Episode 2 - How to Understand Yourself and Others - The T.E.A.M. Personality Styles

(upbeat music) - Thank you very much for joining us again for our podcast. We just wanted to say how overwhelmed we were by all the positive messages, comments, and feedback that we received from all of you. It was extremely encouraging and inspiring. So we wanted to start by saying thank you for that. - Yeah, it was so lovely to read your personal messages of encouragement, of appreciation, and I just felt so grateful to have such loving, support network. Thank you. - So in this podcast, we're gonna be looking at personality styles. In particular, we're gonna ask what happens when people lack an awareness of their own personality style or even worse, when for whatever reason, they start to suppress or repress their own natural personality style. Then we're gonna look at what happens when people are aware of some of their styles, talents, but use them as an excuse to look down on other people. And finally, we're gonna share with you our own personality styles model and give you an overview of the four personality types involved. - Now, this is quite a momentous occasion for us because we have been developing this model for years. (laughing) - So really, really excited to be able to share it today. It's a model that has come from our years of kind of reflecting into ourselves, reflecting into our situation. It's been based upon the study of deep spiritual works that we've been reading and coming across. And I'm just so excited to share it today. - So, let's start at the beginning. So, this is an interesting one. What happens when people lack awareness of their own particular personality style? It was an interesting thing for me. I was actually reflecting recently on someone that I knew who for many years didn't really understand what their natural strengths are. They'd understand on their natural skills, their natural style of personality. And what was really interesting for me is I saw that it led to a lot of confusion. And it's such a subtle yet really powerful thing to really know yourself. - Yeah, like from what we've observed in ourselves and others, sometimes when you actually don't know your natural personality style, it's actually hard to have a strong sense of self-value. And also, if you have a strong sense of self-value, often you're naturally playing up to the strengths in your personality style. These two things are really connected. - So yeah, let's look at this first one. What happens when people lack awareness of their own natural personality style? Now, this is an interesting one for me because if you'd told me maybe 20 years ago about this other thought now, it's not a big deal, doesn't make it much of a difference. But I've really seen over the years that it makes a huge difference. It makes a difference to yourself in terms of understanding what your natural tendencies are, what your natural gifts are. But it also helps to build positive relationships because you kind of get a sense of who you're dealing with. Otherwise, and I've been guilty of this myself, otherwise it's easy to think that the way you are, the way you're hardwired, that kind of like that's just quote unquote normal and then everyone should be like us. It's kind of with kind of a illusion to be in. Yeah, sometimes I've had discussions with friends and sometimes either one of us feels frustrated. Yeah, why is this person act this way? I wouldn't do something like that. (laughs) And then after a while, after reflecting on what we've kind of observed and developed and discovered about personality styles, now looking back, I realize that I was projecting the way that I am on the things that I would do and how I would behave onto other people then I feel frustrated that they do stuff that I wouldn't have done. But the beauty of knowing about personality styles is that you can realize, oh okay, that's their personality style. That's just like the way that they tend to express themselves and you can really accept people for who they are and not who we want them to be. It's so significant. I mean, the implication is that if we really had the proper understanding of how we tend to function, right? So how we tend to think, how we tend to feel, how we tend to act. And if we had the proper understanding of that for other people, it would really help relationships in general and this can be relationships at work, relationships between friends, family, a whole range of different areas and I think that's a really significant benefit. One of the things that I've seen is that when you have people who don't really understand their own personality style, as you said, they can get frustrated with other people. So naturally, yeah, it just happens. But they can also get frustrated with themselves. And I really think that what you've just described is a situation that a lot of us can really relate to. You know, and when we don't know what our real strengths are, we just don't recognize them. We're not building on them in our day-to-day lives and a lot of the people around us may have a totally different set of strengths. And we want to try to mold ourselves to being the way that we think others will find us, you know, valuable. So again, it does kind of relate to a lot of areas of our life. It's so key to understand our personality. Now, of course, that doesn't mean that we don't adapt, right? And it doesn't mean that we don't actually do our best and it's not an excuse for bad behaviour. We're not talking about those things at all. What we're really speaking about is just naturally understanding what's my natural way of being. When am I at my best? And to give a very simple example that everyone can relate to, you have people who are introverts and extroverts, right? So it doesn't mean that the introvert doesn't like being around people, but they know that they get their energy by having that time alone, you know? And the beauty of actually playing to our strengths means that we are actually able to be more adaptive and more flexible. Like if that introvert is getting their time alone, getting their nourishment, when they're around other people, they've