Be Confident with your Personality Plus

The Personality profiles:

• Choleric (Koleris): This is the commander-type. Cholerics are dominant, strong, decisive, stubborn and even arrogant.
• Melancholy (Melankolis): This is the mental-type. Their typical behaviour involves thinking, assessing, making lists, evaluating the positives and negatives, and general analysis of facts.
• Sanguine (Sanguinis): This is the social-type. They enjoy fun, socialising, chatting, telling stories - and are fond of promising the world, because that's the friendly thing to do.
• Phlegmatic (Plegmatis): This is the flat-type. They are easy going, laid back, nonchalant, unexcitable and relaxed. Desiring a peaceful environment above all else.

Myers-Briggs

The Myers-Briggs scale is another well-known system for generalising personalities. Personality Plus is more about how people relate than how they are in their own right. Nevertheless, it is instructive to compare the different scales.

•     Introvert/Extrovert: Sanguines love socialising, and Cholerics have the confidence to interact socially. A Melancholy can be more of an intellectual, and thus somewhat less social, and Phlegmatics just don't mind either way.
•     Sensing/Intuition: A Melancholy seeks facts to come to conclusions; a Sanguine may go with what feels right; while a Choleric's decisions are based on their own opinion - without those opinions necessary being fact-driven, although they could of course be.
•     Thinking/Feeling: This is about how people process the world around them, and the most obvious observations are that Melancholies like facts, whereas Sanguines have a leaning towards emotions.
•     Judging/Perceiving: Whereas perceiving is all about simply making observations, judging involves allocating value to the observations (right/wrong, good/bad, etc.). Since a Melancholy is about "the right" way, and Cholerics are about "my way", they tend to be more on the judgmental scale. Phlegmatics, being "easy way", are more about perceiving.

The profiles of the Merrill-Wilson system overlap closely with the Personality Plus system:

1.     Driver: Choleric
2.     Analytical: Melancholy
3.     Expressive: Sanguine
4.     Amiable: Phlegmatic

Characteristics of Personality Categories
Driver:

•         Objective-focused
•         Know what they want and how to get there!
•         Communicates quickly, gets to the point
•         Sometimes tactless and brusque
•         Can be an "ends justify the means" type of person
•         Hardworking, high energy ?Does not shy away from conflict

Analytical:

•     Highly detail oriented people
•     Can have a difficult time making decisions without ALL the facts
•     Make great accounts and engineers
•     Tend to be highly critical people
•     Can tend to be pessimistic in nature
•     Very perceptive

Expressive:

•     Natural salesmen or story-tellers
•     Warm and enthusiastic
•     Good motivators, communicators
•     Can be competitive
•     Can tend to exaggerate, leave out facts and details
•     Sometimes would rather talk about things than do them!

Amiable:

•     Kind-hearted people who avoid conflict
•     Can blend into any situation well
•     Can appear wishy-washy Has difficulty with firm decisions
•     Often loves art, music and poetry Highly sensitive
•     Can be quiet and soft-spoken

There are many different schools of thought extending from ancient times to the present that use four main groupings or categories of personalities. This is often called a "four-quadrant model", and is used in many different psychological and employment contexts. A rough mapping of each major known school of thought is shown in the table below:

Table of Equivalents for the 4 Personality Types
Merrill-Reid	Driver	Expressive	Amiable	Analytical
D.E.S.A.	Dominant	Expressive	Solid	Analytical
Hippocrates Greek Terms (370 BC)	Choleric	Sanguine	Phlegmatic	Melancholy
Western Astrology	Fire	Air	Water	Earth
"What's My Style?" (WMS)	Direct	Spirited	Considerate	Systematic
The P's	Powerful	Popular	Peaceful	Perfect
The S's	Self-propelled	Spirited	Solid	Systematic
The A's	Administrative	Active	Amiable	Analytical
LEAD Test	Leader	Expressor	Dependable	Analyst
ARRAY (Jonathan Knaupp)	Production	Connection	Status Quo	Harmony
Biblical Characters	Paul	Peter	Abraham	Moses
Geier	Dominance	Influencing	Competence	Steadiness
DiSC(r)	Dominance	Influencing of Others	Steadiness	Cautiousness/ Compliance
McCarthy/4MAT System	Common Sense	Dynamic	Innovative	Analytic
Merrill / Wilson	Driver	Expressive	Amiable	Analytic
Plato (340 BC)	Guardian	Artisan	Philosopher	Scientist
Kretschner (1920)	Melancholic	Hypomanic	Anesthetic	Hyperasthetic
Sprangler (1930)	Religious	Aesthetic	Theoretic	Economic
From (1947)	Hoarding	Exploiting	Receptive	Marketing
Psycho-Geometrics (1978)	Triangle	Squiggle	Circle	Square/Rectangle
Type A or B	Type B	Type B Messy	Type A Casual	Type A Compulsive
	Motivated
PSI	Controller	Promoter	Supporter	Analyst
Brokenleg Reclaiming Youth at Risk	Mastery Achiever Power	Belonging Attached Significance	Generosity Altruistic Virtue	Independence Autonomous Competence
Enneagram	Adventurer Achiever	Helper Romantic	Peacemaker Observer	Asserter Perfectionist
Animals	Bear	Monkey	Dolphin	Owl
True Colors(r) (1978)	Green	Orange	Blue	Gold
Children's Literature	Rabbit	Tigger	Pooh	Eeyore
Charlie Brown Characters	Lucy	Snoopy	Charlie Brown	Linus
Jane Austen Novel Characters	Emma Woodhouse	Lydia Bennet	Elizabeth Bennet	Marianne Dashwood
Comics	Jason	Snoopy	Cathy	Ziggy
Who Moved My Cheese?	Sniff	Scurry	Haw	Hem
(by Spencer Johnson, M.D.)
The Celestine Prophecy	Intimidator	Poor Me	Aloof	Interrogator
(by James Redfield)

No one personality type outshines the other or is preferable to the other - but all complement each other in different ways. If you are choosing a team for a difficult task, it is a good idea to have representation for each on your team for a balanced approach to the task at hand.