As you ponder the next year (or the next ten), what you aspire to accomplish can often get expressed in your favorite quote. What might this narrative reveal about your personality and your social groups?

Which Quote Reveals Your Personality?

As you ponder the next year (or the next ten), what you aspire to accomplish can often get expressed in your favorite quote. What might this narrative reveal about your personality and your social groups?

We all aspire to something and then surround ourselves with like-minded people. Does this serve our unique aims? Beware the narratives that only serve your personality; this may fool you to want or think things that ultimately may not be good for your aims. For example, hanging out with the Just Do It! crowd may inspire you, but it may also rob you of the ability to think accurately about what it takes to achieve ambitious aims. Instead, create groups and teams (ecologies) made healthier by a mix of ideas, narratives, processes, and standards.

Intuitive students

An intuitive student can see that ideas, narratives, processes, and standards are correlated with each personality (as we teach it).

• Inventors – ideas
• Performers – narratives
• Producers – processes
• Judges – standards

For example, while the most objective-minded will easily see processes, structures, practices, measurements, standards, and regulations, they may not naturally understand how to produce or maintain ideas, contexts, frameworks, relationships, stories, or missions.

Each personality is fitted to consider the environment in ways that others are not. Each personality is likely to demonstrate assets, liabilities, and behaviors that can either accelerate transactions or grind them to a halt.

Each personality might be proficient (or fit) to build a group, team, or transaction in ways that are obvious to them—but trapped in their perspective, they might be missing something that works against their aims.

To help, we’ve offered a few quotes that may reveal your personality, your perspective, and its inherent trappings.

Judges (Standards) – Security in fact and evidence

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.” ― Bertrand Russell

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” ― Carl Sagan

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ― Voltaire

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” ― Albert Einstein

“Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.” ― George Carlin

Inventors (Ideas) – Certainty about an ideal future

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” ― T.E. Lawrence

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” ― Walt Disney

“If you don’t have big dreams and goals, you’ll end up working for someone that does.” ― Unknown

Producers (Processes) – Consistency is the ultimate goal

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” ― Thomas Jefferson

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” ― Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

“When you do more than you’re paid for, eventually you’ll be paid for more than you do.” ― Zig Ziglar

“People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” ― George Bernard Shaw

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” ― J.R.R.Tolkien

Performers (Narratives) – Freedom, good moods, and great relationships

“Quality performance starts with a positive attitude.” ― Jeffrey Gitomer

“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” ― Zig Ziglar

“If you would like to be loved, love, and be loveable.” — Benjamin Franklin

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Carl W. Buechner

“Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.” ― Daniel Pink

Many Perspectives

What is important here is that the narrative you so favor may indicate only one dimension of the transactions built to satisfy your aims. When we build the environments that serve our aims, consider not only the perspective captured by your favorite quote, but also those ideas, narratives, processes, and standards which are the assets and contributions of the personalities other than your own.

AUTHOR

John Patterson
Co-founder and CEO
INFLUENTIAL U
John Patterson co-founded and manages the faculty and consultants of Influential U global. Since 1987, he has led workshops, programs, and conferences for over 100k people in diverse professions, industries, and cultures. His history includes corporate curriculum design focusing on business ecosystems, influence, leadership, and high-performance training and development.