Reflections on changing personality

There’s a lot of pseudo-science in the murky edges of coaching and one area, where this is particularly so is personality. Even the gold standard of personality dimensions, the big five[1], comes in for criticism in that it only covers some aspects of personality – characteristics such as psychopathy and humour, both of which play significant roles in how people inter-related with others – are not included.  

I have listened to a lot of presentations on MBTI. Mostly, they gloss over problems like poor test-retest validity. And every one of them has made the assumption that personality is largely fixed. When you know someone else’s personality type and your own, the story goes, you can make accommodations towards each other. Yet numerous studies show that personality is not fixed. In general, we change on every measure of the big five between 20 and 40 years of age. In the following two decades, we become more emotionally stable and more conscientious. And beyond 60, we gradually become even more conscientious, less open and less extroverted. On average, people shift by up to one standard deviation in some or all of the five aspects of personality over their lifetimes. (A standard deviation of three would see someone move from one extreme on the spectrum to the opposite extreme.)

A review in New Scientist[2] examines the evidence relating to whether and how people can bring about deliberate changes in their personality. A series of experiments give confidence that, while personality leads to particular patterns of behaviour, changing behaviours and thinking patterns can result in significant changes in personality. 

The starting point appears to determine what change in personality you want to achieve and why. Personality change requires a strong motivation, rooted in emotionally strong visioning of the benefits of being a different person. The desired shift also needs to be realistic – so no more than one standard deviation, with an acceptance that any movement along the spectrum, in the right direction, will be beneficial. Because personality change requires focused effort, it’s best to work on one area at a time. (The good news in this respect is that positive changes in one dimension typically stimulate compatible changes in others.)

Planning the new behaviours is vital. Building into the plans support from others helps, too. Small steps can have big impacts. So, for example:

·      To become more extroverted, choose someone different, who you don’t know, to sit next to at lunch in the staff restaurant

·      To become more agreeable, say thank you more often

·      To become more conscientious, set specific goals each day for task completion

·      To become more open to experience, look for opportunities to have you views and opinions challenged; or just be curious about how the world looks from the perspective of someone from a different culture

·      To become more emotionally stable, learn how to be more forgiving of yourself and others

You can also seek to change other aspects of personality, which aren’t in the big five. For example, people suffering form severe depression often have low emotional stability. Learning improv – raising their ability to see and appreciate the ridiculous – has a major positive impact on their condition. (The relationship between humour and personality change is not proven.)

A role for a coach or mentor is to support an individual in this journey. A core question in mentoring is: Who is the person you desire to become? Incorporating patterns of behaviour and thought that are more typical of the desired personality into the learner’s existing repertoire allows them to experiment. We can then explore with them:

·      What does it feel like to behave and think at this point on the personality spectrum?

·      What insights do you now have into the benefits and drawbacks of being at various points on the spectrum?

·      What other experiments would you like to try?

Above all, coaches and mentors should develop a healthy scepticism towards “personality pop science”. If every person is a complex, adaptive system then the way personality traits are expressed is as much an outcome of the complex, adaptive systems they interact with as it is an outcome of the inner mental workings of their personality profile. Indeed, one of the most effective ways of helping someone develop new strengths of personality is for them to immerse themselves in other systems (such as responsible roles outside of work) that nudge them towards different behaviours and ways of thinking, in environments safer for experimenting.  

Copyright David Clutterbuck 2022

[1] Extroversion- introversion, agreeableness (high to low), conscientiousness (high to low), openness to experience (high to low) and neuroticism- emotional stability)

[2] Frankel M (2022) How to hack your personality pp 46-48, 15 January