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4 Temperaments

Running a four temperaments session in 60 to 90 minutes

A session plan that turns the grid into a team conversation, with what to say and what is better avoided.

This plan works from the group grid: you open a session, everyone answers from the same link, and the grid updates as answers come in.

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What the four temperaments are, and what they are not

The doctrine of the four temperaments comes from ancient medicine: the Hippocratic corpus (5th century BC) linked four humours to health, and the tradition that followed, with Galen (2nd century), associated a temperament with each. The humoral theory has no physiological basis. What remains is a descriptive reading grid: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic.

In a workshop, these four names can serve as a shared vocabulary to talk about pace and energy: how fast we light up, how long we hold, what drains us. It supports a discussion; it does not measure the person. This questionnaire has no reference group, and we have run no study of the stability of its results (test-retest).

What this questionnaire does not allow

  • saying how a person or the team will succeed;
  • building teams or assigning roles by profile;
  • comparing two people on the same axis: answers are forced-choice with a fixed total, so each person's four scores are read against each other, never against someone else's;
  • assessing, hiring or justifying a decision about someone;
  • reading the four temperaments as the dimensions research measures: the link with extraversion and emotional stability is a historical bridge, not an equivalence established by this questionnaire.

The session plan

  1. Minutes 0 to 10, the frame.

    State the goal: build a shared vocabulary to talk about pace and energy, not rank each other. Say that the temperaments support a conversation, that a first name is optional and that nobody will have to announce theirs. Share the link or the QR code.

  2. Minutes 10 to 25, taking the test and reading alone.

    Everyone answers on their own, then reads their result page in silence and notes one sentence that fits them and one that does not.

  3. Minutes 25 to 40, the grid.

    Show the grid and first ask what people see in it, before any interpretation. Then read the make-up as questions: a frequent temperament, a temperament that is rare in the split, two ways of working that are equally present. Each reading is a hypothesis the group confirms or sets aside. This questionnaire brings out the choleric less often than the others: a rare temperament can come from the grid as much as from the group. The grid keeps only each person's most marked temperament: a missing temperament does not mean nobody uses it.

  4. Minutes 40 to 55, the discussion.

    Do the "where this profile got me wrong" exercise below, then ask this question: "In which recent situation did our way of working help us, and in which did it get in our way?"

  5. Minutes 55 to 60, the commitment.

    The group picks a single concrete action for the month, based on what was said, not on the temperament names (for example stepping back before deciding, checking a detail, letting the floor circulate). Whoever carries it volunteers: the grid does not appoint anyone.

  6. 90-minute variant.

    Between minute 40 and minute 70, work in sub-groups of three or four on a real team situation (a decision, a clash of rhythms): what was easy, what got stuck, and which temperament words help to say it? Each sub-group reports back in one sentence, then keep twenty minutes for the commitment.

The "where this profile got me wrong" exercise

Everyone rereads their description and picks out two sentences: the one that describes them least well, and the one that could describe almost anybody. Pool the second ones, without saying which profile they come from.

This is the Barnum effect, described by Bertram Forer in 1949: a general enough description feels personal to most people. Spotting it together is a reminder that the result is a starting point, and makes it legitimate not to recognise oneself in it.

Why start from a real situation

A meta-analysis of debriefs (Tannenbaum and Cerasoli, 2013) links going back together over a specific work episode with better performance afterwards, mostly in simulation studies (medical and military). It does not cover the temperaments or any profile tool: that is why one question in the plan starts from a real, recent situation, and this plan promises no effect on the team.

To avoid during the session

  • guessing or announcing out loud the temperament of a colleague who has not shared it, or locking someone into theirs ("you are choleric");
  • reading out to the group the first names from the facilitator-only list;
  • commenting on a pair of named people, or comparing two members on the same temperament;
  • sharing out tasks or roles according to temperaments;
  • drawing from the grid a judgement on what the team is worth or will achieve.

Did this help? If you keep a resource page for your students, trainees or colleagues, you are welcome to mention Profilia (profilia.app) there. That is all: nothing to sign up for, nothing in return.