Monica O'Brien is the author of the book Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It. The book is a step-by-step guide for small and mid-sized businesses that want to find more customers effectively. Get the book:

From the category archives:

Personality Tests

I May Never Be a Mother. And That's Okay.

By Monica O'Brien on May 5th in Careers 43 comments

Image Source: sweetimaginations via FlickR

Ever since I started at Brazen Careerist I’ve been obsessed with my MBTI type. Mostly because I couldn’t decide what I was – so I began researching each letter until I was sure.

Now I’ve come to the conclusion. I’m an INTP, which is the least common personality type. Something like 1% of the population has it. Here’s where you find INTP’s: teaching at colleges. Researching. Making theoretical discoveries. They are the “absent-minded professors,” in their own worlds. Disconnected from relationships, preferring to figure things out on their own. And the successful INTP’s are mostly men, which seems to be a reoccurring theme in my life.

In other words, my personality type is the exact opposite personality of someone who society thinks would make a good wife and mother. No kidding. ESFJ is actually nicknamed the “housewife” personality type.

Here is what worries me about my personality type: I feel like I’ve caught this anti-wife, anti-mom disease. And naturally, I want to be a good wife and good mom, because society tells me I should.

So the first thing I did after discovering all this was write an article about how you can change your personality type. It never went to publish, because I knew I was wrong. As much as I want to be a mother, I won’t ever be obsessed with my kids, the way my parents were. I won’t ever have the desire to quit my job, or even cut back on my hours.

I’ve always known this about myself, and up until recently here was my plan to make it work: get a puppy. I would get a dog to practice taking care of someone before I had kids, so by the time I actually had kids I would be ready to give up more of myself. But after five days of waking up at 6am to a puppy licking my face, I’m even reconsidering that.

Maybe that’s the thing. Maybe I don’t want to be a mother. Maybe I’ve been told my entire life that women get married, have kids, and clean their houses, and I’ve just assumed that’s the only acceptable path. Maybe it’s not, and I resent society for that stereotype, because I’ll never, ever fit it. Damn society.

Here’s my new plan for having kids: make my husband stay at home, or get a nanny if he doesn’t want to. Or not have kids, because the first two solutions make me feel very guilty (another side effect of societal views). Penelope wrote about stay-at-home-dads recently, and everyone, including me, hated it. Then I realized the reason I hated it is because it was about a guy cheating on his wife who provided all the money for him and their family. If the post was about a woman cheating on a man, I would say she was bored and taken for granted. Totally justifiable. But a guy cheating on his working wife makes my blood boil; because deep down I don’t respect a guy who does not financially provide for his family, then proverbially slaps his wife in the face by cheating on her.

Before you start hating me, know that these views make sense, given my personality type. But that doesn’t mean I’m not trying, and my biggest revelation is that as angry as I am about wife/mother stereotypes, I am not immune to prescribing to gender stereotypes either. So the only way I can ever have kids is to redefine what motherhood means to me and see if I can make it work with my personality. But that starts with me learning to truly respect a man who is willing to stay home with the kids.

Find Your Career Path: Book Review

By Monica O'Brien on March 17th in Careers 16 comments

Image Source: Edge of Space via FlickR

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when people ask me for my 10-year plan; and as I navigated through graduating from school, starting my first real job, then quitting it after the one-year mark, it seemed like everyone but me had a 10-year plan.  My husband, who started volunteering his summers at a local hospital in 8th grade because he knew he wanted to be a doctor.  My best friend and roommate, who had planned her life to the age of thirty before she started college.  My dad, who stayed in the same military career for 26 years before retiring, then hiring back on to the same job as a civilian.  Everyone knew what they wanted, something I didn’t have.

Six months ago, here’s what I did have: I had a degree in Computer Science. I had admission to one of the top graduate business schools in the country. I had 16 months of experience at a Fortune 300. And I had a job offer at one of the hottest software companies in downtown Chicago.

But I was incredibly unhappy with my career. My boomer parents thought I should be happy because I was making more money than some of their peers. My husband thought I should be happy because my degree was like a season pass to Six Flags when it came to the job market.  My friends thought I should be happy because I got my job offer six months before graduating, with little effort, because there are no women in my field.

So I tried to be happy and make sense of the things I had. Every day I tried to put the pieces of my career puzzle together; and quite frankly, every day made me feel more hopeless.

