The Culture of Personality

Let’s get the bad news out of the way. Statistically speaking, you’re probably in the wrong job. As a new study shows, only 11% of the population is in the right job for their personality.  

I’m lucky to be part of that 11%, and my job is helping people pursue their passions. And everywhere I go, and no matter where they are in their career, people admit to me they’re not really passionate about anything in their job or what they do. They also confess that at work, they largely live an inauthentic life, and that the life they live at home and with their friends is very different from the ones that they lead at their company.

It comes down to authenticity. What if you were the same person in every single situation? 

I’ll bet you’d find a better job—one that fits your personality. If most of us are no longer wriggling into too-tight suits to wear to work (or skinny jeans for that matter), why are we still pulling on job personas that are making us miserable?

I hear the stories all the time: “I became a lawyer because I was raised that success was either a doctor or lawyer.” Or they’re stuck in a career that came out of convenience. “Yeah, 15 years ago, I got an interview through my parents’ friends in finance, and I fell into that niche. And here I am on the management side.” The deeper we dig, the more I learn they are not doing the things they’re naturally inclined to do. 

I’m not suggesting that people go quit their jobs and pursue their passions. What I am suggesting is that we reignite those passions through side hustles or projects. 

At my company, I was the digital social person for many, many years. And that was what I was passionate about until I hit a personal rock bottom in 2016. During some time away from my job, I was able to reflect a little bit deeper and realized that my passion and purposes had evolved over the last 15 years. I had to start changing my metric of success, putting my time into my team members and leadership and doubling down on my family again. I wrote The Millennial Whisperer, becoming a bestselling author of a book centered on work culture. And I did this by becoming true to myself. 

Knowing yourself is the most important thing that any of us can do—practicing the kind of authenticity and self-awareness that allows you to understand your strengths and weaknesses and then outsourcing the things that you both hate and are bad at. 

My deepest desire is to allow people to know themselves at a very early age, but right now we’re at “Clean-it-up-on-Aisle-Midlife-Crisis.”

There are a jillion job-related personality tests out there, my current favorite being The Culture Index. It shows you who you are as a human, and then where you are in your job and what that disparity looks like. You get into key traits: are you team oriented or are you self-driven? Are you introverted or are you extroverted? Do you like a fast pace or do you like a slow pace? Are you low detail or are you high detail? Do you process through your head mostly or through your heart? Do you crave routine or non routine? It's with all of these things that you then get a true read as to what your natural disposition is as a human, and then how that then relates to your current job expectations..

I’m using The Culture Index to help people find more fulfillment in their careers, and what gives me the greatest energy—teary-eye, goosebump stuff—is when I can show someone their real data. They can no longer kid themselves as to what their personality type is, and I can suggest ways for them to actually take steps toward using it to unlock their dreams. We can only do this by understanding our own personalities.

Now for the really good news: there’s never been a more beautiful time to be alive. We’re at the lowest poverty levels, education is at an all-time high. Social media makes everyone super pessimistic. But I'm gonna continue to double down on what the facts say. And what those facts also say is that for the first time ever, all our children can create sustainable lives for themselves by pursuing the things that they enjoy most. And that's because of technology. Our jobs as parents are to teach them the two key traits of tenacity and resilience in helping them unlock those passions as early as possible, while also giving them encouragement and resources around their natural disposition and personality. As parents, it’s our job to unlock those passions. 

Everyone has a gift to the world. Every single person. So how do you unlock those gifts and create a life you actually get paid for? Start with authenticity and self-awareness. Try The Culture Index. And help your children unlock their passions as early as possible.