Happy Sunday Everyone:
I was in Miami week before last for our exec management team meeting for our company. We had a great consulting group come in to run the meeting (The Table Group). I think it’s fair to say if you’ve been through a few “strategy/development” meetings, you might get jaded to say “here we go again”. If gone wrong, one could equate these corporate meetings to that of a New Year’s resolution i.e. nice thought, but it ended. This meeting went very different, and I’d expect the content of the meeting to stick, I’d go one step further to say in large part because of the time and energy the consultant took to go through our individual personalities and how we work best with one another, and why. Additionally, he brought up topics that exploited some vulnerabilities in each of us, which brought a new light (for me anyway) to have a poop load more empathy for people on our team I didn’t see eye to eye with, or people I didn’t know how to communicate with without going bananas, of which I now do.
The majority of the people reading this have gone through many personality test exercises, including me. It’s not a question of having done them, it’s a question of understanding them, and what you do with them moving forward. Our consultant, Glenn, chose Myers/Briggs for our personality testing, which originally came from the theories of Carl Jung (my Grammie studied him weekly until her death at 102, interesting note for me). Like every other test, you answer a bunch of questions and it spits out your personality type. I’m an ENFJ. The meaning of ENFJ and all the others types is a whole different subject but this is what it says about someone that fits this category:
“The theme of the ENFJ is mentoring, leading people to achieve their potential and become more of who they are. ENFJs lead using their empathy, strong communication skills, their enthusiasm, and warmth to gain cooperation toward meeting the ideals they hold for the organization. They are the catalyst who tremendously enjoy drawing out the best in others”.
Side note-so you don’t think this is a fortune cookie. Rob, our CEO, is an ENTP. He gave me permission to share his. “The theme of the ENTP is invention, not just of concrete objects, but also new ways of doing things as a means to an end. ENTP’s are interested in patterns of nearly everything and frequently go from one thing to the next, inventing prototypes and having faith in their ability to improvise rather than extensively prepare. They are the engineers of human relationships and systems as well as the more scientific domains”. Anyone who knows Rob, and can apply mortgage language to what is above understands the alignment.
It goes further to break down the characteristics and implications of the ENFJ/ENTP (and all other types) around management style, attitude, skills, driving force, energy direction, authority orientation, role perception, conflict resolution, modes of learning, and blind spots/pitfalls. My blind spots are that I can get overly emotional and take things personally (shocker to those who know me well). Glenn gave us the assignment that night to read the 14-15 pages describing the characteristics/implications to discuss the next day. In reading those pages, I felt like I was looking into my soul. How a test answering 90 questions (I think 90), could define me was both weird and amazing. I know I like this stuff more than most so figured the rest of the group might have different thoughts, they didn’t, every person on our team was blown away by the accuracy of the intel.
Where am I going with this? My personality would suggest I care a great deal about relationships and I’m very okay with that. Relationships are a two way street and require communication. For any team to work well together, you have to understand each other’s personalities and the characteristics/implications of those personalities. Our team, having a better understanding and appreciation of one another’s profiles and the characteristics/implications that go along with each will lead to better communication, it’s impossible for it not to. One of my favorite companies to study is Bridgewater, a multi -billion dollar hedge fund run by Ray Dalio. Everyone’s desk has their profile on it. Think of me going into a meeting with the name tag that says ENFJ instead of Hunter, it ensures people appreciate my style and vice versa, vs. getting pissed off because of how they’re communicating with me, or me with them.
I know this is a long one and I could go on and on with it. I can only suggest/beg that anyone that has a team would go through this exercise and study it. Our communication with those that we need to spend a lot of time with would be so much more productive if we did. Kim wants to do it for our family, which will be interesting.
If you want to go for it, the book we used after taking the test, which I found incredibly well done is called “working together, a personality centered approach to management”.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.