Predicting Personality

Chapter TwoTHE INGREDIENTS OF A UNIQUE PERSONALITY

If your job requires you to work with others, build relationships, or lead teams, you're like a chef with a full cabinet of spices. The more you mix them together, the more you discover. Some combinations make you cringe, others make you laugh, and some of them are just missing … something … that you cannot quite put your finger on.

Like a spice, each one of us brings a unique flavor to the table—our own individual blend of biological traits, formative experiences, and social influences. We call this blend our personality.

Scientifically speaking, your personality is a set of behavioral, cognitive, and emotional patterns that make you, you. It's the list of words your closest friend would provide if someone asked them, “What is [your name] like?” They might start with your hair color, your height, or your job title, but that's all for context. The real answers are the ones that dwell beneath the surface, like what you care about, what you're motivated by, how you interact with others, and how you see the world. Your external features are a tiny component of you, and compared with the internal ones, they are not nearly as interesting.

You're complex. You're unique. You're hard to understand. And you're living in a world with billions of other people who are just as complicated. Life dumps us into a series of melting pots—our family, team, company, and community—that are all packed with cognitive diversity. When the stakes are ...