got energy to share, you know, they've got energy to give, whereas if they're not using that time to be in their own space, and suddenly when there's a whole party going on, they feel worse than drained, you know? Yeah, and so for me, it's also very interesting because it naturally has implications around people's resilience. Because it's like saying that, you know, the same situation that can be like recharging for one person, that same situation for another person can be incredibly draining. So it's really getting to know ourselves, building that self-awareness so that we can live our lives in such a way that we have that situation that keeps us charged. So that as you said, we can go out, we can do what we need to do, we can be flexible, we can adapt, as and when is appropriate, you know, in different situations, because, you know, let's be honest, life isn't such that you can just do one thing all the time it's going to work. I think we have to be very practical and very grounded, but it's up to us to know what we need, so we can be at our best that we can meet the challenges of life and meet the requirements of life in a healthy, practical, and I'd say successful way as well. And that's why I'm really so excited about this model that we're going to share today, because it completely takes into account that there are like four major areas of life in which we need to have skills, but at the same time, even though we all do have the skills of life to a certain degree, but then at the same time, we have a very inherent strength in one particular area of life. And this is really about how to kind of optimise that strength and how to also make sure that those developmental areas that we still have to work on, like don't really get in the way of us as we move forward in life. Another thing that happens, or that I've seen happen, when people don't really understand their personality style, their natural gifts, their natural way of thinking, feeling and acting, it's very easy to become envious of other people, right? So there's loads of stuff that you see nowadays, people say, don't judge yourself according to others and stuff like that. But I think it has to go a bit deeper than that. We have to actually understand why, and we have to understand how people are different, because otherwise it's still a little bit vague, just don't judge yourself according to others. Okay, but why? And what's the real difference? And I think one of the things that we'll be able to share in this podcast, are those different personality styles, which then helps it become really clear that, yeah, this person just has a different way of viewing the world. Now, what was also interesting for me is, each personality style has a slightly different set of values, which is also very, very interesting. And therefore, because of their values, they actually perceive things in a different way, and they consider certain things to be more important than others. And it's just really, really fascinating to understand that. Because, because normally people talk about values as being just what you grew up with. But what they don't understand is actually your value system is also a function or a result of the type of personality style that you have. So considering everything, really what we wanted to share in this podcast is a really fascinating, practical and accessible model or framework with all of you. We call it the team model. The reason for this is it has four key components. And before I get into that, this model is very much inspired by our years of studying very, very deep eastern teachings on what we call Dharma. Dharma means the essence or the nature of something. And just like you can have the Dharma of a thing, like the Dharma of water is to be wet or the Dharma of fire is to burn in a similar way in this eastern teaching. It very clearly analyzes and gives real insight into the nature of different types of people. And it analyzes and draws out four key personality styles. And we're going to go through each of these and turn and just give you a bit of an overview as to some of the key characteristics of these four personality styles. But what we will do going forward in future podcasts is to go into a deeper dive in each of these four personality styles, how they function, key strengths, areas of development, etc. So you can really get to know them. And once you have this, you'll be easily able to understand more about yourself, more about other people, which can lead to a far greater sense of harmony, a far more insightful understanding about what people's natural strengths and development areas are, a deeper insight into what we can expect of other people, and also how we can interact with others in a way which is most helpful, healthy and harmonious as well. OK, so let's start the first one. B, would you like to talk about the first personality style, which is the teacher or the theorist? So the T in the team model stands for the theorist or the teacher. These people are analytical, intellectual and philosophical. They like to think and they like to think very, very deeply and also they tend to love studying. They're very much more into the facts and they really love to research, discover and share truth. OK, so in our team model, the E stands for entrepreneur or you could say economist. Now these people, they tend to be very sharp in terms of being able to see an opportunity. They can be efficient. They tend to be able to see how they can get certain things achieved very quickly. They also have a natural skill for generating a profit and even for scaling an enterprise, for expanding it and making it much bigger. They may be competitive and their key thing here is that they're very good at generating profit, generating resources, they tend to be business-minded. The A in the team stands for artisan or artist. Now the artisans and artists often do well in the area of artistic expression and practical skill sets. They often have a natural gift for artistic expression such as acting or music, entertainment or dance. They may also have natural interest and talent at sports. And they often have a talent for providing