Project Purpose: Find Your Why to Find Your WaySample

Be Yourself

In getting to know what purpose we were designed for, our personality profile does not just give us a peek into what we can do; it gives us an idea where we can thrive with our potential strengths, and what may be our waterloo because of our potential weaknesses. It can give us an idea how, with our strengths, we can support others, and how with our weaknesses, we can mobilize the strengths of others to support us. The way we were designed tells us ways we will be needed by others and how we will need others. I guess it tells us how we are to function in the world in a way that others will need us to be at our best, and we will need others to be our best. 

How amazing that we can see how we were made for relationships and working together. We also gain an idea of what ways we can function as leaders. That is why we need to get to know our personality profiles, or in other terms, behavioral tendencies.

In our experience, personality frameworks, like the classic four temperaments as reflected by behavior assessment tools like the DISC®, are insightful. DISC is based on the work of psychologist William Moulton Marston in the 1920s. DISC is a popular, straightforward, standardized, and relatively easy way to assess behavioral styles and preferences. The tool classifies people’s behavior into four types (dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness) by looking at their preferences on two scales:

· Task versus people

· Fast-paced versus moderate-paced

Every person tends to behave a certain way, where one is prominently one type of personality or a combination of two prominent traits—a primary and secondary one. Another perspective says that each person possesses all four relational styles, but in varying degrees, with one or two characteristics more prominent than others. Each style has its own priorities and ways of relating, and thus tends to behave in certain ways. With each type and combination comes strengths and weaknesses of its own.

Watch the video posted here. After watching, can you identify with any one or two of these types of behavioral tendencies?

There are clear benefits to knowing your own behavior profile and relational style. For one, doing so is knowing how God molded you to serve. God can use your behavioral tendencies or relational style to serve His purposes, recognizing that with each kind comes certain strengths. Understanding your behavioral tendencies with their corresponding strengths and weakness will help you determine your fit and make you more productive in pursuing and achieving your purpose and goals. It can also reveal where and how you function naturally and at your best. This enables you to celebrate who you are, your strengths, and how God wired you—and how to function best in a way that contributes to others. It also allows you to choose and decide which jobs or roles fit you well. People become dissatisfied if they aren’t well matched to their jobs. When you understand your natural preferences, it is easier to find a fit with a job you’ll like and will be good at. This helps improve performance and makes you happy.

Secondly, it enables you to consider how you can maximize your strengths and minimize the impact of your weaknesses by tapping into the strengths of others and coming alongside others to help them in their weaknesses.

This can reduce huge amounts of time and energy given to resolving conflict, dealing with performance issues, and remedying poorly communicated expectations with people you work with. You’ll have a lot more time to spend on productive activity if you can learn to work alongside other people better.

Where you thrive, how you work best with people, where you need help, how you can best lead others—so far, these should give you more than an idea what you were wired for.