What is Your Temperament Style?

Understanding temperament styles will not only have a positive impact on the way you see yourself but it will also enhance your relationship with others. If you are a parent, it can dramatically improve the way you raise your children. If you are single, it can give you insight into selecting a compatible mate. If you are a salesperson, this information will significantly enhance your sales effectiveness by enabling you to build trust and rapport quickly with your prospects and customers. If you are a manager or business owner, you will find this knowledge incredibly beneficial. It will enhance your leadership style, improve the way you supervise your employees and allow you to recruit more effectively.

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, is credited with originating the basic theory of temperament styles twenty-four hundred years ago. He theorized that our behavior style was determined genetically at birth rather than from external influences such as astrology or birth order. Hippocrates believed that we are born with a combination of four genetic influences he called humors; Choleric (Worker), Sanguine (Talker), Phlegmatic (Watcher) and Melancholy (Thinker). He observed that these four styles have a direct influence on our physiology, character traits and outlook on life. In fact the word temperament, which is commonly used to describe personality types, is a Latin term which means,