The following is an excerpt from Tim Brice’s new book, “MORPHING INTO THE REAL WORLD – A Handbook for Entering the Work Force” which is a survival guide for young people as they transition into adult life. The book offers considerable advice regarding how to manage our personal and professional lives. As a part of this, Tim found it necessary to describe the four types of personalities commonly found in the work place.
Personality Types

You will undoubtedly encounter many different types of personalities in any teaching environment, each with their own unique blend of nuances. Nevertheless, there are four basic types of personalities from which they are based, which is commonly referred to as A, B, C, and D. Although volumes have been written on such personality traits, here is a synopsis:

See if you can spot any of these personality types at the next teacher meeting and maybe you can start to work out who works well with whom, as well as who you’d feel most comfortable collaborating with.

Type “A” Personality – Is a highly independent and driven personality, typically representing the DoSes in language schools. They are blunt, competitive, no-nonsense types who like to get to the point. They are also strong entrepreneurial spirits (risk takers). As such, they embrace change and are always looking for practical solutions for solving problems.

Type “B” Personality – Represents highly extroverted people who love the spotlight. Because of this, they are very entertaining and possess strong charisma (everyone likes to be around them). Small wonder these people are the ones that make their faces well known both in the teacher’s room and in class. They thrive on entertaining people and are easily hurt if they cannot sway someone (such as “bombing” on stage).

Type “C” Personality – The antithesis of Type “B”; they are introverted detailists as represented by such people as accountants, programmers, and engineers. They may have trouble communicating to other people, but are a whirlwind when it comes to crunching numbers or writing program code. They tend to be very cautious and reserved, and will not venture into something until after all the facts have been checked out. These are the teachers who stick to the course book religiously and make incredible overuse of the whiteboard.

Type “D” Personality – Is best characterized as those people who resist any form of change and prefer the tedium of routine, such as those teachers who seem to have been around since the first day the school opened for business. They are not adventurous, resist responsibility and prefer to be told what to do.

It is not uncommon to find people with a blend of personalities, particularly A-B and C-D. But these basic personality types explain why some teachers work well together and others do not. For example Type-A clashes with Type-D simply because one is more adventurous than the other and Type-B clashes with Type-C as one exhibits an extroverted personality and the other is introverted. Conversely, Type-A works well with Type-B, and Type-C works well with Type-D. See if you can spot any of these personality types at the next teacher meeting and maybe you can start to work out who works well with whom, as well as who you’d feel most comfortable collaborating with.

About the Author:

Tim Bryce is the Managing Director of M. Bryce & Associates (MBA) of Palm Harbor, Florida, a management consulting firm specializing in Information Resource Management (IRM). Mr. Bryce has over 30 years of experience in the field. He is available for lecturing, training and consulting on an international basis. His corporate web page is at:
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/