Hello and welcome to episode 41 of design, curious podcast.
I'm your host, a mentor, Rebecca Ward.
Today on the podcast, we are going to get some understanding
around personalities, personality types and all the
tests that can help you understand yourself as well as
your friends and the people you influence.
And your clients, just really important part of business and
even if you're in your career and you're going to work for
someone else, it really comes into play with dealing.
With clients. So we'll get into that in a
little bit and I wanted to remind you that I have this free
downloads for you. If you want to find out more
about the career and get a little more information to get
you started. I have the three things.
I wish I had known before I started my career in interior
design as well as the roadmap to Interior Design.
So if you need either of those you can find those in the show
notes as well as information about my design Mentor, which is
my membership group, and I'd love to see you in there also.
Excited to share a special offer with interior design brand
strategist, Erik essaouira, who you may.
Remember from episode 38, how storytelling and brand marketing
will level up your interior design career.
Erica has just launched a new course called the brand
storytelling master class on teachable and it's for my
audience. You guys, she made a great offer
to go back and listen to the episode.
If you haven't already and leave a review on my Apple podcast or
pod chaser. Platform and then take a
screenshot of that and email it to me podcast at our or design
or you can tag me on Instagram if you post it there then she'll
send you a coupon to take her master class for free.
The course is designed to be short and easy to complete.
You'll learn how to write compelling stories for your
brand, in an easy to implement step-by-step.
Master Class format designed to get you crafting.
Unforgettable brand narratives, in just a few short hours by the
end of this course. You'll have created your own
Lions ran scripts and content Matrix allowing you to easily
generate 20 plus unique content topics and you can use those for
Social Media blog posts and email campaigns.
She's super excited about it and offering this for a very limited
time. So we're just going to promote
it for the month of June. So if you're interested, follow
the course Link in my show notes.
And if you'd like to take it for free in exchange, for the review
of our episode, please do not hesitate to let me know once you
post posted it. So like I said, screenshot that
and email me or post it on Instagram and tag us so that you
can get your code for taking this brand storytelling master
class for free. All right.
Let's get in today's episode about understanding
personalities, because I know you're curious person like me or
else, you wouldn't be here on the design, curious podcast,
you're now listening to design, curious a place where you create
If one are here to learn about what it really is, like, to be
an interior designer and I'm your host and Mentor Rebecca,
Ward, if you're worried about how to succeed in a creative
career, if you're ready to learn your next steps to become an
Interior Designer. And if you want the satisfaction
of doing something, you love every day, you are in the right
place, grab a coffee, a notebook, and let's dig into
today's episode. Alright, so let's get into all
the different personality types. And before we can even talk
about understanding that, I'm going to talk to you a little
bit about all the different types of categorisations and
different tests that you can take to identify what your
personality type is and perhaps your client and other people in
your life that you might be working with or tradespeople.
And then these are tools to help you understand them better to
communicate better with other people, understand improve your
relationships. And knowledge is important.
So the more, you know, the better you can do.
And I think when it comes to personalities, that's also true.
So I'll kind of take you through my journey of being exposed to
different personality, testing types.
The first one I was exposed to was the Myers-Briggs test and
that's something that most people are familiar with.
It's categorized in 16 different personalities, and you'll be a
combination of four different letters.
So for example, My Myers-Briggs is infp, which means that I am.
I'm introverted intuitive feeling and prospecting in my
approach to relationships. So I'll talk a little bit more
about that in a minute. So Myers-Briggs identifies,
which one of these combinations that you are based on the test
that you can take and there's a website for that called 16
personalities.com, it makes it pretty easy to do.
So, you know, even though you might get categorized as an
official person, Analogy type. I also want to say that does it
mean that this will never change.
Like sometimes you might take it when you're young, you might
take it when you older note, you'll find that you're
different because people do change over time and if you're
working to improve yourself or just develop yourself in other
ways, you might find yourself going from introverted to
extroverted or vice versa or feeling thinking, you know.