practical skills in society, like interior decorating or fashion design. And the M in the model for the team model stands for monarch or manager. Now these people are really concerned with justice and fairness. Interestingly enough, they can be a little bit more sensitive about being treated in a way which is respectful. They tend to have quite strong characters as strong sense of drive. They can often be dynamic. They're often good managers of people. They like to lead and they usually have an interest in bringing people together and creating community. So this is the M for monarch and manager. And these people tend to generate leadership and they tend to generate a sense of protection. So by this, bringing people together, making people feel that they're valued and protected. One of the things I've seen over many years, and it comes again and again, is that behind many of the issues and the misunderstandings and the conflicts, whether it's in relationships, in friendships, in working life, it has a lot to do with people's expectations. And I've seen that when people don't really understand personality styles, then it tends to lead to an expectation or a projection of my values, my idea of normal onto other people. And of course, people aren't mind readers. So if I've got one expectation of a person, and then they act differently because they have a different personality style, which also means a different value system, then it starts to cause that sense of frustration, that sense of misunderstanding as well. And so that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast, because true to what we're talking about, this idea that we're looking at the essence of something, what's the real underlying active ingredient that makes it work or fail? It really has a lot to do with understanding ourselves and understanding how other people are hard-wired in different ways. I think one of the most fantastic things about this system of understanding personality is it really allows you to style flex. You can really understand where the other person is coming from and how they need to be communicated to get your perspective across. It makes communication so much more effective. Yeah, and to your point, I think it's also very valuable for all generations, actually, because I was going to say the younger generation, but all the generations, I often see a lot of people who are not clear on what they should be doing. And when I mean by that, I don't mean, okay, they only do one thing. In life, and it's interesting, we were talking about how in this team model, those four areas are also life skills, right? So you have to be a teacher, right? So let's say that you're studying and learning, you're in that teacher process, in that teacher way of thinking. And then we talk about entrepreneurs. So looking after finances and all that kind of stuff, you know, you have your job, you have your money, you want to make sure that you're able to look after it properly. So everyone has an element of the teacher in life. Everyone has an element of the entrepreneur or the economist in life. The idea of the artisan, so there's just certain practical things that you do, right? The ability to just like fix something in the house and so on. Everyone has some of that artisan or artist area. And also to be creative, you know, everyone's got that creative element inside as well. Yeah, and then the last one, you have this like monocle manager. So organizing your schedule, you know, organizing like your day out, your trip, whatever it is. So it seems to me that all four of them are actually basic life skills. And then in addition to that, we will have a particular one of these four where we're particularly strong, you know, where that's like a major aspect of our kind of character or personality. And I was thinking that in addition, it's therefore good to know about ourselves and to know about other people because the two things coming together really helps us to build healthy and lasting relationships. Yeah, like one example of a really fantastic way in which different people with different personality styles really come together to make a cohesive team is like, let's say when you're making a film because you've got the person who's more of the theorist, who's more into thinking and dealing with ideas and concepts. They may be the person who writes the script for the film. And then you've got the director who's literally like the manager that overseer making sure that those concepts of the script get delivered but also giving the vision which the actors follow, the cinematographer, etc. So that he or she's a person who's organising everyone? Yeah, so they're the manager, they're literally like the monarch. And then you've got the producers who are going to be best in the economic field. What does that mean practically, economic field? So they're the people who will be actually making sure that the money comes together to produce the film and the resources are there. And then you've got the artists who are the actors, also makeup artists, set designers like clothing and wardrobe. So they'll be the people who are there to make sure that the film is expressed in a way which is really engaging and attractive. attractive. And so that is like a real example of how, you know, different people with particular personality styles and value systems really skilled in particular areas can all come together and make something which is so much greater than the sum of the parts. And I really loved what you're saying because for me, one of the key things that I think is really important at personality styles is not just recognizing that we have different talents and, you know, different approaches to things, but also seeing how it can complement the other person. Because, you know, oftentimes people, if they have a talent, they may use it to look down on other people or to think that they're better. But I love this approach because it's really all about collaboration. And it's about understanding what can I bring to the equation? Where the particular talents or skills that I have that can be synergized with other people. And that's why I even the title, the