Many of you have already come across this test or something similar. After answering some questions, the test puts you into different groups of letters. You can learn more about it in their theory section. Here are the different letters:

  • Mind: How we interact with our surroundings, either [I]ntroverted or [E]xtraverted.
  • Energy: How we see the world and process information, either Ob[S]ervant or I[N]tuitive.
  • Nature: How we make decisions and cope with emotions, either [T]hinking or [F]eeling.
  • Tactics: How we work, plan, and make decisions; either [J]udging or [P]rospecting.

Disclaimer: I don't know at all how accurate the results are and I'd always take them with a grain of salt and not try to over-generalize.
 

What I learned about my personality type

I fall into the Campaigner group of people, which is ENFP.

While some strength of campaigners include empathy, intuitiveness, and caring a lot about the bigger picture, this also comes with its weaknesses: Many campaigners tend to dislike administrative, repetitive tasks, and it can be difficult for them to stay focused.

I noticed this myself: After we've been heads down in some client projects, I really learned how draining it was to do the same tasks every day. It can sometimes be difficult to step away from daily work and think about the bigger picture (I've written about this here: On Bootstrapping and "Living in the Future"), but it is really important for me to take that time, as this is where I draw energy from. I could also see that giving presentations and talking to like-minded people at conferences and meetups had a positive effect on me.
 

Building empathy

Reading more about those different personality types not only helped me understand how I work, it was also helpful in improving my empathy.

Of course, you can empathize with people without knowing their personality type. Knowing that people think and work in different ways can definitely be a helpful reminder, though. Maybe it's worth doing it with the whole team?
 

What's your personality type? Is it accurate? Curious to learn more!

Jan

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