So there might be changes that happen in your life.
Doesn't mean that you're pegged into this hole forever, but it
does give A lot of content to explore to help understand
yourself better. And when you understand yourself
better, then you can help other people interact with you better.
That's the way I view it. So the 16 letters would be the
first category be there. I re for introverted or
extroverted and RS4 intuitive versus observant or sensory t,
or F for thinking, or feeling and jrpg for judging or
prospecting. So there's an easy online quiz
like I said at 16, personalities.com that you can
take and kind of find out what yours is but I find that the
Myers Brigg is probably one of the most well-known personality
types and there's some books on it, you can read if you're
really into that. So yeah, I've included in my bio
and my staff's bio as well, our Myers-Briggs personality type
which was actually a key thing for a client who reached out to
us and said that she was really drawn to our website into
Working with us because we had included our Myers Brigg results
on our bios and that she was also the same as mine and that
just helped her to have a bond with us already before we met.
So I thought that was really interesting.
So then the next Personnel, the categorization that I really
explored after my eyes Briggs, was that Enneagram.
So the Enneagram, you can probably find on Pinterest or
Instagram. There's a lot of great content
there. To explore it.
And that is nine, different personality types that have been
categorized. And they'll say that, you know,
each of us has some percentage of these nine different
personalities within each of us. But at different times some will
present themselves stronger than others.
So we also include this test result on our bio and so mine is
a nine Enneagram. There is a book that I would
recommend for really exploring the Enneagram.
In that is called the road back to you and I'll include a link
for that in the show notes. So you can explore, what a type.
One is type nine. And then there's also a book
about the relationships that those together.
So I find that for me, the Enneagram is a really easy thing
to identify and other people just because of explored it so
much. That I feel like it's an easier
one for me to identify. Once I see someone's personnel
and I'm like, okay, you're probably a seven or your you
Ornate or a six, or something like that.
And then that just helps me to understand how that person moves
around their day and how they like to communicate.
And it's not that I really try to put people in a box, but it
is helpful to understand people's personalities.
The next personality testing that I went through was the disc
assessment. And I mentioned that before and
I hope to have the coach that took me through the disc
assessment on the podcast, sometime in the future to talk
about it and about personality. Needs and how important it is to
understand yourself and understand other people as
you're doing business relations and so the disc stands for or
the letters d is and c and So within this you'll have four
different personalities that have a different percentage of
each of these letters though. And so D is for dominance the
eyes for influence. S is for steadiness and c's for
conscientiousness. And So you'll either be a high
or a low on the scale of these different aspects and these
higher lows might change as you're exposed to more stressful
situations or as your, the way that you perceive yourself.
First is how other people see you.
So, it's really interesting and so now I do a kind of a standard
practice in my business when we onboard client of doing an
internal assessment of what I think my clients does
personality is, so I know how to speak to them because like Say
there are a Heidi. Well, they really want to be
direct and to the point and they don't want a lot of fluff in
their communication. So instead of saying in an
email, like Hi, how are you? I hope your day is going really.
Well, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, blah, blah,
blah, blah, ID. Really wants to be like hi.
Here are the things that we worked on this week?
Boom? Boom.
Boom boom. Whereas maybe an i or an as
might want some more of that softness of gradually getting
into the point. So really understanding how the
client likes to be. Okin 2 and how they like to
communicate is going to be really key for when you're doing
a presentation and trying to sell your design to them, or
even just communicating throughout the project.
Now, I do see that the disc assessment correlates very
highly with the for temperament assessments, which is another
categorization is exposed to, actually, my mom did do some
research on this. When I am remember, when I was
young, she had a book and would talk about these different
temperaments, but it's actually based on Ancient Greek
understanding of the body fluids, and they think that if
you had a high amount of certain body fluid, then it would affect
your personality. Those four different personality
types would be colored, sanguine, phlegmatic and
Melancholy. And so those actually match up
to the disc assessment, the D is in C.
