Benziger's Personality Types

What are employers interested in when they ask you to do a personality test as part of an interview process? Do they want to know if existing team members will get along with you? Are they interested in finding out what motivates you? Or do they hope to uncover how you think and perceive the world?

All of these things, and more, can be looked at using personality tests. That's what makes personality so fascinating. It's also what makes it such a loaded topic: with so much riding on your personality type, it's easy to try and fit yourself to an "ideal" type.

One of the most common business uses for personality typing is matching people with job types. But when someone has an idea of the kind of profession he or she wants to pursue, or the type of person he wants to be, how likely is it that he will answer a personality test question without some form of distortion, whether conscious or subconscious?

If you've taken a personality test like the Myers-Briggs or DISC, how objective were your answers really? If you're like most of us, your answers were probably tainted, just a bit, with how you want to act, think, behave, or react, instead of purely how you do respond.

It's nothing to be ashamed of; it's just human nature to want to project a desirable image. Unfortunately, this can lead to a poor match between person and job.

The Benziger Thinking Styles Assessment (BTSA) seeks to address this disjoint by looking at different patterns of brain function, and the personality types associated with these.

Benziger's Brain Types

Dr. Katherine Benziger's approach to personality is based on the idea that we all have a dominant and preferred way of thinking. This dominance is determined by the quadrant of our brains that are naturally the most efficient. In Benziger's model, people's brains are separated into four zones.

Each of these zones, or "modes", has specialized functions. Depending on our pattern of dominance, the behaviors and thinking styles represented in each zone are what determine our strengths.

Benziger's Model

Below is an aerial view of the brain and the four corresponding modes as defined by Benziger.

Figure 1 – Benziger's Brain Model

Mode

Specialized Functions/Preferences

Strengths/Characteristics

Basal Left

Seeks order, processes, procedures, systems

Sensing is dominant – realistic, grounded, practical, sensible

Basal Right

Seeks feelings, harmony, spirituality, emotional connections

Feeling is dominant – subjective, takes things personally, values closeness with people,

Frontal Right

Seeks meaning, expresses through images and metaphors, strong imagination

Intuition is dominant – uses hunches and speculations, imagines what the future might bring

Frontal Left

Seeks clarity, criteria, standards, objective measures, benchmarks

Thinking is dominant – analytical, logical, objective, critical

Terms from "The Four Modes," at Benziger.org.

According to Benziger, we all have one mode where we are naturally the strongest. When you are using your most natural thinking style, you are the most effective and least stressed. However, you can, and many people do, develop skill in other less innately efficient modes.

When someone has a second mode that is almost as strong as their dominant mode, for example, their Basal Left mode is almost as strong as their dominant Frontal Left mode, they would be described as having a "Double Left" brain type. Just 5 percent of people are almost equally strong in all four modes: This is called being "Whole-Brained."

Some examples of brain types are as follows:

Brain Type

Strengths

Weaknesses

Professions

Basal Left

(Mode 1)

Deadline oriented, attends to detail, follows instructions

Rigid, averse to changes, lacks creativity

Clerks, supervisors, safety officers

Basal Right

(Mode 2)

Listening, creating harmony, interpersonal skills

Hard to say no, tries to please everyone

Nurses, teachers, trainers

Frontal Right

(Mode 3)

Spatial skills, conceptualizing, creating models, enjoys change

Becomes bored, doesn't finish projects, idiosyncratic

Entrepreneurs, artists, architects

Frontal Left

(Mode 4)

Analytical skills, objective decision making, sound judgment, goal setting

Underdeveloped people skills, willing to break rules to get results

Managers, CEOs, Business analysts

Double Lefts

Modes 1 and 4 combined

Modes 1 and 4 combined

Doctors and lawyers

Double Rights

Modes 2 and 3 combined

Modes 2 and 3 combined

Teachers, writers, dancers

Whole-brained

Modes 1,2, 3 and 4 combined

Modes 1,2, 3 and 4 combined

Heads of large, global, multifaceted organizations (UN, political leaders, Red Cross)

Using Benziger's Brain Types

According to Benziger's model, your brain type determines the areas where you are strong, and those in which you are weak. The more modes you have working for you, the more well-rounded you are.

However, you can never escape the fact that only one mode is more or less effortless. You may have developed competence in other areas due to education, experience, and training but these skills are never quite as efficient or comfortable as those driven by your natural tendencies.

Benziger calls this working in a mode that's not your naturally dominant one "falsifying type." She suggests that as many as 80 percent of people work using highly developed competencies that they may even have mastered, but which are not their natural gifts.

To apply Benziger's theory to your own circumstances, think about the following:

• When you look at the brain type descriptions above, do any of them seem particularly like you, or not like you?
• Does your job demand that you use skills that seem foreign to your natural approach?
• Do parts of your job bore you?
• Are there parts of your job that you just dread doing?
• Do you have an idealized image of yourself or what you should be doing, and does this image match or conflict with the brain type you think you have?

Having answered these questions, do you think you're using your natural strengths?

If not, take some time for self-reflection and look for ways in which you can start to use your natural talents more. If changing jobs is not an option, perhaps there are other ways you can fulfill your talents through hobbies and interests.