The NPSI styles: Idealist

Welcome back as we continue our journey through the different personality styles of the Navanter Personality Styles Instrument. If you missed the previous parts of this section, you can start here.


Motivation: Popularity and team work

The Idealist thrives on being popular – it’s important for an Idealist to be liked, and to have the flexibility to complete tasks as they see fit, rather than as others want them to be completed. The Idealist can be hugely enthusiastic to work on a new task, but struggle with the follow-through, which can lead to a long list of half-completed work.

Words chosen: Adjectives and feelings words

Idealists a great at motivating, persuasion, and gelling a team together. They tend to use exaggerated language, and spend their time describing how amazing, or terrible, something will be. Their words are chosen to inspire others towards action. Idealists are very good at telling stories.

Tone of voice: Varied and interesting

Idealists are masters of using their voices to convey emotion. An Idealist will be very comfortable using vocal expression, pauses, changes in volume, and pitch variations, in order to convey not just a message, but the feeling they have around it. Whilst this is good at galvanising the support of a team, it can lead being very unconvincing when communicating something the Idealist doesn’t agree with.

Body language: Engaging and collaborative

The Idealist is great at using body language to bolster a story or message. Hand gestures come naturally to an Idealist, and the use of facial expressions adds the Idealist’s own personality to a communication. Whilst this makes for engaging presentations, it means that Idealists can be read like a book by others.

Preferred environment: Motivational phrases and some disorder

“Organised chaos” would be one phrase to describe the Idealist’s environment. Some might choose to remove the word “organised”. Idealists suffer from their tendency to be distracted, which means the workspace can become over-run with pieces of paper, half-read books, and a growing in-tray. Idealists will often claim there to be order in the chaos, but this can sometimes be hard to spot! It’s not unusual to find motivational items of notes around an Idealist – they benefit from external input to their mood throughout the day.

Location: London, UK

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