So if, you know, one you can kind of know the other one
better. But so you might have a
preference that one speaks to you more than the other.
And so So you can explore both of those as well.
So that's kind of a quick rundown of the basic
categorization of personality types that people will commonly
ascribe to. And like I said, you can go see
this on my website, which ones I am and my team and we also
included in there for fun what our Hogwarts house is.
And so you know like there's a million quizzes you can take
online to see like What's your like if you were a he one of the
friends from the TV show which friend would you be?
You know the things like that but for Harry Potter does have a
website. You can go to and get sorted
into your Hogwarts house. It's really based on your
personality type and so we included on their Hogwarts house
and sometimes people mention that to a meeting and I think
that's really funny. So yeah, we actually have
embraced this because you know, growth and knowledge.
Which are part of our core values.
And so we think that's really important for us to know
ourselves for our clients to know themselves, so that we can
really both of us work together to create the best design that
they want to live in. We do like to have this kind of
Personal Touch on there, on our website, to kind of see who's
paying attention, who it speaks to and actually helped us
understand the client a little better to where they appreciate
the personality types and get to know themselves and other
people. So now that we've kind of gone
over A bit of background on the personality types.
I'm going to shift over to a book that I think is probably
the one that everyone should read especially if they're
running a business or in a position of leadership.
And then that book is the classic How to Win Friends and
Influence People by Dale Carnegie and is a really really
well known book fairly quick read.
I'm just going to be a quick synopsis of that book which
actually found and I'll leave a reference to this where it's
just a brief summary of what the book is in the main points of
the book and I will highlight a few of those here just to know
for when you're dealing with your clients.
And so one of the things that you're going to want to be doing
when you're dealing with clients, is that you want them
to like you and this might be one of the things I'll just say
that is why people might not be cut out for residential design
because you had to do a lot of interpersonal communication.
You have to basically hold the clients hand through the process
and you're getting To know them get into another personality.
Getting to know what the like how they live with their
vacations are their Hobbies personal details and some
designers just don't want to do that.
You don't want to get to know their clients personal details.
I'm a very curious person naturally, like I said, and I
know you are too because this podcast is called design
curious. And you wouldn't be here if you
weren't curious about the career.
So given that I will treat this going forward as though, you
were like me. Me and you want to get to know
other people. So if you don't really like
communicating with people and really holding their hand, maybe
residential design is not for you but as you can into the
projects you want to be genuinely interested in your
clients. So you're going to smile a lot
when you're meeting them for the first time and you can even get
a smile on phone conversations because that really comes across
and you want to remember the person's name.
So sometimes this totally goes in and out my ears.
That's why I like to record my first initial consultations
because sometimes that's the point where we get into the
house and they'll might introduce their husband or their
dog cat kids and all these names and we might not get them all
written down in time for people who are walking in around.
But it is really great to be able to reference those names
later in your follow-ups, and then your Communications that
you are listening to the client, and that and names are really
important. There is no more lovely sound to
a person than their own name. So, using their name, often is a
good way to communicate with people to get them to like you
and you want to make sure you get it right?
And so that would really endearing the person to you.
So using their name over and over in the initial consultation
just that your understanding that, you know, their name and
using it in the presentation to communicate would be good also.
So I'd encourage you to do that. You want to make sure that
you're a good listener and you're encouraging them to talk
about themselves. So it's not a hard part for a
designer because I think you're coming into their home, the
whole purpose of the initial console is to get them to tell
you everything that they're willing to share about
themselves. So they can get a full picture
of who this person is and what their interests are and their
personality. And what it is, they need you
there for how you're going to design their Project based on
what they're telling you. So you're really wanting them to
Tell you more and more and more, and you're asking questions, and
follow-up questions and and they're telling you about their
interests. And maybe they're saying that
they just got back from a vacation in Hawaii and they want
to go Europe. And so you might have also gone
to Europe and so you can find points where you can relate to
them. And often times, it's not going
to be difficult because typically, you, your ideal
client is very relatable to yourself.
