Sometimes a person's job looks contrary to type.

I once met a Green receptionist. Most Greens might agree that greeting people and making coffee for a living would be masochistic torture.

A Gold manager turned out to moonlight as a stand-up comic and musician with shocking guitar riffs. Golds predictably favor more logistics and less invention, even in music.

I stood in awe of a Blue director of finance. Blues are known to shy away from financial careers, never mind leading whole departments.

And I once met two Orange auditors on the same team in government. Auditing requires more sit-down time than most Oranges can tolerate.

So are these folks in the wrong job?

Probably not. Unless we take a job only to stave off starvation, most of us choose work that turns us on and makes us feel needed.

Probably the worst thing we can do for ourselves is to pigeon-hole ourselves as Green, Gold, Blue, or Orange. Each one of us is enormously more complex than any Color - or even all four Colors. The fact is we often accept different work requiring different skills just so we can grow and make our lives richer.

On the other hand, choosing a job contrary to type risks early burnout. If we are not naturally good at something and we do not even enjoy learning it, then we want to step back and ask ourselves some questions.

For example, what else can I be doing? In what other career can I shine and also make a decent living?

If you feel that you cannot "be yourself" in your current career, it's worth taking a look at other careers that are proven to suit your natural temperament, i.e., your Color. It's worth studying David Keirsey (http://keirsey.com) for relationships between temperaments and careers.

Back to the examples at the beginning of this article. The Green receptionist, it turns out, took the "easy job" as a stepping stone to one day becoming CEO of the company. The Gold stand-up comic was indeed uncomfortable working an audience, but she developed comedy skills to become stronger as a public speaker and to face her greatest fears head on. The Blue finance director was a genius, pure and simple. She loved finance. She loved people even more. And the Orange auditors? It turns out they were the kind of auditors who travelled somewhere different every single day, solved big problems on the fly, and delegated the tedious sit-down work to people who actually enjoyed that stuff.

In the end, have you chosen work that respects and leverages the real you? Do you work where you do because you want to grow? If none of the above, what else might you want to do in the future? Personality science might have some very good clues.

Write me a note if you want to examine this further.