Introduction to Agreeableness

This section of your profile describes your interactions with other people. The ways we communicate our feelings, beliefs and ideas to others are influenced by our cultural backgrounds, the way we were raised, and sometimes which side of the bed we got up on this morning. Some of us are very mindful of others making decisions we hope will be in their best interests, even if it means sometimes neglecting our own interests. Others of us believe each person should be responsible for themselves, taking deep pride in our own character and independence with a firm belief that others are best served by doing the same. The following describes how you engage with others; illustrating the dimension of your personality that determines your independence or your desire to reach out and touch others in meaningful ways.

You are best described as:

USUALLY TAKING CARE OF OTHERS

Words that describe you:

Understanding Unquestioning Humane

Selfless Gentle Kindhearted

Gullible Indulgent

A General Description of How You Interact with Others

Here's one important truth about you: you have a tender heart. Yes, you know that others need to learn to take care of themselves. Yes, you know they need to accept the consequences of their foolish or bad behavior. And sometimes, even when your instinct is to help them, you will let them fend for themselves and let them suffer the consequences of their choices or circumstances.

But most of the time you are there to help when they need you. If they are in trouble, you offer compassion and go out of your way to be helpful. If they need someone who will listen, you are trustworthy and sympathetic. And you are direct with them; when they need advice or counsel, you offer it in a straightforward, direct manner, without beating around the bush.

You're also smart enough to know that you cannot take good care of others if you fail to take good care of yourself, so you listen to your own wants and needs. If you've run out of sympathetic energy, you spend time restoring yourself. If you've ignored your own pain or frustration, you find a friend who will listen well, or go into your own private healing place and give yourself permission to focus on you.

But before long, you're back at it with your friends, offering a sympathetic ear and compassion on which they learn to trust, also giving straightforward advice and counsel when they ask for it. You do know how to take care of yourself, but your genuine interest is in taking care of others.

Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward You

Selfish people might be embarrassed by you. While they're using their time and energy almost exclusively on themselves, they see you giving time to others, and your kindness puts them in a bad light.

Maybe they'll think you're a phony, that you use your altruism to get others indebted to you so they'll then owe you a favor. Or perhaps they'll accuse you, directly or behind your back, of focusing on the needs of others so no one ever focuses on your foibles or your genuine wounds.

All of these are false accusations; yours is a genuine compassion, because you truly have a tender heart. One criticism might be more substantial, though. People might notice when you let things get out of balance and spend so much time responding to others that you neglect your own needs.

Perhaps it's true to some extent that you are more comfortable when the focus is on someone else's needs than when you and your needs are front and center, and this may be a criticism worth paying attention to.

Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You

Positive responses to you are likely to far outweigh negative responses. For many people, your genuine kindness will be an example of a way to treat others and a way we want others to treat us. They will see in you the traits of compassion and sympathy which they might want to focus on in the development of their own character.

For those people you help you will be the friend they need, there at the right moment to help them when they've stepped into yet another thicket of pain or confusion. They will be grateful for your listening, for your straight talk when they need straight talk more than anything, and for the hand you extend so they can find their way, with your help, out of whatever tangle they've gotten themselves into.

Introduction to Openness

How firmly committed are you to the ideas and beliefs that govern your thinking and guide your behavior? Some people trust their current ideas and beliefs the way a climber trusts the mountain; whichever way they move, whether the climb is on a familiar trail or over new ground, there is something solid beneath them, something they count on.

For others, new ideas, new solutions to old problems, new beliefs that replace tired convictions are like welcome wind in their sails. They can hardly wait to tack in a new direction and ride a new idea through uncharted waters. If it's new, it's interesting, and they're ready to explore.

The following paragraphs describe your responses to new ways of thinking and believing. How do you handle new information? Are you more like the climber on a familiar mountain or a sailor with a tiller in hand and a fresh breeze to propel you? How you integrate and process new information about the world and about others is a core aspect of your personality.