team, because it really says what it means on the tin. And the idea is that we're coming together as a team in order to, and I love the comment you made there, in order to achieve a certain outcome that is greater than anything that each one of us could achieve alone, which I think is really key. Absolutely. I mean, and last week, you know, we were speaking about, you know, the self-esteem spectrum and how, you know, we can literally judge the way that we judge our own value in terms of us as individuals, also relate to how we judge the value of others. And so the beauty of this team model is that you can actually recognise, right, I've got this particular skill set, that someone else has got a different skill set and you can still appreciate them. You don't have to judge them according to how you judge yourself. Yeah. And I think that's really key because, you know, and we will talk about this in future podcasts. You also have some people who've got a particular personality style, but they shut down. Yeah. And I've seen that happen a lot. And often it happens because they're around people who have a different personality style. And then that, so let's say that I'm around people who've got a very business personality style. Now, if I don't value myself properly, I will think that the way that they are is quote unquote normal. And then I have to become like that rather than thinking, yeah, they've got a natural talent or gift in this area. I have a different gift. And therefore, let's see how we can complement one another in order to achieve something very wonderful. Yeah, it's, it's classic ugly, darkening syndrome basically. You know, and that, that's what we were talking about last week as well with the self esteem spectrum that you think they're better in this area. I'm not so good. And then that's how the low self value manifests. So yeah, it's powerful. It's a powerful model to understand ourselves and others through this team model. Yeah. And then it's interesting because there's another implication and another you and I had that discussion that when people understand, it's, it kind of protects you. If you understand, no, I'm not in theory. I've just got a different personality style, right? And then you try to be the best for, it's because people always talk about being the best version of themselves, right? But it's kind of like, it's kind of like a very high level statement. And sometimes unfortunately, it becomes a bit more of like a cliche. But what we're talking about here is now you really know what your style is and you're trying to be the best you can based upon that particular kind of character style. Yeah, that's brilliant because we do hear statements. I love yourself, but actually in one sense, even though it is true, but there's a, there can be a vagueness when it makes it actually hard to apply. But with this team model, we can actually eat really appreciate ourselves, you know, very specifically and appreciate what is our contribution to the greater whole. It seems to me that there are free key things to think about here. So one is, what's my natural personality style, right? So that's one thing. Then where do I express it? Okay. So for example, someone's got the monarch or manager kind of personality style. They could be leading a community, right? They could be leading a government. They could be they could be leading a family. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that, so one thing is, my personality style, then it's where do I express it? Right? And then the third thing and I think this is also key is and I call this the principle of optimization. The idea is that, okay, we're not living in an ideal world, right? So some opportunities may come up now, some may not, et cetera. So it's like, okay, based upon what the opportunities are now, how do I optimize? In other words, where can I do the best that I can right now? And then sometimes when you start in that particular direction, later on, other things will open up. I've seen often people who want to get into a certain career, but they don't know that there's a journey to get there. So it's just like, it becomes binary. Like, I can't do it now. So, you know, I've got this nature and I can't do it now. But that's not the right answer because you can literally express that personality style in a range of different environments with a range of different opportunities. It's almost, and in some ways, it's also like how you approach something. You could have a monarch who's looking after some kind of shop, but they'll tend to do it as a kind of community offering. They're trying to, you know, everyone's there. They're trying to see how everyone is. So they're using their kind of shop to bring people together. So there's also something about using your personality style because that determines the way that you approach that particular thing that you're working on. So we are coming to the end of today's podcast. Thank you to all of you for tuning in. Really appreciated. So in summary, we've introduced the team model, T stands for teacher, E stands for entrepreneur, A stands for artist, M stands for manager, four specific personality styles. And as we go through the next few podcasts, we're going to start to do a deep dive into each of these personality styles. And as we get to know them, through that self awareness, we'll be able to understand more about our personality style. We'll be able to understand other people better as we tune into their personality style. And we can really get a sense of what motivates them, what's important to them, what their, what their natural talents are. So we can see how to collaborate to appreciate to understand each other better, for better professional and better personal interactions, relationships and collaboration. So if you haven't done so already, feel free to subscribe to our podcast. Leave us a review. Share the content with your friends, your networks and follow us on Instagram as we share more over the coming weeks and months. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day and we look forward to tuning in and connecting with you in the next podcast episode.