One of the best stress management tips for parents and teachers is to understand how personality affects behavior. When you know this, you can better manage your relationships with your children and students, and thus reduce your stress.
In my all three of my books (available here), I lay out the personality styles of thinker, feeler, doer, and relater. An image of a directional scale will help you picture and remember the styles. Visualize a thinker in the north, a feeler in the south, a doer in the west, and a relater in the east. In short, a thinker (north) analyzes and can be described as someone who processes information using a great deal of thought. A feeler (south) can be described as being more directed through emotions rather than through cognition. A doer (west) is orientated toward results, while a relater (east) requires relationships.
Being aware of your particular style, as well as the dominant style of each child, enhances your effectiveness with others.
Stress Management for Everyone
For example, discovering that my styles lay in the “thinker” and “doer” areas and my daughter’s are in the “feeler” and “relater” areas significantly increased my relationship with her and helped me become a much more enjoyable and effective parent.
Personality behavior assessments have successfully been used in many industries to improve interpersonal relations between employees, customers, management, and other types of interactions. Although my assessment is labeled for parents, it is also ideal for teachers—really for anyone—interested in becoming aware one’s own styles and in need of some stress management help. An added dividend is that children, parents, friends, students, colleagues (or anyone else you ask) can take an anonymous assessment of how they perceive you at no additional charge.
After taking the assessment, you will receive a comprehensive, 20+ page report that details your behavioral and personality tendencies in various situations, information on how others perceive you, and suggestions for increasing your effectiveness with others. If you’re ready to take this important stress management step, click here to get started.
