Personality Type Strategies

There may well be further descriptors of personality types depending on the test used, but the essence is that really, the better we can understand ourselves and our students, the more effective learning and teaching will be.

Any opportunities to learn more about Personality Types is an exercise that will benefit both our personal and professional lives.

While it may be not be the optimum situation to generalise on Personality Types, following are suggested ways that may assist us in addressing and understanding ourselves and our students:

To enhance what they do, Type A personalities should strive to:

• develop Type B behaviours, attitudes and chill as much as possible
• make a list of their personal stress warning signs to maintain their awareness
• when they become aware of their personal physical and emotional warning signals, share their issues with family, and critical friends
• understand that no one other than themselves makes them wild, and it is up to them to take responsibility to control their personal aggression and anger

To enhance what they do, Type B personalities should strive to:

• maintain what they do and how they do what they do; basically stay the same
• set active goals to pursue to lift them out of their comfort zone
• spend time coaching and mentoring Type A and C Personalities Types

To enhance what they do, Type C personalities should strive to:

• be open and prepared to be positive in outlook and attitude
• have a support team and a critical friend they are willing to share issues with
• when feeling under pressure write problems down
• rather than stew on it, understand that no one other than themselves makes them adopt this approach and use the PMI tool to rationally examine it

In our classrooms, encouraging discussions and student research on Personality Types will benefit learning and teaching immensely.
Once again it’s all about students and us learning more about ourselves, nurturing relationships and adopting transparent and accepting attitudes.

Identifying our personality types is not about pigeon holing or labelling people but more about:

• being able to identify strategies for each type that will see both our students and us grow and thrive
• win-win situations for all

It’s developmental, not judgmental; it’s well worth investigating.

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom" Thomas Jefferson