You are your ideal client often. And so I know that's true for me
because I work with a lot of busy families.
I understand what it's like to have kids and pets and dogs and
running around everywhere and so I can speak their lingo and I
understand all the needs, like, the kids rooms what, you know,
they all look the same. So so it's often great to have
relatable points that she can bring up with the client to.
Again, ensure that you have a good communication with them and
they like you another recommendation from the book,
Look, is that you want others to feel important and that you want
to sincerely point out ways that they're important to you as an
client that even though you're there as the prize in the expert
but they are critical for you to be able to do that thing to be
able to design the space and create a space for them to
improve life. So means that the client is
really important to you and you want them to feel that in your
Communications. So when it comes to the
presentation, you're going to want to win, people over to your
way of thinking. Because Obviously, you're
selling the presentation, you're selling your design to them but
you want to do it in a way that is authentic and you're not
arguing with the client. And so you're going to show
respect to the client. If something comes up that they
don't like instead of saying, oh you're wrong.
I'm the expert. You just need to do what I'd
say. I'm the designer know, you're
going to want to have a conversation with them, that
makes them feel heard, and even if you disagree with them,
you're bringing up points calmly and kindly. that are important
and it's important that they can express their thoughts and
perhaps you want to ask them are questions to understand why
they're hesitant a particular item that you designed maybe as
a fabric on a chair and you want to know that actually that fat
particular fabric reminds me of some experience they had in
their Grandma's house or something - in the past and that
they didn't you would never realize they had that but they
might actually now just Becoming aware that.
Oh this fabric actually reminds me of my grandma and I don't
really want that in my house. So having a conversation about
that helps the client feel heard instead of shutting down them,
down immediately, with that negativity.
Another important thing in the presentation is that you want
them to say, yes, is often to the ideas that you're
presenting, as often as they can.
So if you have something easy at front like you say, here's your
front door and here's the arrangement of the living.
Room and this flows really well. Don't you agree?
And they say yes and so then go into the kitchen and look at
this. Nice.
Doorway into the kitchen. It's expanded.
And don't you think that's great idea?
Yes. So so you're looking for them to
agree with you along the way. So it's easier for them to
agree. When you reach to maybe more
creative ideas that you're trying to promote that.
You're not sure that they're going to go for but they've
already been in the habit of saying yes to you.
So that this would be a great way for them to Be open to what
you have to say and of course you're going to be presenting
with a smile and you're going to be friendly and everything that
comes up. I find that clients like to do
and I like to let them do is that they need to take ownership
of at least one portion of the job or of the project design.
So the way I work with the design process, I don't do a
check-in halfway through in the design.
See if the client likes the direction instead we do all of
our gathering information of what we think they are.
Like at the very beginning we design it and then we presented
to them so they don't get to see the design until the
presentation and then we can make adjustments.
And so we have it presented as a complete and final product to
the client, which is the best way to show them to see how it
all comes together. But usually and invariably they
want to take some kind of ownership of the project which
is fine. They haven't really had any
participation in the design up to this point for telling, you
know, besides telling They like that.
The very beginning. So usually there's a little
something that they want to change and often.
It's like a throw pillow or finial on the hardware.
So we can kind of anticipate these things and often times,
we'll pick some options and have them ready to show them.
They're like, oh I'm not sure I would love that pillow.
Maybe we can explore something else and so we'll say well do
you like this one or this one? And be like, oh yeah, I like
that one. And so then they've actually
been able to make a decision and input on that design and so that
really helps them to take ownership of the project and
then they feel like they've been a part of it even though they
weren't going through the whole design process with you at the
end, they're able to say yes or no and make some changes in
really take ownership. And I think that's an important
part for the client to really sign off on the design.
