Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D.
Become Who You Are Meant to Be
Understand what drives your behavior. Develop the capacities that change how you lead, relate, and live.
I’m Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D., developmental therapist, leadership coach, author, co-creator of the Striving Styles Personality System, and MBTI Certified Practitioner.
For more than four decades, I have helped people understand why they behave the way they do and what needs to develop for meaningful change to become possible.
My work goes beyond insight, advice, and behavior management. It connects personality, psychological needs, adaptive patterns, and development so you can understand what is driving your behavior and develop the capacities of your authentic self.
Understanding Who You Are Meant to Be Changes Everything
You cannot become who you are meant to be by simply trying harder to behave differently. You have to understand what is driving the behavior.
Our behavior patterns are shaped by personality type, emotional needs, past experience, and the ways we have learned to adapt and protect ourselves. When we focus only on changing what we do, we miss what is keeping the pattern in place.
The answer often lies in seeing the gap between who we are trying to be and who we were meant to be.
Understanding your personality type and the behavior patterns that have developed around it creates the self-awareness needed for real development and lasting change.
Becoming who you are meant to be is not about becoming someone different. It is about developing beyond the patterns that limit you so you have greater freedom to choose how you think, feel, and behave.
Why Smart, Self-Aware People Still Repeat the Same Behaviors
Insight is important. It just isn’t enough.
Most people already know far more about what they should do than they are consistently able to do.
A leader knows they should delegate but takes the work back when pressure increases. Someone knows they need stronger boundaries but continues taking responsibility for other people. A person understands the relationship pattern they keep repeating and still finds themselves caught in it again.
This is the Knowing-Doing Gap. It exists because knowledge alone doesn’t drive behavior.
When emotional needs are activated or we experience stress, uncertainty, conflict, or vulnerability, we instinctively rely on familiar psychological strategies. These patterns may have developed early in life or evolved over years of adapting to what was expected of us.
That is why simply knowing better does not always lead to doing differently.
Real development requires understanding what the behavior is accomplishing psychologically, what need is driving it, and what capacity needs to develop so the old response is no longer necessary.
Striving Styles: Understanding What Drives Behavior and Development
If insight alone does not change behavior, the next question is obvious: what is driving the behavior in the first place?
That is where the Striving Styles Personality System comes in.
The Striving Styles Personality Assessment shows you how your preferred psychological functions are hard-wired into your brain and how they shape the way you naturally think, feel, respond, and behave. It identifies the emotional needs tied to each function and the normal behaviors you use to meet those needs, giving you a deeper understanding of why you do what you do.
It also shows how behavior from the functions changes when you use them from your self-protective system or your self-actualizing system. Your Striving Styles Report includes the capacities of your authentic self that likely need development.
Here’s where you make the shift from awareness to action. Your SSPS Roadmap for Development takes those identified capacities and gives you a step-by-step process for developing them, so you are not simply trying to stop a behavior. You are building the capacities of your authentic self that help you become who you are meant to be.
Striving Styles does not just tell you who you are. It shows you how you are wired, what drives your behavior, and where your development needs to go next.
Two Pathways. One Developmental Foundation.
The context may be different. The person is not.
People come to this work for different reasons. Some want to become more effective leaders, strengthen a team, or address patterns affecting performance at work. Others want to understand and change patterns affecting their relationships, emotional well-being, or personal growth.
Depending on what you need, there are two pathways for working with me. Striving Styles provides a developmental foundation for both, but how I use it is different in each.
Leadership & Team Development
Leadership challenges are not always skill problems. Personality influences how leaders communicate, make decisions, delegate, manage conflict, hold people accountable, and respond under pressure.
In leadership and executive coaching, I use Striving Styles to identify the personality strengths leaders naturally rely on, the self-protective behaviors that may be limiting their effectiveness, and the capacities they need to develop to lead differently.
With teams, Striving Styles creates a shared understanding of personality differences, needs, communication styles, and predictable patterns under pressure. This gives teams a practical way to address the dynamics that get in the way of trust, accountability, collaboration, and performance.
Personal & Relationship Development
When the issue is personal, the work goes deeper into the patterns affecting how you feel, relate, protect yourself, and respond to the people and situations in your life.
Through psychotherapy and therapeutic coaching, I use Striving Styles to help you understand the psychological needs driving your behavior, recognize when you are operating from self-protection, and identify the capacities of your authentic self that need further development.
Rather than focusing only on stopping an unwanted behavior, we work on developing what is missing so you have greater freedom to respond differently in your relationships and in your life. Moving from insight to practice to becoming who you are meant to be.
Explore Anne’s Books & Developmental Frameworks
Grounded, step-by-step psychological frameworks for leadership, authentic personal growth, and relational dynamics.
My books bring more than four decades of work in personality, leadership, psychotherapy, relationships, and human development into frameworks people can use to better understand themselves and develop.
They explore the same central question from different parts of life:
What becomes possible when you understand what is driving your behavior and develop more fully into who you are meant to be?
Sample Books
So, You Think You Can Lead? A Guide to Developing Your Leadership Authority and Potential: Learn what it takes to move beyond technical competence and become a skilled, professional leader who can lead people at different stages of development.
Who Are You Meant to Be? A Groundbreaking Step-by-Step Process for Discovering and Fulfilling Your True Potential: Discover the Striving Styles Personality System and the psychological needs, strengths, and patterns that drive your behavior in relationships, work, and life.
Are Your Relationship Rules Ruining Your Happiness? How Unconscious Relationship Patterns Sabotage Love—and How to Break Free: Discover the unconscious relationship rules and self-protective behaviors that keep you overgiving, pleasing, controlling, withdrawing, seeking approval, or losing yourself in relationships.
More Than Four Decades Helping People Become Who They Are Meant to Be
I have spent my career studying a question that sits underneath much of human development:
Why do people continue behaving in ways that do not reflect what they know, want, or are capable of becoming?
My work has spanned psychotherapy, leadership development, personality assessment, team effectiveness, relationships, and organizational behavior. Although these can look like different areas of practice, I see them as deeply connected.
People do not leave their personality behind when they enter the workplace. Leaders bring the same emotional needs, adaptive strategies, strengths, and self-protective behaviors into their roles that influence them everywhere else in life.
I don’t believe lasting change comes from telling people what they should do differently.
It comes from helping them understand why they do what they do, what is driving the pattern, and what needs to develop so they have greater freedom to choose.