Reminds me of the Enneagram personality system and type 8: the Challenger. It's an interesting personality type to me, because in their times of stress and doubt they become the unhealthy version of my personality type, the investigator, which can give me a little bit of a different view of that tactic. It was really fun when I was in sales because I got to train some of those people and could push back with bigger challenges if they didn't properly size up the meeting before we started.
Are you big into the Enneagram? My last boss was and she made everyone do them. I'm a 3 (the achiever) with strong 7 and 8 tendencies.
I was raised on Myers Briggs, so I get the core concepts, but my fiancee is HUGE on the enneagram. She has a spreadsheet of the types of all her friends and favorite fictional characters (and would kill me if she knew I said that). It's really interesting though. I use a larger, personal system I hodgepodged together when overcoming my social ineptitude and the enneagram is a great system for accounting for the emotional state of individuals.
OMG that's so cute though. My boss would bring it up all the time. She'd be like "you are feeling this way because you are an X and you need lots of extra love and care" (this was usually about /her/ boss who needs to be reminded that he is appreciated). In the 7th grade (I think) I did an MBT to correspond with career options (which at the ripe age of 13 were fashion designer, FBI Agent, and civil rights activist, in that order). I dug it up recently and had a good laugh about the whole thing.
I would strangle your boss. "No, bitch, I'm feeling this way because you're pissing me off and stuffing me into your little box negates my individuality now put away your fucking pentacle and look me in the eye." "All models are wrong but some are useful." I've seen enneagrams do far more harm than good.
Aw no my boss is great. She was the only thing keeping me at this job for the past year. Obviously it wasn't a hard guide and she understood her bosses' needs because they're close friends but she would sprinkle quips about enneagram types in. I think it was all in good fun.
Amen. That shit is meant to be a guide, not a label. I hate when people use these things as an absolute reason for behavior, as if no outside influence could possibly affect how I'm feeling or thinking.
Yeah. I like it too. Growing up I had to take a MBTI test pretty much monthly so my mom could test new ones. At one point I could ask what she wanted to to get and crank out that score. In college I would post up at bars and trade therapy sessions for drinks. People would tell me about their lives and the people in them and I would deconstruct the situations so they could actually understand what was going on. It was actually really fun.