It's also interesting to see how the different personalities
respond to the presentations, some people get Really
emotional. I've had clients cry through the
presentation, just because it's so beautiful, and they can
Envision themselves living in this design already, and they
just are so happy to see it. Other people are wanting to know
a lot of the details. I've had a presentation where
they, as we were walking through after we did, you know, the
initial showing everything, then they wanted to walk through
again, and write down every single dimension, for every
single piece. Piece of furniture just because
it took comfort in knowing exactly what that design are
what those sizes were so that I don't know if they were going to
go back home and tape it out on the floor.
But they're probably a high C on that scale on the disc
assessment because they really need to know those details and
fine tune that. So, yeah, you'll see the
different personalities come across.
And so we try to tailor our presentations also, for these
different personalities, whether we just need get to the point
and kind of show them all the Like here's the design, here's
how much it costs. Say yes or no.
Or I probably really want to use more flowery verbiage to kind of
take them through and see like imagine yourself walking through
this doorway into your nook. And here's where you have coffee
in the morning. Sun's coming through.
And so, you know, you'll go understand by the time you get
to the presentation, how your client likes to be spoken to and
how they like, to communicate and so by This time, you should
really be able to fine-tune your presentation to accommodate
that. And so, that's really important
to know how your client might react to your presentation.
And then even the end of the project when it all comes
together. You'll have different reactions
as well. Some clients and be like, yeah,
looks great. I love it.
Thanks, you did a great job and others are just like falling on
the floor fainting because they love it so much.
So you know this is not rocket science, you know, that people
have Personalities. And so you're going to be
running into them though. As you're dealing with clients,
it's good to be aware for communicating with them.
So hopefully, this is piqued your interest on understanding
personalities. If you're not one of those
people already who likes to explore personality types, maybe
are a little more Curious now, but this is just something that
I've always been really into. I remember back in college
before 9/11, we would go to the airport and just sit and watch
people and I love to see people. People interact and try to
understand their story. And you know, how are these what
kind of relationship to these people have just based on you
know, watching them and observing human interaction.
Then I learn a lot that way by watching people.
So that's understanding and Personalities in a nutshell and
why it's important. And hopefully that'll give you a
leg up. When you're starting your career
to really communicate well with your clients and trades and
anyone that you might be working with.
It's very have it all the lowdown on personalities at
least from what I considered to be important and if you have
other personality tests that you've taken or you really enjoy
and want to share what your personality type is with me, I
would love for you to slide into my DMs and let me know which one
you've taken and what is your personality type?
Because I'm just curious about everybody.
So I hope you found that enjoyable again.
You can find all the links for everything that I mentioned, the
websites, as well as the book in the show notes.
And I hope to see you in my design Mentor, I'd love to talk
with you more about dealing with clients and starting your
business and how to be an interior designer in that
program. Also, don't forget to take
advantage of that offer. Erica sort has for her brand
storytelling masterclass. Go ahead and leave me a review
on Apple podcast or pod Chaser screenshot that review and send
it to Me so that you can get that code to take this really
amazing Master Class. You're going to want for your
business. So next week we're going to have
another great interview in our summer series.
We're going to have one extra interview per month during the
summer. So June, July and August, we're
going to have three interviews instead of two, just because
I've so many that I've done, I really want to get them out to
more quickly than I've been able to typically, I have like a
three monthly time. Once I interview someone before
it can get Published because I have so many people that I've
interviewed and just the lineup is taking a while for them to
get out. And so, I'd love to have you
guys here. These great interviews more
quickly. So, that's why I'm doing this
summer series. So you got some great interviews
coming up. So, stick around for that and
until then when we see you next week, stay creative and curious.
Thanks for listening. If you loved this episode,
please leave a rating and a review.
This helps me reach other curious creative side.
IQ. If you have a topic request or
would like to contact me, simply head over to my website, our
Ward design.com or email me at podcast at our Ward design.com,