Personality Power: Discover Your Unique Profile--and Unlock Your Potential for Breakthrough Success - Softcover

Zichy, Shoya

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814421237 ISBN 13: 9780814421239

Publisher: AMACOM, 2013

Synopsis

This helpful book reveals a better way to find professional satisfaction and experience breakthrough success rather than searching for a new position or quitting and landing in the growing pool of unemployment.

Through helpful charts, relevant exercises, and inspiring success stories, you’ll learn how to leverage your natural talents and attain the professional fulfillment and recognition you deserve. Shoya Zichy’s Color Q model is a highly accurate professional assessment used by thousands of professionals worldwide that partners an extensive understanding of and involvement with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator with David Keirsey’s Four Temperaments model.

After completing the simple ten-minute assessment, you’ll gain helpful insights on how to:

• identify career blind spots,
• find ideal and least-preferred work environments,
• communicate with and coach others,
• and create a career road map toward achieving your professional goals.

You’ll also have the opportunity to read an in-depth chapter on your personality type, which will help you better understand your unique professional strengths and how to make the most of them. 

About this title

About the Author

Shoya Zichy heads a New York City-based consulting firm that specializes in executive coaching and training programs using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Keirsey Temperament model. Zichys work has been profiled in Fortune and Plan Sponsor magazines and on CNN. Her firms client list includes Con Edison, Deloitte & Touche, Standard & Poors, and The Northern Trust Bank. Previously she had a fifteen-year career in marketing at Merrill Lynch and American Express. Today, her proprietary research linking personality to investment behavior is the cornerstone of Peter Tanouss bestselling The Wealth Equation and of a unique new web-based coaching facility designed for 401(k) participants. www.LeadershipQ.com

From the Back Cover

The key to both enjoying and succeeding at work lies in knowing your core strengths--and making the most of them. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Grounded, realistic, and accountable? Competitive and theoretical? Spontaneous and action-oriented? Creative and empathetic?

Based on the easy-to-understand "Color Q" model of the four major personality groups -- used by more than 50,000 professionals worldwide--Personality Power gives you a clear blue-print for using your natural abilities more effectively ...and reenergizing your professional life. Just take a simple, 10-minute self-assessment to determine your personality type and discover how best to:

- Communicate with employees, bosses, and others with different styles

- Identify your ideal (and least suitable) work environments

- Avoid the blind spots associated with your type

- Assemble a career plan with concrete steps for achieving your goals

Featuring in-depth chapters for each personality type, helpful charts, exercises, and inspiring success stories--including profiles of well-known figures such as Diane Sawyer, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Hillary Clinton, and others--the book reveals how to use your natural talents to approach innovation, deal with conflict, negotiate compensation, and self-coach your way to greater success.

Good news: You don't need a new job to be happy at work. Now, packed with life-altering insights, Personality Power will enable you to achieve the recognition and fulfillment you deserve ...just by being yourself.

"I have successfully used Color Q with hundreds of associates to increase their awareness of personality and leadership style, which has resulted in higher-performing teams. It is an incredibly fun, memorable, and effective resource!

-- Rehana Farrell, Chief Administrative Officer, Guggenheim Investments

"A breakthrough book! Shoya Zichy scores a bull's-eye by showing business leaders how to understand their strengths and use them to reduce conflict and manage more effectively."

-- Peter J. Tanous, President, Lepercq Lynx Investment Advisory, LLC

Shoya Zichy is the creator of the award-winning Color Q personality profile system. Formerly president of APTNYC, the Myers-Briggs Association of New York, her roster of impressive clients includes Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, UBS, and the U.S Treasury. She is the author of Career Match.

Ann Bidou is the coauthor of Career Match and has written for various publications.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1introduction

I SAT, STRANDED, in a muggy Asian airport. It had been a long, overscheduled

trip seeking new private banking clients. In the midst of a pile of

debris left behind by the late-night floor sweepers, I noticed a dog-eared

book. I picked it up and, from that moment, my view of the world was

changed forever.

 

“If a man does not keep pace with others, perhaps it is because he hears a

different drummer,” it began with the frequently quoted Henry David

Thoreau. The book, a since-discontinued presentation of the theories of Swiss

psychologist Carl Jung, outlined new insights into the way people take in information

and make decisions. The contents confirmed what I had long sensed

intuitively, having observed people with fascination since I was a child. The

information hinted of a new framework to use with clients and associates.

