One of the most common questions that I am asked from audiences has to do with with using Carl Jung’s Personality Types in daily life. While everyone is very eager to understand their personality in order to plan their studies and career moves, one of the best ways to evaluate the power and usefulness of the personality types is to use them in the less important events of daily life. In this way you can train yourself and understand yourself without having to risk everything. Also because these events are often repetitive in nature, they allow room for improvement and more testing.
One such daily life situation, is the use of the global website, Craigslist. For the uninitiated, this is a website where average people, usually not retail stores, post their garage sales, rental property, or other items for sale or rent, even job vacancies. Craig Newmark created this list website first as a hobby and is really targeted to everyday usage by normal people who need to buy and sell things. As such it is a perfect place to test your acumen in bargaining in all it’s quotidian majesty.
I decided to try and see how personality types can come in handy in negotiating the purchasing of a small item, such as a simple office printer.
What we found in our simple test is that different personality types take different attitudes in the negotiation process.
Si Types – These types are interested in creating trust. They take a long time to feel comfortable doing business with you. They want everyone to be satisfied and they often want to move ahead together
Te Types- The ultimate pragmatists, these types are very business minded and usually focus they say something like “Just the facts ma’am”.
Ti Types – They are very analytical, they need a lot of information, they make decisions slowly, they need precision.
Se Types – They need enthusiasm. They are quick and fact orineted.