How Personality Affects Relationships (Part 1)

We all have a dominant or consistent personality trait which characterizes how we react, lead, follow, and interact with others. We were not made to fight ourselves but rather embrace the God-given personality with which we’ve been blessed. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to work on minimizing or correcting the inherent weaknesses present in our personalities. We do and we must. But more importantly, we must develop the strengths of our personality and leverage those traits for greater kingdom impact.

Personality affects how we exercise leadership responsibility, how we influence others, and how our strengths and weaknesses play a key role in our relationships. Understanding personality gives perspective on differences in others—how they think and act—and helps us adjust our leadership styles to best meet their needs. It also gives us the ability to help people on our team adjust to one other.

Personality is determined through hereditary factors as well as one’s upbringing, culture, environment, and experiences. Although one’s personality typically does not change, we can change certain aspects to minimize our weaknesses.

[We could also discuss one’s spiritual gifts and how that relates to personality and relationships. However, so much great material has already been written on that subject elsewhere, therefore, our ongoing discussion in future posts will be focusing on a particular version of the DISC personality profile.]