If you could gain insights about a person's character by reading their body would that be a useful engagement tool?
If these insights provided clues for understanding more about the internal worlds of others, how might that add to your capacity for building relationships?
What if this was a map for recognising the strengths and motivations of colleagues, while also increasing awareness of how to navigate their challenges and triggers?
A map of personality such as this would provide you with the capability to skilfully relate to anyone.
Such a methodology does exist. American physician and psychotherapist Alexander Lowen developed Bioenergetics based on Wilhelm Reich's breakthrough work on Embodied Character. Bioenergetics (Adapted for organisation life as The 5 Character Structures) is a body-mind map of personality. It suggests the way you develop your adult body and mind, is informed by events you had to overcome in early childhood.
According to this approach, you experience challenges in early life that prompt you to develop strategies for safety and success. The repeating habits and patterns of these strategies shape your body (muscular armoring), emotions (emotional armoring), and mind (psychological armoring).
We are made up of emotional, mental and physical parts that operate as a unit and influence each other
Life involves experiencing things and events that threaten us
We adjust to these events by ‘armouring’ ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally
For some people that makes immediate sense, you might call it the game you got together to cope with life. For others it triggers scepticism and resistance. I have found this methodology to be profound, however I have no interest in convincing you it’s the ‘truth’. What I will say is that The 5 Character Structures initiates really useful conversations that lead to development breakthroughs for individuals and teams.
Most of us at some point are probably guilty of saying (even if only to ourselves), the world would just work better if everyone thought and felt like me. In reality we all see the world very differently, and as wonderful as this is, it can be problematic.
Navigating different perspectives and behaviour is what we often refer to as organisation dynamics. Psychometric instruments such as Insights, DiSC and Myers-Briggs are effective at having you recognise and work with diversity across both processing information and communication styles. These instruments provide a helpful and usable means of flexing your approach with colleagues for better outcomes.
The 5 Character Structures (5CS) adds another dimension. It goes deeper into the human onion. Whereas most personality models deal with how you act, 5CS deals with why you react. 5CS speaks to five personality patterns that most people already have an intuitive knowledge of. With a little understanding and practise this ‘knowing’ becomes conscious, leading to insight and empathy for the inner worlds of others, and the behaviours that play out from them.
Perhaps even more powerfully it helps you make sense of yourself. 5CS helps you understand why you react the way you do, and how to better manage any negative impact you may be having on others because of these reactions.
5CS contributes to your self mastery. It helps you make sense of your childhood and family life. It helps you recognise where you might have some blindspots. It can help you recognise and overcome your unseen personality.
Of course no person can adequately be explained as a colour, type or four-letter acronym, and equally your Character Structure is not who you are. 5CS is not a typology, rather a map of personality that speaks to a variety of strategies that we all variously deploy.
5CS highlights strengths and developmental challenges. Even more importantly it provides tools for getting the best from yourself and others. For some people it liberates aspects of themselves they have been holding back for a long time.
As curious as the 5 Character Structures might sound, it is the area of development that leaders I work with consistently say is making the biggest difference to their progress (at work and home!). It also consistently proves to be a fastrack way to developmental breakthroughs.
Consider what you could do if you had a deeper insight to both your own behaviour and that of others. Consider what you could affect with an enhanced capability for interacting more successfully.
Understanding The 5 Character Structures as an individual can liberate your leadership and life. Learning The 5 Character Structures as a team takes you on a journey that builds trust and leads to higher function and performance. You get better results and have better experiences.