There are few things more difficult as a leader than managing personality conflicts. There are as many different personalities as there are people, and sometimes getting people to work well together is the most difficult and time consuming part of a leaders job. There are times, however, when you experience the magic. A diverse team is able to leverage their differences and the result is creative solutions that can take the team, project or company from good to great.
How then, can we leverage and get the most out of those differences? The secret is to understand the basic underlying patterns associated with different personalities, and to use that knowledge to create strong teams, to better manage conflict, and to foster creativity and innovation.
Myers-Briggs is the most widely used personality profiling tool. For more than 70 years, companies around the world have benefited from the power of increased productivity and harmony by helping people understand why we think the way we think and why we behave the way we do.
In a nutshell, your Myers-Briggs type consists of 4 letters, each representing a different preference in how you like to do things. In this article we’ll discuss one of the four, and the others we’ll save for another time.
One piece of the personality puzzle is whether you have a preference for Introversion or Extraversion. While this concept has received a lot of publicity lately, people still mistakenly think these words mean someone is either quiet or outgoing.
In the Myers-Briggs world, introversion and extraversion are about where you get your energy from, and what you tend to pay attention to. When it comes to leading a team of people, understanding whether someone is an introvert or an extravert, can help increase effective communication, reduce destructive stress, and amplify team cohesion.
First, think about which of these two descriptions sounds most like you. While it’s true that everyone both introverts and extraverts at different times, we have a favourite between the two. Think of it as having a preference for being either left or right handed. You can use either hand at any time, but you definitely have a favourite.
An Introvert is energized by introspection and their inside world of thoughts, ideas and memories. They prefer to communicate in writing because it’s a reflective process, and they’re often the last to speak up in meetings because they’d rather formulate their ideas in their heads before speaking them out loud. They can come across as private, reserved, and hard to get to know. They excel when working alone or in small teams.
An Extravert, on the other hand, is energized by interaction and the outside world of activities and actions and people. They prefer live communication and in meetings will speak early and often because their ideas tend to formulate as they talk about them. They can come across as expressive, enthusiastic and easy to get to know. They excel when working with lots of different people.
So how does this information help us as leaders? At the most basic level, because this preference is about energy, it can be tremendously helpful as a leader to know how your people re-energize most effectively. There is always too much to do, and too little time to do it. Help keep the energy levels up in your people and you’ll help them be more productive.
Imagine these two types of personalities having to work together. Challenges can arise in meetings when some people are hard to reign in because talking is their default mode, and others may wait to be asked their opinions because they’ve been waiting for a break in the conversation that never arrived.
Misconceptions can easily arise between these two types at work because one group will tend to screen calls and send emails, even when the recipient is just a few cubicles away. The other group will feel more productive when they drop by someone’s office to bounce an idea around, never considering that their arrival may be considered a rude interruption rather than an effective collaboration.
In times of change, stress or frustration, one group my keep their feelings, ideas and opinions to themselves, leaving others to assume they are in agreement or on board when they are not. With the other group you may hear lots of ideas and opinions, even when you don’t ask for them.
As a leader, you can more effectively manage these types of situations by understanding the makeup of your team, and by anticipating challenges that may arise between members who are very different from one another. Introverts and Extraverts who have to work closely together on a daily basis can literally suck the energy out of one another, if they don’t understand this fundamental difference between them. One effective way to manage this is to arm your team with knowledge so they can manage it themselves.
Introverts who are able to ask their extraverted team member for a moment to think about their response is as powerful as extraverted members who are able to preface their comments by admitting their ideas is not yet fully formed. Extraverts naturally interrupt and finish each other’s thoughts and this helps in articulating the idea. Introverts faced with this same barrage of interruptions are more likely to find their thought process derailed.
So let the extraverts think out loud and let the introverts take a moment to gather their thoughts.
When it comes to performance self-management, people knowing and asking for what they need and want is the secret sauce. Understand that differences can arise from natural in-born preferences, and that personality conflicts can be effectively managed. The bottom line is that as a leader, you must bring out the best in the team both as individuals and as a collective group. It starts with understanding people are at their very core, and knowing what you can do to help them be the best they can be.