I did what most people do when they are lost: search far and wide for a map or marker to help them navigate. But since no one else thought I was lost, I had to look in strange places. One day I came across a post from Ryan Healy that had a link to a personality assessment on JT O’Donnell’s website.  Naturally, I was interested in my interaction style, so I took it… and lo and behold, at the end of the page was a link to JT O’Donnell’s workbook, Find Your Career Path.  My credit card was out in seconds.

Find Your Career Path is about getting a career and work environment that is compatable with your strengths.  The workbook is divided into four sections using the G.L.O.W. Method:

  • Part I: Gaining Perspective – a series of unique personality assessments to give you a better perspective of your strengths
  • Part II: Luminating Your Goal – a guide to determining a best fit career and workplace environment
  • Part III: Owning Your Actions – information on creating your resume, developing a career story, and taking the steps necessary to get your dream job
  • Part IV: Working It Daily – a worksheet that will help you stay committed to reaching your goals

This workbook is great for two reasons.  The first is that JT provides a step-by-step guide to changing careers.  Going through this process is similar to what JT offers in her personal consulting sessions, so it’s an inexpensive alternative to hiring a career coach.  It’s great for people who are self-starters and want to get started understanding their work personality without shelling out a ton of dough right away.

The second reason, and the reason I like the book so much, is because JT illustrates her entire method with real-life stories from her clients.  And her clients were very lost, much like me.  For me, half the battle was admitting to myself and others that I was unhappy and accepting I didn’t have to follow anyone else’s definition of success in my own career.  If you like reading about my story, you will probably like reading the stories in the book because they are easy to relate to.

What this workbook won’t give you is an overnight change to your dream job.  In some instances, it will just help you understand how to do your job better.  For example, part of my job is project management, which I thought I would be great at because I’m a Global Learner and can see things on a big-picture level.  But I’m also an Architect and I don’t respond to the pressure of meeting deadlines.  In knowing this, however, I’ve figured out that I was assuming the people under me didn’t like pressure either, which is why nothing ever got done.  Some people need pressure to motivate them to perform, and the book has helped me become a better manager.

I also know the book will help me going forward in my search for a dream job.  I want to start a business at some point, and sometimes I wonder why I haven’t just done it yet.  And I get irritated because my entrepreneur friends are constantly reminding me how so many people say they are going to be entrepreneurs and then don’t have the guts to quit their day jobs.  But the real reason is because I’m a Reflective Learner, and I like to let ideas sit in my head for awhile and mature before pursuing them.  Which is what I’ve been doing for the last three months with my big idea, which I will pursue at some point, because I’m also a Commander and stop at nothing to reach my goals.

The greatest benefit of completing the Finding Your Career Path workbook is understanding who you are and how you fit into your workplace, and, if necessary, changing your workplace environment to something better suited to your strengths.  If this sounds like something you’re interested in, I have great news…

JT has agreed to sponsor a contest I’m running at Twenty Set this week.  There are two sets of prizes:

  • 1 private Professional Strengths Assessment Session - You will complete all the tools in the book and then have the results interpreted in a 90 minute phone session with JT O’Donnell herself.  To win, leave a comment here saying why you want to win, or if you are shy, you can also send me an email.  I’ll choose one person for the prize.
  • 3 Find Your Career Path workbooks – You can take all the assessments described here on your own to find career satisfaction.  To win, leave a comment on any of the posts at Twenty Set dated from now until Friday, including this one.  Winners will be randomly selected, and each comment counts as one entry (though read my comment policy first, because violations don’t count as entries).

JT also has one of the personality assessments online and offers the workbook at 20% off to anyone who takes it.  Highly recommended if you’d like to learn more about the process.  She also offers free career advice specifically for Millennials if you are interested.

As this is the first contest at Twenty Set, I’m interested to see how things turn out.  Big thanks again to JT for sponsoring the contest and for changing how I view my career and life.

Are You Giving Off Negative Energy? The Answer is Probably Yes.

By Monica O'Brien on February 1st in Personal Development 6 comments

Energy is an interesting concept. It make us move, do, and accomplish. The problem is there are different kinds of energy, and the type of energy you get will dictate the type of work you get done with it.

Consider this: Someone writes an opinionated post. It gets 60 comments, but over half the people hated it. Was the post successful?

