Eigenprint Type: what a description of how you work can tell you

What does Eigenprint Type measure?

Type describes how you work or study. Some people are good at what they do and still end each week drained, and they cannot say why. If that is you, skill does not help much. Skill explains what you can do, and it does not tell you which ways of working wear you out the most.

I’m Robert Russell, a career and identity coach, and I run QuantumThrive Hub in South Africa. I build an artefact by hand for each client who is deciding about work, a business or studies. The artefact rests on four lenses of you. Together the four lenses are your Eigenprint, the full picture of you that I build. Eigenprint Type is the first of the four. The focused build uses three of them: Type, Path and Sky.

I wrote the Type questionnaire myself, and it draws on the work of Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist who wrote about personality types. Type has five axes. An axis is one scale between two ways of working, such as planning ahead and keeping things open. The five axes describe how you take in information and how you decide. They also describe how you organise your work, where your energy goes and how you respond under pressure.

Four of the axes combine into your Type. There are sixteen Types, and they sit in four groups. Each group is called a Cluster: Design, Meaning, Foundation or Momentum. You land in a Cluster according to where two of your axes fall. The fifth axis, how you respond under pressure, is reported separately, beside your Type. You see your Type and your Cluster named, and you see where you sit on each axis, described in plain sentences.

What Type rests on, and where it stops

Type describes how you tend to work. Type will not tell you how skilled you are. Knowing how you decide does not tell you what you are skilled at, and I make no claim about skill.

Type alone will not tell you what to choose. You get a description of how you tend to work, with no verdict and no prediction. Treat the description as a set of questions to ask yourself. Then check each question against what you have done, and keep what holds up.

An example: a business you built and no longer enjoy

Take a business owner four years in. The business pays its bills and the clients stay. They are no longer sure they want the job they built.

Nothing is wrong with the business. What they notice is that their best days are rarely the ones they planned. On the planned days they tick off a long list and have little to show for it. On the open days they finish a piece of work that matters to them.

Suppose their Type shows that they organise their work by leaving room to choose what to do next, not by fixing a plan in advance. With that in mind they can ask a sharper question than “Do I still want this business?” They can ask which parts of the job give them that room, and which parts take it away.

Then they test the question against their own life. They list five days from the last few months that went well, and mark each one as planned or open. If four of the five are open days, the description fits them and they can lean on it. If the days are mixed, they set that finding aside and decide using the other three lenses: Path, Sky and Name.

A school leaver can run the same test. Take a learner weighing Accounting, with its fixed set of subjects, against a broad arts degree where they choose many subjects themselves. Suppose their Type shows that they like open choices. The learner lists the three school projects they enjoyed most. They mark each one as having fixed steps or open choices.

A parent can ask their child to make the list. The parent then lists three tasks from their own work. They compare the two lists to see whether they work in similar ways.

Where Type sits in your Eigenprint

An Eigenprint is made of four lenses. Here is each lens, what it rests on and where it stops.

• Eigenprint Type is the subject of this post. Type describes how you work, think and decide, and it stops at preference: it does not measure skill.
• Eigenprint Path is a number’s position in a count, worked out from your birth date. Path names a theme that keeps coming back in your life, such as being the one who organises others.
• Eigenprint Sky is a position in a twelve-part cycle, worked out from your birth date. Sky shows what tends to draw you in and get you moving.
• Eigenprint Name is where your first name and surname come from, looked up in dictionaries and name histories that you can check yourself. Name is part of the comprehensive build only, so you get Type, Path and Sky in the focused build.

Do not rely on one lens. You can rely less on a pattern that one lens shows than on one that three lenses show. When several lenses agree, you have the strongest sign you can get.

How you start

Your Eigenprint Type result is free. You create an account, answer a short questionnaire in one sitting and see your result before you pay anything.

Questions people ask

Is Eigenprint Type the same as a personality test you have already taken?

No. I wrote the Type questionnaire and its scoring myself. It draws on Jung’s work, and the axes, the wording and the scoring are my own.

Does Eigenprint Type tell you what career to choose?

It does not. Type describes how you work. I build an artefact that compares that description with a role, a business or a degree you are weighing. You see the reasoning behind it.

If you run your own business

A description of how you work applies to the person running the business as much as to anyone else. Type will often show you which part of the job was never a good fit for you, even when the business is doing well.

If your child is choosing a degree in a few weeks

Your child can complete the Type questionnaire in one sitting and see the result straight away. You can both see whether the description speaks to them, before any closing date and before you spend anything.

If you are choosing your own degree

From eighteen, you create your own account and pay for yourself. Under eighteen, a parent or guardian holds the account and pays, and the artefact is still written to you. Either way, your Eigenprint Type result is the same: a description of how you work, not a verdict on what to study.

What Type leaves open

Type is one lens. To decide, you also need to know three things. One is the theme that keeps coming back in your life. Another is what tends to draw you in, and the last is where your name comes from. Then you need a next step.

The focused build combines Type, Path and Sky and scores where you stand now on five dimensions, with the more important ones counting for more. The comprehensive build adds Eigenprint Name and the timing work, which puts dates on your roadmap.

Your artefact holds a roadmap, the steps you will take. In the comprehensive build, the timing work uses your birth date to place each step on a calendar. The roadmap then says March where it would otherwise say in three months. The dates are not a prediction. They give you a sensible order for your steps.

A coaching session is the smallest paid step. You and I go through one of your lenses together, such as your Type result, online on a video call.

See the focused build or the comprehensive build. To start with the free part, create an account and see your Eigenprint Type.