 

Settling back in my Hong Kong office the next morning, I decided to

categorize each of my customers according to their Jungian behavioral profiles.

I used four colors to create a simple system that could be used by the

support staff during my frequent absences. Each file included brief instructions

for handling personal interactions. “When a Gold comes in, make

sure all statements are up-to-date and organized in date-sequential order.

If a Blue makes an appointment, call our investment guys in New York and

get three new ideas.” There were four color groups of clients; each had its

own service strategy.

 

Over the next few months our new business increased by 60 percent, primarily

on word-of-mouth. My company benefited, but I did as well. I began

to enjoy my clients more, my stress level went down, and, in time, my relationships

outside of the office would improve as well.

 

For some ten years, I applied the same techniques to a growing and

diverse client base: high-net-worth individuals in South America, white-robed

sheiks in Abu Dhabi, shipping magnates in Athens, aristocratic

landowners in Spain. No matter who or what, the color coding dotted their

files and it worked—for men, women, young, old, and worldwide ethnicities,

the results were universal.

 

Institutions reorganize and solid careers dematerialize overnight. With

my firm in the throes of a major transition, I took some time off to go up to

Maine and rethink my life direction. On the porch of my small seaside inn

sat a man reading a book written by Isabel Myers, who had been deeply

influenced by none other than Carl Jung. She had developed a new application

for Jung’s work called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It was

the life direction I was looking for.

 

As I discovered a worldwide network of MBTI books, seminars, tapes,

and people, a new and strong sense of internal direction unfolded.

Suddenly, the right people and events began to materialize. Jung would have

dubbed it “synchronicity.”

 

Drawing on my corporate experience, I began pioneering unique ways of

applying these ideas to workplace applications, such as team building, leadership

development, and sales. And 35,000 attendees to my seminars later,

my life is now completely focused on my coding system, which has evolved

into a model called Color Q (www.ColorQPersonalities.com).

 

Evaluating people was key to survival during my unusual childhood; I

was born a countess in Hungary. When my family fled the communists, we

landed in the court of King Farouk of Egypt, where I played with his daughters

in his 550-room palace. Later, we fled the horrifying bloodshed of

Colonel Gamal  Abdel Nasser’s revolution.

 

I’ve turned what I learned then into a system that helps all of us define

our unique strengths, pursue the best career, and reduce conflicts in key

areas of our lives.

 

What Color Q Is Not

 

Color Q is not a labeling system denying the individuality of every person.

It does not measure the impact of education, intelligence, mental health,

special talents, economic status, motivation, drive, and environmental influences

on the core personality type. There are billions of unique people on

our planet and only four color groups. If you wonder what that leaves, I say

the deepest and most important part of you—the part that always knows

what it really wants and won’t be happy until it gets respect!

 

The framework is not gender specific. It works equally well for males and

females. Both men and women are found in each personality style, though

in some groups the percentages differ.

 

What Color Q Is

 

Color Q is about categorizing people—ourselves and others. It is based on

the extensive research of “personality type” experts who, for the past seven

decades, have laid the intellectual groundwork that serves as the basis of

this book. There are many systems for understanding others. This is the

one that I have found probes most deeply into the core of human behavior.

It confirms that each personality style is natural, equal, observable, and

predictable, and that each can be equally effective at work. Once mastered,

the system provides practical ways to maximize our natural talents, as well

as those of others.

 

Truly exceptional people always do so much more than is required. The

only way to do that without severe burnout is from passion born of confidence.

You are the right person doing the right thing in the right place,

and enjoying it! Sound impossible? Not at all, for those who are true to

themselves in spite of naysayers, parental expectations, and societal pressures.

Use this book to reveal your road to being exceptional.

 

Color Q is also a tool for understanding the sometimes-incomprehensible

behaviors of colleagues, bosses, clients (and even friends, dates, mates, and

children!). Since so much of success depends on “emotional intelligence,”

you’ll find your increased ability to “read people” perhaps the most valuable

outcome of reading this book. Enjoy your new journey!

Edition details

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814421237
• ISBN 13: 9780814421239
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288