To thrive in your ideal career, knowing your personality traits helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses, enabling you to find a role that best suits you and puts you in an empowering position to succeed. Likewise in a leadership role, it’s also imperative to understand the different personality types of your team to adjust your management style to effectively guide each team member. This short article and quiz will help you achieve both goals.
We all face two kinds of expectations—outer expectations (meet work deadlines, answer a request from a top Executive) and inner expectations (keep a New Year’s resolution, start exercising more). Our response to expectations determines our “Tendency”—that is, whether we fit into the category of Upholder, Questioner, Obliger or Rebel.
Taken from the book The Four Tendencies by acclaimed writer Gretchen Rubin, taking the Tendencies Quiz (approx. 7 mins) will enable you to determine your patterns (ex: how you commit to yourself and to others – how you handle expectations) helping you better understand them, to better to set you up for success.
Let’s break them down for you below! (Note that there is no right or wrong tendency or best type.)
The 4 Tendencies:
The Upholder: This tendency type tends to meet both outer and inner expectations, they keep resolutions, and they meet deadlines. They are very structured and proud to fulfill all their tasks.
The motto for this tendency is, “discipline is my freedom.”
The downsides are rigidity, uptightness, hard to be flexible and trapped by their own rules. People with this tendency tend to be judgmental as well because they can’t understand why things that are so easy to them are hard for others.
The Questioner: This tendency type questions all expectations (they are often told they ask too many questions) and need reasons for everything, they tend to resist anything arbitrary. They love to customize and love to research. If an expectation meets their inner standard, they will complete the task with no problem, if it fails their inner standard, they will push back.
The motto for this tendency is, “I’ll comply if you convince me why.”
The downsides are that they can be draining and overwhelm people with their constant questioning, causing others to feel very defensive.
Bosses may confuse questions and curiosity with questioning leadership.
They love research so much, it’s hard for them to make a decision, giving them analysis paralysis.
The Obliger: This is the biggest tendency for both men and women. They tend to meet outer expectations but struggle with inner expectations. They keep promises to others but not to themselves.
They usually don’t make time for self-care and rarely put themselves first.
This tendency loves accountability and often prefers a tough boss to hold them accountable.
The motto for this tendency is, “I do what I have to do. I don’t want to let others down, but I may let myself down.”
The downside is that that this type of person can have ‘Obliger rebellion.’ When they feel overwhelmed by expectation, feel exploited or ignored or taken advantage of, they can become dramatic and blow-up a situation to protect themselves, leaving behind a trail of dramatic consequences.
The Rebel: This tendency is the most different from the other 3 tendency types. They resist both outer and inner expectations and do what they want to do in their own way, in their own time. While they can resist, they can also be unstoppable, making them great entrepreneurs and great at sales.
The motto for this tendency is, “You can’t make me, and neither can I.”
The downside of this tendency is that it can be difficult for others to work with Rebels. They push back with accountability (living up to their identity of being a rebel) and they are often misunderstood.
People are typically just one of these 4 tendencies and while they all have their differences, they all bring their strengths to make thriving teams.
As a leader, it’s crucial that you don’t favor your own tendency and that you have an understanding for all 4 tendency types which will give you insights into effective communication and leadership strategies, empowering you to navigate relationships and professional endeavors with newfound clarity. Effective interaction and leadership will help you meet all your 2024 goals!
So, are you an Upholder who readily meets inner and outer expectations, a Questioner who seeks rationality, an Obliger who thrives under external accountability or a Rebel who defies convention?
Take the Quiz and find out!
https://gretchenrubin.com/quiz/the-four-tendencies-quiz/
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