This is a guest post by Molly Owens.
What’s your personality type? Are you an ENTJ? INFP? INTJ? If you don’t know, recent data collected by my team at Truity Psychometrics suggests that understanding how your personality shapes your professional life is an important part of building a successful, fulfilling career.
In order to find out just how importantly personality plays into career advancement, we surveyed 25,759 people about their personalities, their earnings, and the roles they play in their organizations. We broke down respondents into the 16 Briggs Myers personality types to find out which personality types make more money, hold more managerial positions and are happier with their careers.
The results paint an interesting picture. We found significant differences between personality types and income earned, managerial roles and job satisfaction. Here are some of the study highlights that demonstrate just how important your personality can be to your success:
1. Extraverts, Sensors, Thinkers, and Judgers have higher average incomes than their counterparts.
When it comes to income, four personality types out-earn their counterparts. Thinking-Judging types in our study made up the top four highest earners. More tellingly, Extraverted TJs take the cake. ESTJs have the highest average yearly income at $77,000, followed closely by ENTJs at $76,000.
These extraverted TJs do not just out-earn their introverted counterparts, but they do so by a considerable margin, with INTJs and ISTJs — the highest earning Introverts — earning an average of $52,000 and $59,000, respectively… almost $20,000 less than extraverts.
2. Extraverts tend to manage larger teams, as do Thinkers and Judgers.
Why do Extraverts and TJ types make more money? According to the results of our study, it’s leadership opportunities.
Because they are naturally organized, strive for structure and have an affinity for schedules and lists, Judgers show high levels of productivity and tend to become the go-tos in their office. Combine that with the typically analytical personalities of Thinkers and the tendency for Extraverts to gravitate towards leadership roles, and you’ve got a personality type that employers want to reward.
Data from our study reflects this advantage. When we looked at which personality types manage the largest teams, ENTJs and ESTJs topped the list, and ISFPs, ISTPs, and INTPs brought up the rear. When we reviewed the data on a broader level we found that, in general, Extraverts manage an average 4.5 employees while Introverts only manage 2.8 reports.
In short, Extraverts and TJs are more likely to have the qualities that employers are looking for in managers, helping them advance more quickly and earn more throughout their careers.
3. Extraverts, Feelers and Judgers tend to be more satisfied at work.
When it comes to job satisfaction, Extraverts lead the pack. In fact, they not only lead the pack they dominate it, taking up seven of the top 10 personality types with the highest job satisfaction. ESFJs ranked as the most satisfied type, followed by ESFPs, ENFJs, ENTJs and ENFPs. Interestingly enough, as you can see, ENTJs weren’t at the top of the list — despite managing more employees and earning more.
In the same way Extraverts dominate when it comes to job satisfaction, Feelers make up five of the top six personalities with the highest job satisfaction. Feelers often choose careers that give them opportunities to help others and that reflect their personal values, which makes job satisfaction a matter of “doing what you love.” Because they tend to find careers doing what they love, they are less concerned with financial status and organizational power, making job satisfaction more easily attainable.
If you want to understand more about how your personality type shapes your professional success and gain insight into why different personality types make more money, manage more people and are happier with their jobs, access Truity’s full report, and start learning today.
How have you noticed your personality affects your professional development? What personality traits have helped you succeed in your professional life?
About the guest post author:
Molly Owens is the CEO of Truity, a California-based provider of online personality and career assessments and developer of the TypeFinder® personality type assessment. Learn more about personality type and career achievement and connect with Molly and Truity on Twitter and Facebook.