Your Workstyle Has a Magnet

A Viewpoint on Energy, Interests, and Designing Work That Fits

One of the most underused insights in personality assessments is not about stress, communication, or motivation. It is about interests. Not hobbies. Not skills. Interests are the areas of work and thinking you are naturally drawn toward, whether you are conscious of it or not.

I often explain interests using a simple analogy. A magnet.

A magnet has two sides. One side pulls things in. Flip it over, and it pushes things away. Our interests work the same way.

When we score high in a particular interest area, we are pulled toward it. We lean in. We stay engaged longer. We often perform better because we willingly spend more time there. When we score low, the magnet flips. We procrastinate. We avoid. We find excuses. It feels heavier than it should.

This is not about ability. It is about energy.

My own highest scores land me squarely in the communicator space. I am drawn to coaching, persuading, debating, selling ideas, and helping people think differently. Put me in a room with a leadership question or a people problem and I am fully engaged. There is energy there. There is momentum.

On the opposite end, my lowest scores sit in scientific interests. If the conversation turns to chemistry, fertilizer formulas, pool chemicals, or anything that feels like a lab assignment, I can feel the magnet flip. My brain starts scanning for the exit. It is not that I cannot learn it. It is that it does not energize me.

When I am in my high interest zone, there is a different kind of intensity. If you bring me a leadership challenge, I move quickly into what my family calls Super Coach mode. If you want to debate the greatest basketball player of all time, I can stay there for hours. For the record, it is Michael Jordan.

That is the upside of the magnetic pull. The downside is that we can over rotate. We can stay in our favorite zone too long and neglect the work that does not naturally attract us.

I have a friend whose magnets look very different from mine. His highest interests are technical and outdoor. Give him a hands on project and open the door and he is gone before you finish the sentence. The challenge is not getting him started. It is getting him to stop. On the other side, he scores low in administrative work and social service. If you ask him to lead a workshop or work through a stack of paperwork, his magnet flips and pushes him away.

Here is the important part. He is capable of both. He simply does not enjoy both. One energizes him. The other drains him.

Fortunately, most of his role aligns with what pulls him in. He has also been wise enough to surround himself with people who thrive in the spaces where his magnet pushes away.

Your interests do not determine your competence, but they do shape your satisfaction and sustainability. When you understand your magnets, you manage your energy more intentionally. You lean into what fuels you and you prepare for what drains you. You make smarter decisions about how to structure your day and how to build your team.

Sometimes the solution is surprisingly simple. If someone scores low in administrative work but high in outdoor interests, perhaps the paperwork gets done on a patio instead of behind a desk. The positive magnet offsets the negative one. The environment matters.

The more aware you are of your magnetic field, the more control you have over how you work, lead, and live. You begin to design around energy instead of obligation. You understand why certain tasks feel effortless and others feel unusually heavy. You build teams that complement each other instead of duplicating blind spots.

Whether you are leading a boardroom, running a club, or developing a team, performance improves when people are pulled toward their work rather than pushed through it.

And no, I cannot explain the physics of magnets in detail. That would require a different interest score entirely.