Keirsey Temperament Assessment - Free, Powerful, and Revealing
During my last session at the Advanced School for Innovators we were reminded of another personal inventory tool that’s just as useful as Myers-Briggs (MBTI) and KAI - the Keirsey Temperament Assessment.
When you go to the Keirsey assessment page the first thing that you notice is that, unlike KAI, you can take the assessment over the internet. The second thing you notice is that, unlike KAI and MBTI, the Keirsey assessment is free. This makes it a lot more accessible than the other two. The website has a wealth of information on interpreting the assessment results.
Unlike MBTI, which assesses personality into one of sixteen broad types, the Keirsey assessment places you into one of four possible temperaments (descriptions taken from the Keirsey webpage):
- Guardian: Guardians pride themselves on being dependable, helpful, and hard-working. Guardians make loyal mates, responsible parents, and stabilizing leaders. Guardians tend to be dutiful, cautious, humble, and focused on credentials and traditions. Guardians are concerned citizens who trust authority, join groups, seek security, prize gratitude, and dream of meting out justice.
- Artisan: Artisans tend to be fun-loving, optimistic, realistic, and focused on the here and now. Artisans pride themselves on being unconventional, bold, and spontaneous. Artisans make playful mates, creative parents, and troubleshooting leaders. Artisans are excitable, trust their impulses, want to make a splash, seek stimulation, prize freedom, and dream of mastering action skills.
- Idealist: Idealists are enthusiastic, they trust their intuition, yearn for romance, seek their true self, prize meaningful relationships, and dream of attaining wisdom. Idealists pride themselves on being loving, kindhearted, and authentic. Idealists tend to be giving, trusting, spiritual, and they are focused on personal journeys and human potentials. Idealists make intense mates, nurturing parents, and inspirational leaders.
- Rational: Rationals tend to be pragmatic, skeptical, self-contained, and focused on problem-solving and systems analysis. Rationals pride themselves on being ingenious, independent, and strong willed. Rationals make reasonable mates, individualizing parents, and strategic leaders. Rationals are even-tempered, they trust logic, yearn for achievement, seek knowledge, prize technology, and dream of understanding how the world works.
Each of the four main temperaments has four subtemperaments. Each is explained in detail on the assessment page linked above. This page explains the relationship between Keirsey and MBTI.
My temperament is Rational. I can see a lot of the archetypal rational characteristics in myself, but also a few from idealist and artisan. My main rational trait is pragmatism, and I’m drawn to strategic planning as are many rationals. I also place a high value on competence, my own and that of others. But as a musician I have some artisan traits, and as a thinker I have some intuitive traits of the idealist.
Regarding the relationship between my type and temperament, it doesn’t seem to match. My rational temperament should indicate a type ENTP, whereas I’m an ESTP. The page I linked above claims a 75 percent corrrelation, but in my case the Form Q portion of my MBTI assessment indicates I’m right on the border between S and N anyway.
Take the Keisey assessment and read up on your results. It will tell you a lot about yourself and how you relate to others.
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