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Personality Types and Leadership – Part 4

May 9, 2012 By
Where Commander-Leaders don’t really want to be bothered by details and Entertainer-Leaders know that details exist but don’t know what they are, it takes a special kind of person to handle details.  COREMAP® calls these special people Organizer Personalities.
Organizer Personalities as Leaders
As a general rule, Organizer Personalities do not usually seek out positions of leadership.  However, when a job requires someone who excels in creating a structured, systematic environment, the Organizer Personality offers traits and skills that enable the Organizer-Leader to flourish.  These qualities and skills include:
• Willingness to Train – Great Organizer-Leaders are detail oriented and take the time and effort to ensure that their followers have all of the details needed to properly complete a job.  Since they are logical and methodical in all that they do, training programs that they design and deliver tend to provide sequential lessons that make it easy for students and trainees to follow.
• Patience and Fairness – Organizer-Leaders recognize that people learn at varying speeds.  Consequently, they are very patient and willing to review details until their followers understand them.  Once the Organizer-Leader believes that followers are prepared to perform the tasks and complete the projects before them, he/she gives the followers great latitude in how the job is done so long as it is completed within the timeframe allowed.  If there are problems or conflicts, the followers know that the Organizer-Leader will help them find a solution quickly and will fairly arbitrate any disputes.
• Leads by Example – When the time comes to get a job done, the Organizer-Leader believes that the best place to lead is from the front and set the example.  He/She does not have the self-perception of being over others; rather, believes that “many hands make light work” and that his or her hands are every bit as capable of lightening the load on followers as anyone else’s.  Because the Organizer-Leader is working right alongside the followers, he/she has a great insight into the challenges that the other workers face and will always be looking for solutions that benefit “his/her people”.
• Loyalty – Having worked right alongside the followers, the Organizer-Leader is very likely to see them as part of his/her extended family and will tend to take the attitude that “we take care of our own”.  The old expression, “I’ve got your back” could well describe the message that the Organizer-Leader sends out to followers.  This message may not be vocalized; but, is delivered by the actions taken and the examples set by the Organizer-Leader.
A good example of an Organizer-Leader might well be the Compliance Officer, we’ll call him “John”, at a securities broker/dealer I worked with.  A major part of his job was ensuring that agency managers were well prepared for the day when a regulatory inspector would walk into the agency office to conduct a legal compliance inspection.
Each year, John would schedule an inspection at each agency, describing it as a “dress rehearsal” compliance inspection.  He used an inspection sheet prepared by the broker/dealer; an inspection sheet based on the experiences of the president of the firm who was also a securities attorney and an expert witness in many court cases involving securities firms and their registered representatives.  John would randomly select client files, much as a regulator would, and review each file to confirm that the representative had conducted a thorough fact-finding interview and that the investments recommended were suitable for both the risk tolerances and financial goals of the client.  At the conclusion of the inspection, John would meet with the agency manager and review the files with the manager.  John then recommended actions that needed to be taken within the agency in order to offer the highest probability of a successful outcome to a genuine regulatory inspection; and, he suggested training that should be provided to the registered representatives to ensure that they provided all of the documentation that was needed to justify and defend the recommendations that they offered to clients.
About six months after conducting a “dress rehearsal” with an agency manager, John got a call from that manager.  The manager told John that an inspector had just left the office; that the agency had passed with flying colors; and, that at no time was she nervous about the outcome of the inspection because she knew that she had taken action on all of John’s recommendations and that her registered representatives had received the suggested training.
By providing the processes and procedures; by offering a system that the agency manager could adhere to, John made certain that the team he led was well prepared for the challenges that they would face; and, that they would emerge from those challenges stronger, more competent, and more confident in their own ability to succeed.
Filed Under: Dynamic Leadership, How personality type impacts leadership, Lead from strength, Leadership, Personality Assessment, Personality types, What characterizes good leaders Tagged With: , , , ,

Personality Types and Leadership – Part 2

April 4, 2012 By

If you are like most people, you’ve either met or heard of someone who just seems to attract others like a light bulb attracts moths at night.  He or she is seen as being warm, approachable, magnetic.  When there is work to be done, this person leads others into it with excitement and enthusiasm. COREMAP® calls these people Entertainers.

