Every person is unique with a different set of experiences, skills and ambitions.
Research shows there are four core personality types each with four sub-types. While a person’s experiences, skills and ambitions change over time, personality is remarkably stable.
Learning about your personality will help you understand your needs and preferences.
This will enable you to make choices which enhance your level of career satisfaction.
Creatives make up about 30% of the global population. There are four types of Creatives: Synthesizers, Artisans, Persuaders, and Entertainers. Creatives love to have fun. They plan for the future, but they live life in the present moment.
Creative types share a number of characteristics. They are bold, spontaneous, unconventional, and risk-taking. They seek stimulation, prize the freedom to do what they want, and they are generally grounded.
In their professional lives, Creatives excel at mastering new skills, particularly those involving tools or instruments. They have a bias for action, are practical and willing to take risks. This makes them highly effective entrepreneurs and problem solvers.
Creative Artisans make up about 5% of the population. Artisans enjoy exploring the physical world. Artisans are hands on by nature, spontaneously picking up a wide range of practical projects for fun. Artisans are masters at using tools and love fixing things or dismantling and improving them. They take a logistical approach to learning the world. Through building practical skills, Artisans increase their technical prowess and come to better understand their environment in the process.
Artisans explore ideas and concepts through action by experimenting, prototyping and creating. In short, they love building things. Artisans also enjoy helping others and sharing their experience. They are most happy if others express an interest in what they are doing.
Because they are curious and action oriented, they can appear spontaneous and unpredictable. Some Artisans may find it hard to maintain focus on long-term studies or to identify and work towards distant professional goals.
Artisans are confident in their ability to work with any type of tools and equipment. This means that they enjoy risk sports such as motor racing, skiing and surfing.
Artisans often base their friendships on shared interests rather than shared values and principles. In this way, they form practical relationships with others. However, Artisans can sometimes overstep the mark. Their comments or actions may, at times, be inappropriate and go beyond accepted norms of behavior.
Artisans will be happiest in jobs which allow them to complete practical projects and solve immediate problems. They like to work without many constraints such as how and when they do their work.
Artisans are confident and optimistic. They tend to live in the present, usually having many projects on the go. They rarely get stressed.
Artisans can resolve most practical problems and love using their creative skills to fix or improve things. They are adept at breaking down a problem into its constituent parts to find a solution.
Artisans are happy to go with the flow and can easily adapt to new situations. Their pragmatic attitude allows them to switch their focus as priorities change.world around them.
Because they enjoy risk and are very practical, Artisans keep their cool when many other types panic. In these situations, an Artisans logistical and problem-solving skills kick in as they work to fix problems.
Resilient, flexibile and focused on the present, Artisans generally have a relaxed attitude to life.
Artisans can be protective of their ideas and how they do things. As such, they may resist what they perceive as criticism and ignore unwelcome information or become angry or belligerent.
Artisans tend to communicate using logic and facts rather than empathy and feelings. Even when they try to be sympathetic, they can come across as rather terse.
Artisans do not readily share information about themselves and their emotions. It can be hard to get to know them and they often prefer silence to casual conversation which can feel awkward to others.
Artisans enjoy exploring new and different things. Once they have mastered them, they are easily bored and prefer to move on to the next thing. Artisans don’t like to feel tied down to anything long-term and commitments can feel oppressive to them.
Creative Artisans are down-to-earth problem solvers who like independence and space to do their best work. They are generally even-tempered and accommodating. Artisans show loyalty to workplaces which provide them the variety and practical challenges they prefer. They work best resolving day-to-day issues rather than focusing on long-term goals. Artisans can provide valuable insight into how to implement complex long-term projects.
Artisans don’t enjoy fixed daily routines or working to someone else’s agenda and may be resistant. They work best when they have a list of short-term practical challenges and the freedom to handle things as they see fit.
Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.
Artisans will tend to struggle to focus on more distant goals as they can be easily bored. Learning how to best translate long-term goals into daily actions can help them to better plan and manage tasks and activities. This would help them to use their practical skills to take on bigger and more complex projects.
Colleagues like Artisans because they are relaxed and interested in their projects. They build connections by helping others solve problems and identifying shared interests.
Artisans are also reliable in a crisis when others are prone to panic. An Artisan’s calmness, aptitude for analyzing problems, and creative problem solving are invaluable. For these reasons Artisans may play a valuable role as trouble shooters in a corporate setting.
Creative Artisans are generally reserved and can be hard to get to know as they are unlikely to engage in office chat. They prefer to demonstrate rather than present and work better on their own than in a team.
Artisans have a good sense of humor and can use this to defuse tension and restore harmony. Some Artisans actively practice relationship building techniques to nurture a network of support their goals.
Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.
Artisans’ rational and practical nature means that they will respond well to fact-based feedback. However, they may resist if they feel that their freedom to act is being challenged. Artisans are likely to ignore information they reject rather than challenge it openly.
Less naturally empathetic than other personality types, Artisans can come across as unsentimental and blunt. As a result, they may cause offense by failing to recognize emotional and social boundaries. Learning how to read different types of people and communicate with greater empathy could improve their work relationships.
Relaxed and practical, Artisans tend to get along well with others. They are popular with their colleagues and can build networks based on mutual interests rather than political goals.
Creative Artisans are action orientated and have a low tolerance for rules and boundaries. They tend not to say very much and tend to provide minimal direction to their team. As a result, Artisans will allow their team to have the high level of autonomy that they themselves enjoy.
Artisans are more likely to give practical demonstrations than lengthy explanations. Any feedback they give will be short and direct. Not all personality types will respond well to this leadership style. Learning how to delegate to routine and important tasks to different personality types could help some Artisan leaders maximize their impact with their whole team.
Artisans are curious about change and are confident in their ability to master new technologies. They will help their team address the practical problems associated with wider scale change projects.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
Artisans are likely to find project management of longer-term initiatives boring.Depending on the nature of their role, they may need to delegate the task of defining project goals and managing execution. If this is not possible, using key project management hacks could enhance their productivity.
Although they are kind, their lower level of empathy means that they may feel ill-equipped to handle the emotions of the team during times of change. Artisan leaders can be at a loss on what to say and do to help them. Learning how to help others process change may improve their leadership effectiveness. Helping their team members handle uncertainty and stress well will also mitigate burnout.
Because they tend not to be very expressive, an Artisan may fail to pay enough attention to the recognition needs of their team. Learning how to give praise and celebrate successes could help them motivate their team and improve team performance.
Artisans excel in a crisis. Their courage, acute sense for the facts and their ability to analyze problems enables them to solve urgent challenges calmly. People follow their confident lead in all kinds of situations from corporate takeovers to physical emergencies such as fires or other survival scenarios, such as the military.
Creative Artisans are masters of craftsmanship, tools, instruments, and technology. Artisans are like jazz musicians. Their love of tools helps them to improvise on many different machines or devices.
Artisans thrive on variety and love to know how things work. In a world where routine tasks are automated, an Artisan may be attracted by opportunities to maintain, fix and improve the tools and machinery which enable these technologies to function. Artisans have a wide range of career choices from engineering and IT to graphic design and science.
Artisans are highly practical and focused on current day realities. Their love of physical action and risk may attract them to careers as pilots, firefighters, detectives and paramedics. Artisans may also find satisfaction in trouble shooting roles such as networking engineers or office managers.
Artisans may struggle to maintain focus in jobs which involve work on strategies, planning or delivering long-term goals. Equally, jobs which require a high degree of empathy and strong interpersonal skills will not generally be a good fit.
I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.
With a strong desire for autonomy, an Artisan may be attracted to freelancing or some form of entrepreneurial activity. Additionally, an Artisan’s skill with tools may inspire them to set up businesses in the trades such as construction, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering or plumbing. Alternatively, they may be drawn to more creative practical careers such as craft arts, photography or carpentry. Artisans may also prefer careers which allow them to work outdoors such as farming or horticulture.
Artisans work best in environments which reward the quality of their work, not their position in a hierarchy. They fit well in organizations which allow them to take action to solve problems, creatively, and immediately. Artisans appreciate organizations that allow them to work with people whom respect their contributions and whose company they enjoy.
Artisans may wish to avoid organizations which are rule-focused, hierarchical, or inflexible and which reward compliance with procedures and rules. They will likely find workplaces in which their colleagues are mainly detached, objective, or impersonal to be stressful and unsatisfying.
Artisans are one of the most flexible personality types. They have a broad range of career options open to them. If they can address their challenges in dealing with people and planning, they have the ability to find career success in a wide range of fields.
Too often, we leave our growth to random chance. That can be frustrating because we can’t always grow as fast as we want (or need) to! While experience can be a great teacher, there is no substitute for learning proven strategies to maximize our potential.
Creative Artisans have tremendous capabilities. They also share some common challenges. Possible areas for growth for Artisans include:
Build stronger relationships with the people who matter most
Enlist key stakeholders and accelerate change
Increase your impact through effective communication
Strengthen your ability to deliver results through others
Enhance your interpersonal skills to strengthen relationship
Look ahead to accomplish your critical goals more efficiently
Deliver critical project outcomes on time and on budget
Enhance productivity and relationships through respect and appreciation
Work effectively with others to deliver collective results
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