Personal Capabilities & Personality
Professional and business capabilities are absolutely necessary for the Enterprise Architect, but those can be used effectively only when the architect brings a range of personal capabilities to the job as well. Personal capabilities determine how well someone learns anything, and how well they can apply it.
There are a number of personal capabilities that sometimes get listed as personality traits rather than as capabilities. Creativity, being a visionary, leadership, open mindedness, passion and resilience, for example, are frequently mentioned as being part of a good Enterprise Architect's personality.
Personality can be defined as the set of characteristics of a person that uniquely influence that person's perceptions, motivations and behaviours in various circumstances. Seen from this definition, the traits listed above can indeed be considered to be personality traits.
The prevailing assumption is that past a certain age personality is more or less fixed and essentially cannot be changed. From here follows (quite naturally) an assumption that personality traits are more or less fixed: one has them or one doesn't, and there is not much that can be done or changed about that.
We take exception to that assumption and argue (backed by 30+ years of extensive research and practice in the fields of organisational development,
learning and development, executive coaching and training, emotional intelligence, neuro-science and more) that many of the
characteristics classified as personality traits are in effect capabilities that can be trained, developed and improved.
While we do not claim that everybody can become a Picasso, Gandhi or the Dalai Lama,
we do know that the capabilities underlying the creative process – for example — and the process
of setting and developing a vision, leadership capabilities and optimism & resilience can be taught, practiced and improved
We believe that whether or not a person engages on this level of development is not a matter of predetermination or fate, but a matter of personal choice.
In fact, the idea that one's personality is a given and that there is no choice in how to develop or strengthen it is an example
of a mental model that is worth an investigation 
.
