Differences between Personality Traits and Personality Types

Kevin Lilly holds a master of business administration in international management from the American Graduate School of International Management. A former senior vice president at MiMedx in Marietta, Georgia, Kevin Lilly supervised the recruitment and retention of the sales department's top talent. He is interested in topics such as personality profiling.

Although personality traits and personality types are often assumed to be the same, they are not the same thing. While personality traits are distinguished behavior patterns, a personality type is a collection of various personality traits. Put more simply, personality traits make up the personality type.

Personality types are a more holistic description of people's behaviors, while personality traits are more specific descriptions. To better appreciate the difference between the two, personality types could be seen as the climate, while personality traits are the specific weather elements. Personality types can only be evaluated over a long time, while personality traits can be observed within a short time.

Although there are many theories about personality types and traits, there is a consensus on the characteristics that describe people's personalities. Some of these traits are agreeableness, openness, and introversion or extroversion. It is the combination of these traits that result in personality types such as sanguine, melancholic, or phlegmatic.

According to Myer Briggs theory, it is possible for individuals to predominantly exhibit a particular personality type and still display signs of other personality types. It is equally important for individuals to know that while certain personality types are better suited to certain tasks, none is superior to the other.

How to Help Young Adults Plan Their Lives

Georgia-based Kevin Lilly is the former senior vice president of sales at MiMedx. This position saw him double the company's revenue and increase the employees on the sales team to 300 from 180 in a span of three years. In addition to his professional responsibilities, Kevin Lilly mentors young adults, helping them plan their lives.

Young adults are at a stage in their lives where they need to make decisions concerning their future. Mentors, concerned adults, teachers, parents, and guardians have the duty to help them make the right choices while assisting them in planning their futures. Despite all the fears and confusion they might exhibit, there are a few ways to help them.

Talk to them about their goals. It's good to break down goals into long-term and short-term to enable them to reflect on any of their actions that might affect those aspirations.

Offer them the support they need and allow them to live their lives. Raising them well-equipped and well-loved is a process you will need to start before kindergarten and continue as they grow into young adults.

Learn to encourage their positive choices. Just like offering support, this also begins early in life. Provide them with different options and help them evaluate those options. In addition, praise them when they make appropriate life choices.

 

How to Modify Your Coaching Style When Working with Youth Athletes

Kevin Lilly earned a master of business administration degree from the American Graduate School of International Management. Most recently, he was the senior vice president at MiMedx, a biomedical firm in the Atlanta area. Kevin Lilly enjoys coaching youths in sports like softball, football, and basketball.

Although adult and youth athletes are passionate about sports, they must be taught in different ways to gain proficiency. Coaches must adopt a teaching style that caters to participants’ attention spans, capacity to comprehend complex information, and proprioceptive abilities (the body's capacity to sense itself).

To effectively train youth athletes, coaches should split complex skills into simple drills combined with breaks to learn new skills or engage in recreation.

Youth coaches should stop athletes from practicing a skill after repetitions and corrections stop being productive. Once that point is reached, young athletes can take a break and practice a different skill for a while. This strategy will reduce frustration. Moreover, athletes may experience sudden mastery of a particular skill after taking a break from it.

Coaches should keep training sessions short so that young athletes don’t lose focus. Youth below 10 years of age can only tolerate 30 minutes of focused training at a time since they have a shorter attention span.

Finally, research reveals that making five encouraging remarks for every instance of constructive criticism will help coaches teach youth athletes more effectively.