What’s your archetype? Knowing your archetype can help you control your narrative, provide you with focus, and boost your confidence. Take the Archetypes Quiz at www.talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz. Archetypes are shared, universal patterns that help us understand characters, stories, and even ourselves.  

12 PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY ARCHETYPES

1. CAREGIVER – maternal, comforting, trusted, generous 


2. CREATOR – artist, designer, maker, vibrant 


3. CITIZEN – girl/guy next door, hardworking, friendly, down-to-earth, loyal 


4. EXPLORER – adventurous, innovative, pioneer, investigator, trailblazer


5. HERO – disciplined, inspiring, strong/brave, warrior, champion 


6. OPTIMIST – kind, simple, innocent, pure 


7. JESTER – humorous, comedic, entertainer, playful, light-hearted 


8. IMPASSIONED – focused on senses, relationships, inclusive, passionate, devoted 


9. MAGICIAN – transformer, dreamer, visionary, spiritual guide. 


10. REVOLUTIONARY– radically distinct, bold, rebel, unapologetic 


11. RULER– authoritative, influential, political, sophisticated, ambitious


12. SAGE – learner, teacher, academic, analytical, wise. 

TRANSCRIPT

This might be one of the shortest and most impactful podcast episodes you’ve heard in a long time.  I hope so!

Of all the topics I coach people on and that I speak about, I’d say Personal Branding, and helping people articulate or narrate their unique brand makes the biggest impact. Typically I run my coaching clients through several exercises to help them identify their unique brand, including but not limited to: seeking input from others, taking personality tests, creating your personal Venn diagram, running through mental exercises, reviewing formal work feedback and evaluations, completing worksheets that I assign, and lots more. 

And of all these personal branding exercises, identifying their archetype is the one that they often tell me is the most helpful.

So I thought I’d spend an episode coaching YOU on how to identify your unique professional identity archetype, and what to do with it to help you be your happiest and most successful self. Sound good?

Welcome to talk about talk podcast episode 183: what’s my archetype. In case we haven’t met my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at talk about talk where I coach ambitious executives like you to communicate with confidence and establish credibility so they can achieve their career goals. The topics I cover are all focussed on communication, including things like overcoming imposter syndrome, becoming a great storyteller, listening like a leader, nailing your formal presentation, establishing executive presence, and establishing your unique personal brand.

You can learn from me through private one on one coaching, corporate workshops and keynote speeches, the boot camps that I lead, the archive of this podcast, and through my email newsletter. If you go to talk about talk.com you can sign up for the newsletter there. It’s like getting free coaching from me every two weeks.

While you’re there on the talkabouttalk.com website, I encourage you to take the archetypes quiz. That’s the topic of this weeks episode. I’m going to help you identify which of the 12 professional identity archetypes resonates most with you and what you can do with this insight. Just go to talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz.

OK – By the end of this episode: You’ll understand the power of identifying your professional identity archetype and how you can use your archetype to accelerate your career trajectory.

Here’s how this episode will go: 

First I’m going to define archetypes for you. Give you the archetypes 101 lecture.  Don’t worry – it’s brief. Then, I’ll share a list of 12 professional identity archetypes.  Your challenge is to identify which 1-2 of these archetypes resonate for you. I encourage you to do this both qualitatively – by listening to my descriptions and thinking about which 1-2 resonate with you.  Then also by taking the archetypes quiz at talkabouttak.com/archetypesquiz. This quiz is kind of like a personality test. It will help you validate which archetype resonates for you.

So Let’s start with this.

What are archetypes?

Simply put: ARCHETYPES are UNIVERSAL PATTERNS. Got that? Universal patterns. Universal as in broadly understood – by many or most – as well as universal as in over time.

Many archetype researchers highlight that archetypes, these universal patterns, have been around since stories were told. Think Athenian philosopher Plato, way back in 400 B.C.  Think mythology.

If you consider the etymology of the term archetype, there’s ἀρχή archḗ, which means “beginning or origin”,[4] as in the word archaic.  And then there’s type or τύπος týpos, as in pattern or model.

More recently, just 100 or so years ago, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung talked about how archetypes relate to our collective unconscious.  (An aside. Carl Jung also developed several other important psychological concepts such as the persona and such as extraversion and introversion. You know, at the end of every Talk About Talk podcast interview, when you hear me ask the guest expert “are you an introvert or an extravert?” Well, that’s Carl Jung too. Anyway, I digress.  But hat tip to Carl Jung.)  

So Carl Jung is the scholar who established that archetypes are innate representations that universally exist in our minds. These archetypes, or universal patterns, typically come in the form of two things: characters and/or stories. And these universal patterns are commonly adopted by fiction writers, as a means to help us as readers or audiences members to make sense of the story.

Many of the papers you’ll find about archetypes identify 12 common archetypes.

So why should we identify our archetype? 

Based on my experience coaching thousands of executives, I can tell you that this can be a powerful exercise. First of all, people love being diagnosed.  Who doesn’t love copleting a personality test, then reading the results