A Common Purpose
Several weeks ago, my employer sent my coworkers, boss, her boss, and myself to a one-day seminar downtown to learn about development (a term that has a specific meaning in the context of my employer’s line of business; if you don’t know what it means, don’t worry about it). During the course of this educational session, we were provided a series of 20 questions that we answered about ourselves, and 20 additional questions about how we believed others perceived us. It was a personality quiz, of sorts.
Now, I’m awfully skeptical of personality quizzes, because I believe they are self-fulfilling prophecies. At least, for a person such as myself, the results are always skewed to nearly exactly what I expected, and that isn’t because I know myself very well, but rather because I anticipate how the answers I choose will affect my results. In other words, I have an introverted personality because I answer questions that I know will classify me as an introvert. Savvy?
Nevertheless, I was asked to participate, and so I did. I’m not sure that I fully grasped the results, and I’m not sure that I ever will, but I am still, to this day, learning more and more about myself as a result of this personality quiz. If nothing else, the personality quiz was my key takeaway from the seminar.
So, let’s talk about this quiz. It’s set up in a very interesting way, classifying you primarily as one of four personality types (although everyone has some measure of each!). They are:
- Dominance
- The “take charge” trait
- Extroversion
- The “people” trait
- Pace
- The “patience” trait
- Conformity
- The “systems” trait
Now, from first to last, these traits follow a trend. The most dominant personality is strong and cares nothing of what other people think; the extroverted personality is very people-oriented and seeks happiness in relationships (and these aren’t only people-based; one could conceivably have a relationship that relates the sun to happiness itself). Pace personalities are introverted in nature and focus largely on the way they are seen by others, rather than how they feel or wish to behave of themselves. And, lastly, conformity personalities are heavily systematic, supportive, and find comfort in routines and predictable, planned patterns.
I’m not going to go through and describe what the quiz is or how it works. I am, however, going to talk about some of my own personal results of this quiz and what I believe they actually mean to me.
The most interesting thing that I find is that, while I believe this quiz nailed me perfectly, there are a few items that I strongly disagree with. Or did, when I first read them. Yet, over time, having seen myself and the way I behave, I have discovered that the aspects of my personality identified by the quiz which I most disagreed with are, in fact, the most true. My own personal denial of some of these aspects of my personality would make it evident that they wouldn’t appear in the results, since I answered the questions for the quiz, and yet the quiz results disagreed with my answers.
I won’t go through the results and analyze them in their entirety — at least not in this entry — but what I do want to focus on is one such segment of the quiz results which I believed was inaccurate at first glance. Today, it occurred to me that this aspect of my personality was accurate: “seeks a common purpose.”
Everyone has more or less of the four qualities that this survey calculates. My level of conformity, for example, indicates that I am “careful, thorough, dependable, conservative and systems oriented.” That’s pretty accurate. My dominance level? Agreeable as well: “You are supportive, collaborative and modest. You may place importance on security and prefer to work with leadership that has a strong sense of direction and purpose.”
Whoa, wait. That last part has some interesting implications. Okay, yeah, I’m supportive, collaborative and modest, I suppose. I can live with that. But what’s this “prefer to work with leadership that has a strong sense of direction and purpose”?
Most clearly, that last sentence means I naturally seek a support role, being the reliable platform upon which someone else — with a strong sense of leadership — may ride to pursue a goal that we share in common. Now, I never saw that as “seeks a common purpose” until today.
The quiz analyzes several other aspects of one’s personality, in addition to their primary traits. That is, their decision-making process or, more precisely, their sense of logic. Furthermore, the quiz analyzes “energy styles,” which dictate one’s velocity and endurance for approaching and accomplishing tasks. Of these energy results, the quiz states that primarily, my energy style is “allegiance.” And what does that mean? It means I have “a follow-through, supportive style. Dedicated to completing a predetermined project,” and, get this, a “sense of connection to a common purpose.”
Whoa, there it is again. I’ve always believed myself to be a leader of sorts, but that’s really an aspect of my dominance overtaking my extroversion; in other words, on a scale, my personality is more dominant than extroverted, but far more pace and conformity than the other two. Thus, if I am put in an authoritative role or in a position where it is I that must make decisions for myself or a group, then I step up to the role and take charge. However, I’m not typically given that opportunity, and I don’t frequently put myself into that position intentionally because of my stronger pace/conformity tendencies.
So, back to this whole “common purpose” thing. For some time, I disagreed with the notion that I was remotely interested in a common purpose, and this I believe stems from another aspect of my personality, which says that I “choose to work alone, and will prefer to interact with close friends and associates.” Yet, I really do find gratification in supporting a common purpose.
This morning, as I was returning home from a quick coffee trip, I found myself at a red light in front of a beige Chevy truck. When the light turned green, the person in front of me was driving slowly, and the person in the lane to my left was driving even more slowly. Naturally, I made my way in front of the person in the left lane to achieve the legal speed limit. This Chevy truck, seemingly reluctant at first, eventually became dissatisfied with his position behind the other vehicle and eventually changed lanes to get behind me once again.
As we continued down the road, we managed to find ourselves at another red light. Round 2. This time, there were no vehicles in front of me, but there was a person in the right lane, which I needed to compete for, as my turn was just a short distance from the light. The Chevy truck was behind me, and when the light turned green, I sped up quickly to get in front of the person in the right lane. This is where I felt a connection to the driver in the Chevy truck. After I sped up quickly and moved into the other lane, the truck also sped up and actually passed me rather quickly (despite my reaching the speed limit already).
How did I feel at that moment? I felt empowered! More accurately, I felt like I had empowered someone else, which makes clear my desire to seek a supportive role. I felt like I had started something, built the foundation upon which this fellow motorist sailed his ship. I felt connected to this person, whom I, through my own behavior, empowered to reach his potential, to achieve the goal that he or she really wanted. Sometimes, I think people on the road are careful about what will happen — the risks involved with doing what they want to do, either by law enforcement or disapproval from other motorists. Yet, this person on the road today was able to do what he really wanted because I showed him that he can. And that connection brought me gratification.
To recap, it seems that one’s connection to a common purpose is derived from naturally finding satisfaction in playing a supportive role. That role points a person of my personality type to follow someone whose purpose is the same or similar to my own, and because following that person and supporting them provides gratification, so does connecting with anyone who follows the same mindset or shares the same or similar goals.
It’s funny that, zooming out a little bit, as much of an introvert as I am, it seems that even introverts seek connection with people in some, often invisible capacity. Introverts and extroverts aren’t so different; we’re people, we just interact differently at a different pace, but ultimately we seek the same results. Friendships, relationships that matter, happiness, and a connection with others through some medium — common purpose, most notably for a supportive introvert such as myself.
More details, I think, can be extrapolated from this information. I believe I’ve merely scraped the tip of the iceberg from what this information really means about who I am and how I behave. I’m quite amazed at the accuracy of this quiz, though, and how I can continue learning more about myself every day by continuously evaluating and analyzing myself, and comparing those infrequent and oft impromptu epiphanies with the answers that have not yet been revealed to the my mind as true understanding (although they already exist on paper in these quiz results, I just can’t see them!).