On the Openness Dimension you are:

CONTENT

Words that describe you:

Sensible Realistic Conventional

Sincere Simple Firm

Earnest

A General Description of How You Approach New Information and Experiences

You find that you are usually more comfortable with ideas and beliefs that you have held for a long time. These values, which for you are tried-and-true, provide you with practical solutions to life's problems, and with straightforward ways of engaging in intellectual discussions and debates. You've tested these positions over time, you know them well, they work for you, and you trust them. You like the way these solutions provide consistency and value to your life.

You've always been teachable as well. Whether in textbooks or classrooms, or through a wide variety of personal and interpersonal experiences, you've explored and tested the values and ideas you hold dear. Along the way you've grown to recognize ideas and beliefs that fit with your life. When this happens, you open yourself to learning what it is that this can teach you. Most of the time evaluating new information strengthens what you know and trust; the "next new thing" usually proves too shallow or too impractical to dislodge you from what has served you so well.

Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward Your Style of Thinking

Not everyone will be thrilled by your commitment to the tried-and-true, and your practical solutions to problems of all sorts. Some people are in flight most of the time, leaving behind where they've come from and peering into whatever brand-new thought or experience they come across. They live for these flights of fancy. So they may find your commitment to the tried-and-true very trying and even boring. So be it; you won't be a companion on their journey. And that is fine with you. You will likely continue on being quite satisfied with your approach to important beliefs and ideas.

Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You

Despite some negative reactions toward your style of thinking, many others will appreciate in you the combination of a steadiness of mind and openness to occasional change. They will find your practical solutions clear and accessible in an intellectual environment that is too often fuzzy and lacking clear values. They will come to trust you as someone who is not swayed by every new intellectual wind that blows, nor tantalized by some imaginative belief or value that seems attractive at first but usually proves in the long run to be unreliable as a guide in life. In a complicated and fractious intellectual climate they will find your clear thinking, your practical ideas and your down-to-earth solutions to problems to be a great relief.

Introduction to Emotional Stability

We're born with the capacity to feel deeply, so it's as natural as breathing to experience a range of emotions. Fear and joy and sadness, anger and shame and disgust lie somewhere within each of us. Ah, but to what extent do we control these emotions, and to what extent do they control us? How you answer this question of how your emotions play out in your life has a great deal to do with your levels of personal satisfaction and with the character of your relationships with others. Do you manage your emotions well, keeping them in check with your thinking and your willpower, or are you someone who lets emotions have their way, giving in to the wild dance of feelings? The following paragraphs describe your emotional range in terms of being a person who is emotionally steady or someone who is responsive to whatever feelings swell up in you.

On Emotional Stability you are:

STEADY

Words that describe you:

Relaxed Even Unwavering

Constant Certain Together

Cool Detached Tranquil

A General Description of Your Reactivity

When emotions get topsy-turvy, most of the time you keep your feet on solid ground. When some of your friends lose control of their feelings, you are able to stay relaxed and even. It's not that you're cold-hearted or without feelings. On the contrary; you can be fun-loving. You hurt when a friend is in pain or is in trouble.

You might cry occasionally at a movie, or when watching a particularly touching story on the evening news. But in moments of emotional pleasure, or when troubling feelings rise up within you or around you, you keep yourself together.

Here's a fundamental truth about you: when it comes to your emotional world, you are certain and constant, not flapping around and out of control. It's a good thing because life will come at you, as it comes at all of us, with emotional surprises. We all hit hard times, or get caught off guard, or feel a sudden swell of fear or joy or anger or sadness.

Once in a while you'll get caught up in the feelings of one of these moments. You get silly, maybe too silly, with your friends. You wake up in the dark, or run into dark thoughts, and find yourself afraid of . . . of something, though you're not quite sure of what. The sadness around you creeps inside you and you feel "down" for a while, but you push your way through it. "Think", you say to yourself. "Stay calm, and figure out a way to cope". Soon, you're relaxed and together again, your feet are once more on solid ground, and your emotions are under control.

Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward You

"How do you stay so calm in this emotional storm. Don't you feel anything?" Some of your friends might find you too controlled, as if you don't feel things as deeply as they do.

Your ability to stay so unflappable while they're coming apart at the seams could lead them to believe you just don't care enough, either about your own emotional world or about the pain or pleasure they're so caught up in. This might lead them to exclude you from those seasons of their lives when their feelings are deep and they need to surround themselves with people they believe will understand the turmoil they're in. They won't think of you as such a person, so they won't let you in on their emotional whirl.

Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You

The opposite may be true as well. When some of your friends can't contain their emotions they might turn to you as the steady rock, the stable one, the person who will remain composed and help talk and think them through their turmoil. You're just what they need, their calm, cool and collected friend, when their emotional world is falling apart.

Also, people who are as calm and secure as you and who, like you, are emotionally composed most of the time, will find you a friend they are comfortable with. They know that when the world goes upside down, and for everyone the world will occasionally stand on its head, you will be there, as secure and unflappable as they are, and are therefore a trustworthy companion through any emotional turmoil.

Introduction to Conscientiousness

It's a work day, breakfast is over, and you're dressed and ready. So how will you approach the tasks at hand? Some people work best with a clear schedule, a set of priorities and a due date for every step in the process. Others are, shall we say, less regimented. They approach a task with as much imagination as organization, and with a willingness to bend and modify in order to exercise some urge of creativity.

How about you? Do you walk in a straight line toward a clear goal, or are you more likely to dance your way down whatever path will get you wherever it is you're headed? The following paragraphs describe ways in which you approach the tasks life brings to you, and to what extent you are focused or flexible in how you choose to proceed.

Your approach toward your obligations is:

FLEXIBLE

Words that describe you:

Spontaneous Intuitive Perceptive

Natural Somewhat Disorganized Unpredictable At Times

A General Description of How You Interact with Others

When there's a job to be done, like most people you want to know what the goal is and when it's to be completed. For you, that's a start. Next you want to know what the plan is to get to the goal. So you lay out a plan, or at least the major points of a plan: "Organize the kitchen sometime this spring" or "Get the project at work done as soon as possible." You don't need an in-depth specification of every little detail; in fact you prefer not to work that way. You lay out your goals, develop a general plan, and then you get things done.

You believe in intuition as well as organization. As such, you trust impulses as much as strategies and you value spontaneity as much as you do efficiency. In a word, you like to keep it flexible. When you set out to accomplish a task, you prefer to have some room to maneuver. Like an artist, you find that the best way to reach a goal is not always in a straight line. Some of the most productive times for you are the unplanned moments of inspiration and creativity that just come to you. While you do keep to a general plan, those times of pure vision and originality are what really drive you.

Some of the people who rely completely on an organized approach to getting things done may be surprised at your efficiency. But there is a definite method to your approach. With a creative flair that others may not have anticipated, the original plan gets met and there are often a few extra accomplishments along the way. Your comfort zone starts with a task and a plan but it also requires the freedom to be able to go with your instincts and impulses so that you can not just accomplish the task, you also have the option to explore something brand new along the way.

Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward You

People may have problems with your style for two reasons. First, you don't always follow the rules or go along with detailed plans, whether at work or at home. Those who need the details to stay on task just don't quite understand how you are going to get it all done. Second, while you get things done - the way you veer off course at times and use your creativity may leave others wondering what went on. Some people find all this creativity and thinking "out-of-the-box" at odds with their desire to follow a clear course. And this causes not only some confusion it may also spark some anger toward you at times. Even you would likely admit that living and working with you takes someone who is able to let you do your thing at times. If someone is really tied to a rigid approach to how things should get done, there is clearly the potential for some conflict with you.

Every workplace and home does need a modicum of reliability and a decent amount or order and organization if it is to accommodate the mix of people who work or live there. That leads to a serious question for you: Are there times when your creative, though at times unpredictable, style keeps others off balance? Are there some plans that should be sacred, some space always well organized, some charts left as designed? Are there are some things you could change that would allow those who live and work with you to feel more in control; changes that wouldn't impinge on your creative processes? If others are finding your style to be difficult to deal with you may want to consider how you can all work together most efficiently.

Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You

The truth is that your work style gets things done, often with more beauty, fun, creativity and imagination than others could ever manage. But your style is very unique to you. Flexibility is essential to your style. With your creativity and flexibility the path you take to any goal can make everyone's accomplishments more inventive and enjoyable. Bringing some extra enjoyment to people's work can be a real asset; one you may want to use more consciously.

Deep down inside there's also another truth you should consider. A lot of people wish they had some of whatever it is that you've got. They get so bogged down reading the committee notes or checking the project calendar that they seldom just cut loose and let their impulses run. They neglect their intuition to the point that it barely whispers - that is, until you come along with yours shouting out loud and remind everyone in the room that there's something to listen to besides the original plan and the orderly, organized path laid out to get there. So not only do you enhance the accomplishments of the group, you also enhance the lives of each member willing to find in themselves the spontaneity that is your trademark personal characteristic.

Introduction to Extraversion

Some days you want to hang out by yourself, not answer the phone, and make the world go away. The next day you e-mail everyone, schedule lunch with a friend, and try to find an evening gathering to take part in. It may be the phases of the moon, or something you ate; some days are just like that. In actuality, your desire to be with others or to be alone reflects something deep in your personality. Some of us are more comfortable by ourselves or with one or two friends, while others of us crave the crowd and can't stand it when the house is empty or the phone doesn't ring. The following paragraphs describe your fundamental desires about being with other people; whether you are generally an outgoing person or more reserved, if you seek adventures with others, if you tend toward assertiveness or kindness.

When it comes to Extraversion you are:

RESERVED

Words that describe you:

Thoughtful Modest Reflective

Private Introverted Careful

Restrained Meditative

A General Description of How You Interact with Others

You are generally a modest and private person. You are thoughtful and careful before making decisions and offering opinions. You most likely have a number of good friends and you greatly enjoy spending time with them. But even with your friends you tend not to be terribly outgoing; you open up, but slowly, and share yourself, but in a careful way. For you quality is much more important than quantity. When it comes to your social life you are more comfortable with deeper, well nurtured friendships than with having a social calendar that rivals that of a socialite.

Whether at work or in social situations, you neither need nor particularly like the spotlight. In fact, it is often the case that your friends and colleagues think you deserve more credit than you take and more attention than you get. But that isn't really your style. Again, you don't crave flash and attention, it's quality and depth you treasure.

This isn't to say that you don't want to be around people or that you aren't good in relationships and in social situations. In fact, you need the companionship of people, you just prefer quiet conversations with a friend or a small group to finding a new party to go to every week. Your social encounters balance out the side of you that likes your own company and having enough time to think and reflect. But you do find that life has a better rhythm for you when there is enough quiet time to deliberate on your own so that you are refreshed for your next encounter with friends and colleagues.

Negative Reactions Others May Have Toward You

You may occasionally run into problems with other people. Particularly those who may want more from you than you want to contribute, ones who may feel that by holding back you're not holding up your end of the social bargain. Others may guess, correctly, that there is a wealth in you that they would like to tap into, but may assume that you are unwilling to share. Their positive expectations will be confirmed on those occasions when you do open up. But your social style is one you have developed carefully and positively.

Positive Responses Others May Have Toward You

While some people can be frustrated by your thoughtful manner, others will appreciate you, and it won't take them long for them to realize that you are one of those who values depth and substance over flash and casualness. Even in private conversations there are times when you are more willing to listen than to open up. They will appreciate having more time to share their own thoughts and more of the spotlight than you care for. It is also likely that when you do choose to contribute they will listen because they've learned that you speak from a deep well of contemplation and reflection. It may take you some time, but if you're thoughtful about it, you will find a few friends who understand your reserved nature and will enjoy certain social situations in which you are fairly comfortable and in which people are equally as comfortable with you.

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