In the journey of building an art therapy business, understanding oneself is essential. It lays the foundation for how you operate, collaborate, and innovate within your practice.
Think of ourselves as living computers, we all carry personal manuals to function efficiently. Did you read the manual? (Usually we don’t because we automatically assume we know what’s best for us or know how to use a product). Imagine downloading incompatible software—your computer freezes because it’s not designed for it. Comparingly, knowing your own design helps you make better decisions and build a business that truly works for you.
Personality assessments serve as powerful tools in this introspective process, providing insights into your strengths, tendencies, and ideal working conditions. Here’s how you can leverage these assessments to tailor your business to fit your unique personality:
Understanding Personality Assessment
What is a Personality Assessment?
A personality assessment is a self-report that covers a series of areas within a person’s identity and personality from a psychological point of view.
It looks at areas that are your strengths to where you find yourself in frustration. These types of assessments provide a framework to how you go about your life and how you react to things.
It gives you an idea of how you should be working with your system and not against it. Knowing who you are as a person and overall these types of assessments were designed from people who studied psychology and studied people.
It helps to organize yourself in a certain category whether you are an introvert and extrovert or maybe you’re somebody who is very energetic to maybe someone who is more passive. It’s an overview or a map to follow about your type because not everyone has the same personality. The most common personality assessments out there are the Myers Briggs and the Enneagram tests, there are many more that I will share later in this blog.
Benefits of Personality Assessments for Art Therapists
Behind personality assessments is the overall understanding of one’s self to bring self-awareness to an individual. That way they can grow and be the best version of themselves and work with their system and not against their system.
Another point to state, is that understanding your personality will help improve relationships that you have as an art therapist. Whether you are working with a team of other art therapist, or you are a solo Art Therapist and working with clients.
You come to understand the types of clients and collaborators that you prefer to work with, just by reviewing your assessment. You’ll be more conscious about who you are willing to work with, so you get clarity and alignment with how you should be approaching your work.
Let alone how to build your brand and business, the brand stems from your personality. The brand incorporates some of your essence into its narrative given that you are the face of the brand. Leaning into your personality, patterns, and how you function, will help to really build the brand in a way that is authentic to your personal design. Knowing this in behind the scenes is only going to build your confidence and make decision making easier in your brand and business.
Popular Personality Assessment Tools
1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The Myers-Briggs test categorizes personalities into 16 different types, offering insights into strengths, weaknesses, career paths, and relationship dynamics. By identifying your MBTI type, you gain clarity on your preferred work style, communication methods, and interpersonal interactions. Understanding these traits can inform how you structure your art therapy practice, whether you thrive in one-on-one sessions or group workshops.
2. Archetypes
For those who resonate less with traditional personality assessments, exploring archetypes provides another avenue for self-discovery. Archetypes delve into universal patterns of behavior and personality traits, offering a deeper understanding of your motivations and values. By recognizing your dominant archetypes, you can align your business practices with your inherent tendencies, fostering authenticity and resonance with your clients.
3. Enneagram
The Enneagram system categorizes personalities into nine distinct types, each with its motivations, fears, and growth opportunities. Taking the Enneagram test sheds light on your core motivations, guiding your approach to work, relationships, and personal development. Understanding your Enneagram type can help you tailor your art therapy offerings to meet the unique needs of your clients, fostering deeper connections and meaningful transformations.
4. Astrology
Astrology offers a cosmic perspective on personality traits, reflecting the influence of celestial bodies on individual behaviors and tendencies. By exploring your birth chart and horoscope, you can uncover hidden strengths, challenges, and potential paths for growth. Integrating astrological insights into your art therapy practice adds depth and nuance to your understanding of human nature, enriching your therapeutic interventions and client interactions.
5. Human Design
Human Design combines elements of astrology, the I Ching, Kabbalah, and the chakra system to create a comprehensive personality assessment. By analyzing your unique Human Design chart, you gain insights into your energetic makeup, decision-making process, and ideal environment for productivity. Understanding your Human Design type empowers you to structure your art therapy business in alignment with your natural flow, optimizing your creativity and effectiveness.
Discovering Your Identity Through Assessments
Interpreting Your Personality Test Results
The way to go about interpreting your personality test results is to first have a read through the report. It’s best to read through all of the reports, and highlight some important areas that are unique. These will be useful for your art therapy brand, pay attention to the areas within the report that speaks to your strengths and weaknesses.
Not only that but read over the area of friendships and relationship, things of that nature that involve other people. Diving into the career path and work habits areas speak to the structure of your business. They are the ingredients you can use to start differentiating yourself and to gain clarity in possible offer ideas.
With friendships and relationships, that area could talk about the types of people you prefer to be around. You never know assessing through these personality tests what might show up. It can give you an idea of who you are best fit with, depending which test you do. Sometimes they could dive into your core values, motives and your strengths,
Usually they just stick to the strengths, but if core values are mentioned make a key point of it. They will be attached to your brand because people connect with people who share the same values and beliefs. Keep a note of this because it will be connected to the type of culture or environment you will create within your art therapy brand. Even if there’s no mention of core values within the test results. Reading through your report, you might find some patterns that link to possible values and beliefs or themes that show up consistently within the report.
