The Four Professional Personality Types

Having led both in the military and in the private sector, I spend much of my time helping people perform at their potential. In the private sector, I also spend a lot of time in the hiring process and making sure I bring the best people possible to the organization. I've therefore invested much time thinking about human performance, and have found that people generally fall into four broad professional personality categories. Since four categories is surely not enough to fairly categorize every person in the world, I believe that these categories can also be broken down further into sub-categories, but we'll save that for another time.

First, there are two variables that are key to understand about people; What you are driven by and what are you rewarded by?

• What drives you? Is it comfort or is it challenge? 
• There are those who are always looking for the easy way out (comfort seeking).
• There are those who feel unsatisfied if they complete all their tasks too easily (challenge seeking). 
• What rewards you? Is it consumption or is it creation? 
• Those who feel rewarded by consumption like to buy things and get enjoyment from the act of acquiring nice things more so than their actual subsequent utility. The mere act of getting a faster car, a bigger house, or emotional adornment from others makes them feel better, even if they end up rarely using the car, not needing the extra room in their house, or not finding emotional value in outside attention. The act of consumption is what provides the reward itself. They're also likely to greatly enjoy consuming entertainment. 
• Those who feel rewarded by creation on the other hand may have relatively few material needs (though they may be very financially successful). They derive pleasure from improving on processes or products, making systems more efficient, or designing/producing the very things that consumers can't wait to have. They would much rather create or build something that somebody else buys and enjoys, than to buy something for their own entertainment.

Business schools love a 2x2 matrix, so I will use one to illustrate:

I'll further summarize each of the types here:

Type I: Builders & Conquerors. They are driven by challenge and rewarded by creation. They are entrepreneurs, business executives, inventors, and figures who can change the course of policy and history. They are rarely driven by monetary gain, though they are often very financially successful. Achievement and legacy are absolutely critical to their life. Examples are people like Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, who lived relatively modest lives and worked every moment of it, including on their death bed because they couldn't help themselves from thinking of the next great thing they could help create. 

Type I Characteristics:

• Competitive, visionary, aggressive, judgmental, focused, goal oriented.

What Type I people talk about when outside the work place:

• Principles and ideals, and creating actionable plans to change the world to better fit those principles and ideals. 
• They focus on the future and don't talk a lot about the past, other people, or things that cannot be changed.

Type II: Shop-a-holics. They are driven by challenge and rewarded by consumption. They love to have the fastest cars or the latest fashion.  They get a sense of fulfillment by having material possession; a bigger house, a fancy garage or a fancy kitchen, for example, because they love the way they look. This is not to be confused by Type I personalities who may want a similar fancy garage in order to build or restore a car, or a fancy kitchen because it makes them more efficient in creating new meals to serve others. Type II also love the challenge of getting the newest and latest things. They are likely to participate in competitive flash sales, wait in long lines to buy Apple products the day they debut, or spend long periods of time finding the best deals for things online even if the money they save doesn't justify the effort --  as the joy comes from the hunt itself for best prices.

Type II Characteristics:

• Trendy, demanding, dynamic, require external validation, competitive.

What Type II people talk about when outside the work place:

• Things, and what is the "best of X" and when the next best thing is being released.
• How to get great deals on things, and why certain things are better or worse than other certain things.

Type III: Followers & Consumers. They are driven by comfort and rewarded by consumption. Since they are driven by comfort, they often don't place a premium on their own career and lack the income to consume the things they most prize. Many therefore tend to talk about things that other people have or do, for example, people on reality TV shows or others around them.  They take pleasure in obtaining more than others in their group, and often live out desires for greater things through the lives of others.

Type III Characteristics:

• Late adopters, entertainment driven, defensive, unorganized, caring to close friends.

What Type III people talk about when outside the work place:

• People, and what other people are doing. In particular celebrities. Type III will also talk about things, but usually in the context of what things other people have or don't have, vice the technical merits of the particular object itself.
• They also tend to talk about the past, and repeat stories of past achievement they experienced in life. For example, they are likely to tell the same story of an accomplishment they once had in high school when they find a new person who is willing to listen.

Type IV: Artists. They are driven by comfort and rewarded by creation. Since they are driven by comfort, they are often viewed as lacking discipline, but they don't necessarily want more discipline as they feel it may interfere by what they are rewarded by, which is the creative process. These types often end up being artists, writers, and garage inventors. The creative process is the most important, and the creation is the ends to the means (to give the world something), unlike Type I in which creation is the means to an end (to change something about the world).

Type IV Characteristics:

• Original, imaginative, playful, low risk tolerance.

What Type IV people talk about when outside the work place:

• Ideals, but not concrete ideas on what they can do to progress those ideals. Talk will often minimize actionable steps and focus on idealistic concepts.
• They are likely to also discuss matters of style, goals, and place emphasis on the artistic value of different ideas and things. 

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So what about military leaders?

I would put forward that organizational leaders are generally preferred to be Type I. However, there is significant room for personality variations even within these quadrants. Ideal military leaders have a different skill set from ideal business leaders, and vice versa. 

One area in particular that I have noticed is how strong of a need one has to create. With the desire to create comes a desire for change, ownership, innovation, and legacy. These are not characteristics compatible with a typical military officer who must focus more on fulfilling the command's intent, working within a typically very constrained set of rules, and having no long term ownership of ideas, units, or operations. Military leaders tend to be in a job for 1-2 years, do the best job they can do, and then simply move on to the next job. There is no expectation of significant long term change to occur during their tenure in terms of organizational structure, mission, or processes, as it is simply outside of the scope of their typical duties.

A strong entrepreneur wants to build, create, change, innovate, and take an idea from inception to empire -- often within a period of relatively few years. This is different from a strong military leader, who recognizes that he is there to serve the unit, his men, and his mission during his pre-defined and rigid timeline, and that although his men might follow him to the gates of hell, that unit is never "his" and the structure and organization of his unit are outside of his control. In fact, any attempt to create new fundamental paradigm within the organization will often lead to career failure within the military. An overwhelming desire to "create" is therefore not typically compatible with an ideal leadership role. 

Within Type I personalities, I therefore think there is a divergence between ideal military and business leaders, at least for the first 20 or so years of one's military career. This doesn't mean that strong military leaders can't be strong business leaders and vice versa (in fact they certainly can), but it does speak to the organizational pressures and values which tend to select who may succeed more in each environment.