Entertainer Personalities as Leaders

Just as the Commander Personality brings specific skills to a leadership position, Entertainers bring skills that make people want to follow them; and makes the follower feel special for having chosen to follow this leader.  To separate themselves from the not-so-great, GREAT Entertainer-Leaders are:

  • Great Communicators – By their very nature, Entertainer Personalities have the ability to communicate their thoughts, their vision of the future, in clear and vivid terms.  For these leaders, words are not merely “words” … they are tools that bring their experiences and vision to life … when properly put together and sequenced, they change mere music into the soundtrack of a dream come to life.  For this person, the sky is not simply blue; it is a cerulean blue so bright that it hurts your eyes to look at it for any length of time.
  • Good Listeners – This seems highly improbable since Entertainer Personalities love to talk!  But, the fact is that great Entertainer-Leaders have learned that taking time to listen attracts followers; and, that having listened, they will be asked to provide feedback … they will be asked to talk and their audience will be eagerly awaiting their every word.
  • Interpersonal Skills – Entertainer Personalities love to be the center of attention.  Great Entertainer-Leaders take the time to interact with their followers and make themselves available … to have an “open-door” policy that is backed up with a welcoming, receptive attitude.  Great Entertainer-Leaders have learned that to have an audience that is fully engaged with them, they must give their audience their undivided attention.  When they are with you, they are with you; nothing and no one is permitted to interrupt or distract.
  • Optimistic – No one’s life is free from adversity.  The great Entertainer-Leader though has learned to find the silver lining in any cloud.
    There are no road blocks to progress.  Rather, these temporary obstacles are viewed as opportunities to be innovative; challenges that empower each of us to demonstrate how we can rise up to the challenge and create solutions.  Great Entertainer-Leaders use this optimism to inspire those around them to accomplish things that the followers have never thought possible.
  • Create a “Fun” Environment – For the Entertainer Personality, life is to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest.  The Entertainer-Leader knows that no one wants to slave away in a work environment that is dull, boring, and the days blur into a monotonous week in which nothing distinguishes one day from another.  Consequently, the Entertainer-Leader is going to create an environment in which not only are organizational objectives attained, the wants and needs of each individual are going to be fulfilled as well … an environment that is upbeat, positive, and contains occasional surprises that make each team member smile and eager to see what the coming day will bring.

In Part 1, I stated that Ray was a Commander-Leader.  He also had a lot of the Entertainer-Leader in him, too.  Whether it was a sales contest that made each salesperson want to make one more cold call; or, an end of the day “sale-a-bration” in which everyone returned to the office after their last evening appointment for pizza, he was always finding ways to make working feel like play.  He even found ways to make weekly sales meetings fun.

Anyone who has attended more than a couple of sales meetings knows that they usually follow a template that says, “I know you’ve sold something in the past but that is the past … go sell something today.”  Ray’s sales meetings were different.  He found ways to make them fun.  While I did not witness this one first hand, one of his greatest sales meetings was held right around Halloween.

He had a casket delivered to the office and set up in the meeting room.  Just before it was time for people to arrive for the weekly meeting, he laid down in that casket, folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes.  When the sales people arrived, they were ushered into the meeting room by his secretary who simply told them to sit down and wait quietly for the service to begin.  They found Ray lying in the coffin and heard organ music playing softly.  When everyone was present, his secretary closed the door letting him know it was time to start the sales meeting.  While everyone sat there wondering what was going on, he suddenly sat up, climbed out of the casket, slapped his hands together and cried out, “Now that I have your attention … Now that you’ve thought about the permanence of death … NOW we’re going to talk about the miracle of life insurance!”  When the meeting ended, everyone of those sales people walked out with a smile on their face, eager to share the miracle of life insurance with a prospective client.  Obviously, Ray did not do this for every sales meeting; but, you can be assured that every member of his sales team looked forward to each meeting, wondering if today was going to be the day he grabbed their attention in a new and unusual way.

NEXT:  Organizer Personalities as Leaders

Filed Under: Dynamic Leadership, How personality type impacts leadership, Lead from strength, Leadership, Personality Assessment, Personality types, What characterizes good leaders Tagged With: , , ,

While We Are All People, There Are Different Types of People

September 16, 2011 By

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with a group in Southwest Florida that does amazing work in its community.  They held a full-day staff retreat to learn about personality types and how different personalities impact customer service.  They defined their customers both internally and externally; i.e., the people inside their organization that they serve along with the people in their general community that are served.

When it comes to customer service, different types of people need different things.  For example,

  • People who are bold, “take charge” people need action; they need to see results … and the sooner the better!
  • Detail oriented people want the facts and the details; they need to see that there is logic and predictability in how their service need is going to be handled.
  • Those who are concerned that whatever solution is applied will make everyone happy need security and reassurance.
  • Individuals who are outgoing and enjoy being the center of attention need to be given the opportunity to express themselves and be heard; they need to recognized and appreciated.

The words that we use when serving these different people make all the difference in the world so, as individuals who serve customers, it behooves us to choose our words carefully and make certain that the words we use convey our desire to satisfy the needs of those customers.  Words, just like the “little things”, can make all of the difference in the world.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Financial Coaching, How personality Type impacts customer service, Personal Coaching, Personality Assessment
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