Aligning Your Identity with Your Brand
When it comes to designing your brand and building out the plan, use these insights from the report to enhance this side. For example, if we are to go back to defining the type of culture you bring to your brand. Lean into your strengths and traits, they are clear to other people because it’s something that’s very unique to you and comes naturally.
Those strengths not many other Art Therapists will have, so even if the personality reports talk about personality traits. This is another area where you can leverage some of that into the type of culture you want to bring. This links to how you might want to position yourself as well, so this is a ingredient to differentiation and positioning.
Your of course values and beliefs also play a role in standing out. They will be showcased within the brand as it’s brand core values. I would really focus on that heavily because that will be part of the brand elements.
To share one example, I had a client who was an ENFP. They immediately knew because they are an extravert, they stopped doing one-on-one sessions because they never liked it. Therefore, inclined to run group sessions and workshops. They gained clarity from that insight, which in the end most of the offers they’re going to be creating will be group focused. This was all from the fact that they began to understand, that they thrive in the energy of other people and it came naturally to them so it worked in their favor.
Finding Compatible Work Partners
The Importance of Work Compatibility
In addition to understanding yourself, it’s essential to identify collaborators who compliment your strengths and work style. Whether selecting software tools, partnering with fellow practitioners, or collaborating with influencers, seek alignment with individuals and resources that resonate with your personality and values. By surrounding yourself with like-minded collaborators, you create a supportive ecosystem for growth and innovation within your art therapy practice.
A focus on compatibility is essential for working in a space of natural flow. Where your energy is not being drained but being rejuvenated while you are working on your therapy business. When you lean into things that come effortless to you and connections that are easy to navigate, your productivity will only enhance when you understand that not every person fits your inner design.
Working with partners is essential for any small therapy business, and the things to look at is the following:
Do you prefer to work with extroverts or introverts?
Do you work with people that are more organized or you prefer spontaneous type of people?
You have to understand who you get along the best with. More than likely you’ll be working with a collaborator long-term, so it has to work for you and bring out the best in you. Look at this as if it was a marriage, you will you be able to lean on that person? Do they compliment you well or does it cause you to be more stressed every time you have to work with them? Is type of work they give you too much?
These are all beneficial because if it’s not working for you and the chemistry is not there, people externally will see that. It’s essential to know who is your suitable partner, and what would be ideal is to run a meet and greet session with them.
Doing screening with potential collaborators gives you a glimpse of who they’re as a person, what their about, and get a sense of feel of how they work. You can do research on them to further gain understanding. We have to learn to say no in order to protect our energy but also be smart with our energy.
Embracing Diversity
While aligning with collaborators who share your values is essential, embracing diversity also fosters creativity and innovation. Be open to working with individuals from different backgrounds, perspectives, and personality types. By embracing diversity within your network, you enrich your practice with fresh insights, ideas, and perspectives, expanding your horizons and driving positive change within the art therapy community. I suggest you do this later in your business journey because the focus at the moment would to be to build your network and audience and to start easy.
Using Assessments to Find Work Partners
The easiest thing that you can do here to help with matching personality types for optimal collaboration, would be to create a profile of your ideal collaborator. Using all of the personality assessments that you’ve gathered and maybe even some of your own personal connections.
Which collaborator stands out to you? Check your inner circle of connections alongside your personality assessments. You can build your very own ideal collaborator profile, that you can use as a reference whenever you are looking to partner up with somebody.
Whoever it is, you can use the sheet and that would help to decipher whether you say yes or no to this partnership.
Some examples of partnerships could be:
- Media outlets like a podcast
- Blogger
- Author of a mental health book
- An mental health organization or a charity.
Those types of partnerships can be valuable to help with spreading awareness about your art therapy brand. You can address this first by looking at your ideal collaborator profile. That way, whatever you’re doing in terms of work with this partner, it’s not going to feel like extra work or energy draining.
Like I said, we want to keep this fairly positive, and it’s about being aware that you don’t have to say yes to every single person that offers you something. You have to share the same values as this partner, and it might require you to ask them some questions, some interviewing questions, so that whoever this person is that you’re collaborating with, you feel comfortable with working with them and knowing that this is going to benefit both of you and not just something that’s one-sided.
In Conclusion, Embrace Self-Discovery and Growth
Navigating personality assessments is a journey of self-discovery and growth, offering valuable insights into your unique strengths, tendencies, and preferences. As you build your art therapy business, use these assessments as tools for introspection, guiding your approach to client interactions, collaborations, and personal development. Embrace authenticity, surround yourself with supportive collaborators, and remain open to diverse perspectives as you continue to evolve and thrive in your art therapy practice.