The post may have moved people to do (in this case add a comment) but in the end, No, the post was not successful (unless your idea of success is pissing people off). Not because people didn’t like the post – if they didn’t like it they wouldn’t respond. People hated what was written because the post gives off negative energy.

You could argue the audience is negative, but how do you attract a negative audience? By being negative. And that’s the crux of energy: negative energy breeds more negative energy, while positive breeds more positive.

Here are some simple ways to test whether you are giving off negative energy:

Are you sharing an opinion or attacking someone not like you?

I see this the most when I tell people I’m married, and lately when I tell people I’m getting an MBA in entrepreneurship.

But let’s stick to marriage: It’s fine if you want to be single and think getting married when you are young is a bad idea. What I don’t understand is why I can link to so many articles like these.

Have your opinion, but let people make their own choices – what’s right for you isn’t right for them and vice-versa.

Do you focus on the things you hate?

I’m a firm believer that we move towards the things we think about. There’s a girl I know whose entire MySpace page is dominated by her pet peeves – she has about 30 of them. Thirty negative thoughts! I wonder how much time she spent creating that list - how much energy she wasted thinking of all the things that piss her off.

Focus on things you like. Focus on what you like about people. Leave the ranting and raving in a notebook on your nightstand, and make sure the notebook burns nicely.

Do you exclude others?

Extreme example: One of my friends got engaged in college (after me), and the next day a group of our friends threw a “Not Engaged” party. Invitation reads: “We’re having a party for all of those people who aren’t engaged. Everyone is welcome… unless you’re engaged.”

Surprisingly, they weren’t trying to be mean; rather just trying to establish a bond with other people like them. That’s a completely normal need, but be careful how you do it – it should never be at the expense of someone else.

Nobody is perfect and we all have bad days. Furthermore, growing and maturing is a slow process and most of us will never get to the point where we don’t give off negative energy in some way. Wouldn’t it be nice though, if we all made an effort to give off positive energy instead?

What other ways do people give off negative energy?

Just When You Thought You Knew…

By Monica O'Brien on January 10th in Education Leave a comment!

I’ve never thought of myself as a strategist, so when I read Penelope Trunk’s blog today I was surprised to see a topic devoted to how people who think they are strategists really aren’t. Is it trendy to be a strategist these days? I know strategists can make big money in corporations, but so do CEOs and other executives. I’ve personally never heard anyone describe themselves as a strategist, but I guess Penelope knows people.

So I decided to take the 4 question Meyer-Briggs test she links to. I think we’ve all taken this test about 20 times, read a little paragraph, said, “Yep, that describes me,” then promptly forgotten our results. Oh, that’s just me? Anyway, I take the test, knowing full well there are 16 different combinations and I had 15 chances of not being a strategist, which was fine with me since I wasn’t quite sure why I would want to be a strategist anyway.

Once I get my results and say “Yep, that describes me,” I go back to Penelope’s post to see how far away I am from the combo that labels you a strategist.I do a double take. Err… I have the exact same combo she lists.

So apparently I’m a strategist. Now I have to go figure out what a strategist actually is and what careers one might have so I can see if my current course of study/goals/life fits into this new label I’ve received. I also need to reevaluate the work I’m doing at my job and see if I’m doing any “strategizing” in my current role, as a true strategist strategizes all the time.

I guess that’s my exciting tidbit today – I basically won the lottery, but instead of collecting $34.2m I get a homework assignment – reflect more about who I am.

Please take the Meyers-Brigg Test if you desire, but don’t be too disappointed if you aren’t a strategist. Penelope wrote an entire paragraph about how you can still be brilliant and might make a great leader/manager instead.

And if you are a strategist… let me know how you’re handling it. With my 24th birthday right around the corner, I was getting pretty confident that I “knew” myself at this point and could start conquering these huge goals that played to my strengths. It’s disconcerting to now have to figure out what this new information actually means to me, and even worse, if there’s a whole part of me I never noticed before.

The curse of finding yourself is you’re never quite done.

Note: I don’t know Penelope Trunk personally, but her blog is fantastic. Trunk’s posts can exasperate and enlighten at the same time, so her blog is perfect for someone interested in professional and personal development. There are feeds you read and there are feeds you look forward to reading every day; Brazen Careerist is in the latter group for me.