The personality type is based on three axes.
- Individualistic - Collectivistic
- Governing - Consultative
- Overseeing - Independent
For each axis, your answers to the questions may reveal a bias, in which case you are classified as having the personality type named after that direction on the axis, or they may have no signficant bias, when you will be termed 'balanced'.
If all three axes are 'balanced', then that is your personality type. If only one axis is biased, then that is your personality type.
If two or three axes are biased, then the axes are listed to give your personality type, with the least biased axis first. Therefore, an Independent Governing Individualist is slightly different to a Governing Independent Individualist.
Axes with the same bias are separated by dashes rather than spaces. So an Independent-Individualist has equal Independent and Indiviualist traits, but an Independent Individualist has stronger Individuality than Independence.
This therefore gives a total of 147 recognised personalities. If you disregard the ordering of the axes, this falls to 27.
The exact size of the bias is ignored, only the relative sizes of the three biases are considered. This is to partially cancel the effects of people's differing inclinations to say "strongly (dis)agree".
Effectively, the personality types can be viewed as regions on the surface of a sphere, with 'balanced' as the centre of the sphere. Unfortunately my graphical skills are far too low to actually draw it, so you'll have to use your imagination.
Meanings of the axes
The meanings of the axes are listed below. The examples given are for extreme cases on each axis, most people will have aspects of both sides of the axis.
Individualistic - Collectivistic
This axis broadly measures your approach to similar situations. An Individualist will treat each situation as unique, and do what they believe to be best for each individual situation, which may appear very inconsistent. A Collectivist will group situations together, and do broadly the same in each similar situation, even if this appears less than optimal in a few variations.
Governing - Consulting
This axis broadly measures your feelings about the making of decisions. A Governor believes that the best decisions are made by a person or small group of people having access to detailed information. A Consultor believes that the best decisions are reached by taking the majority opinion of a range of people who have been given the relevant information.
Overseeing - Independent
An Overseer believes that the best results are achieved by having a strong supervisory structure over peoples' actions, to check that they are being carried out, even if these checks take significant amounts of time. An Independent believes that the best results are achieved by giving people tasks and trusting them to carry them out without being watched.