Disclaimer: At Floricane, we've fallen in love with Insights® Discovery, which is a kind of personality/personal preference evaluator that is similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI, yet different in huge, important ways (that's a blog post for another time). Insights is all about stretching outside the box that some other tests might try to put you in. Insights would say, "Don't worry, Jar Jar Binks! You definitely know when it's time to put on your Darth Vader mask and get. things. done."
As a psychology major, I'm super into these kinds of charts. When I come across a new one, I typically seek out the characters that represent me and my favorite people. Of course, as I'm doing this I'm also loosely converting the Myers-Briggs types to colors on the Insights wheel... #Insights4Life
I found this chart especially interesting because of how it illustrated the personalities of my group of best friends and me. Background: these are the girls I've been best friends with since age 8; so they're basically my sisters. Here we are making up the most hilarious Star Wars foursome:
So proud of my motley crew.
Let's ignore for a moment that I'm the hideously ugly, super-evil, Frank-Underwood-of-Star-Wars character, and let's pretend that Palpatine used his powers for good. Now, how great is this group of best buds? They each have vastly different character strengths, which can come into play at different times. The best part is that the diversity among the group means that one's strengths can almost definitely compensate for another's weaknesses. That's the definition of a great team!
The same thing can be said about teams in the workplace. If everyone had the exact same outlook on things, or the exact same skills, the team would probably be critically weak in some key areas. Not to brag, but let's be honest: they'd have nothing against my fearsome foursome.
It's so important that we appreciate those differences in others and recognize how our differing strengths are a huge benefit to all of us! I'll try to remember that when my more optimistic friends (I'm talking about you, Jar Jar) are dragging me kicking and screaming out of my pessimism camp.
And I'd also like to mention that I just got engaged to a Chewbacca, and I'm overjoyed about it.