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What Could Possibly Make an Introverted Organizer a Great Leader?

October 6, 2013 By

Organizers can be Great Leaders. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at a few of the characteristics and skills that the Organizer brings to the leadership table.

  • Analytical – Organizers who use their “alone time” to examine situations often see opportunities where others see only problems, obstacles, limitations, and dead ends. Given sufficient examination, these impediments can be turned into motivations and opportunities. The analytical Organizer finds the opportunity to do what “they” say can’t be done.
  • Detail Oriented – There is an old saying that “the devil is in the details” and here is where the Organizer shines. While the Commander does not want to be bothered with the details, preferring the “big picture”; and, while the Entertainer may not always recognize that there ARE details (as an Entertainer myself, I feel I can safely make this observation), the Organizer identifies the key elements that must be included if a project is to succeed and then makes sure that someone is responsible for ensuring that they are attended to.
  • Focused – While Organizers are extraordinarily attentive to details, they still are able to “keep their eyes on the prize”. They make sure that the details are attended to because they see how those details contribute to the ultimate success of the team and the project.
  • Consistent and Fair – Teams seem to function best when all members know what is expected of them and what each member will be contributing. Organizers, being detail oriented and having systems and processes in place to ensure that those details are attended to, tend to make certain that the processes and procedures ensure that things are done the same way each time and that the standards are consistently applied. Ultimately, fairness means that the same standards are applied, consistently, to every member of the team.
  • Perseverance – The value and importance of some projects is always readily apparent to others. When a Great Leader knows that he or she has a good idea, perseverance is a key component required for the ultimate adoption of that idea. While others may give the idea a passing glance, the Organizer sees the value and persists in presenting that value to the audience and will not give up.

Organizer personalities can be Great Leaders … they bring vital traits and skills to the leadership table. If you think about the truly great leaders you have known and admired, there is probably at least one Organizer on your list. Click the “Comment” button and share your story about that Organizer Leader here.

Tom Hoisington is a speaker, trainer, and author whose goal is to provide leaders and potential leaders with tools that empower them to build teams that are creative and cost effective along with a clearer understanding of how personality types interact within those teams. He can be contacted at tom.hoisington@eagleoneresources.com

Filed Under: Dynamic Leadership, Great Leaders, How personality type impacts leadership, Lead from strength, Lead with Integrity, Leadership, Personal Coaching, Personality Assessment, Personality types, What characterizes good leaders Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How Can a Relater Personality Be a Great Leader?

May 6, 2013 By

When people think of leaders, they tend to think of the person who takes command; who gives orders; who talks loudly; who moves through the crowd shaking hands with everyone and talking to everyone who will listen … and frequently to those who would rather not listen.

A Relater Personality (see Personality Types and Leadership – Part 3 published here on April 11, 2012) hardly fits the description above. Relaters tend to be introverted personalities; again, not what you expect from someone who aspires to a position of leadership. But, I believe that Relaters can be GREAT Leaders because they have some skills that are desperately needed.

They Listen: I once heard the great Cavett Robert say, “God gave you two ears and one mouth. It was a hint.” What did he mean by this? Great Leaders recognize that they do not know it all. Great Leaders listen twice as much as they talk; and, at this, Relaters excel. Relater Personalities listen to others, especially where there are differing opinions and points of view so that they can determine where common ground exists.

They Build Consensus: Once the Relater Leader knows where the common ground is, they are in a much better position to broker compromises in which all parties believe that they have gotten what they need. They rally people to the positions that all support and keep everyone focused on what they have in common; the positions that they all support. Rather than having team members see other members with differing points of view as opponents to be defeated, Relater Leaders help the team arrive at positions that the majority can support. Even those who don’t completely agree with the position feel valued in that they had an opportunity to present their opinions and ideas and that they were heard.

They Foster a Spirit of Teamwork: My former neighbor, Bobby, is a Relater Leader. Working in the construction industry, Bobby was a job-site supervisor and had a reputation for getting more quality work from his crews than any other supervisor in the company. Got a tough job with a hard completion deadline? This was the man you wanted on the job! I asked him how he did it and his answer was quite simple. He stated that his crews did not work for him … they work with him. If he needed the crew to work on Saturday in order to be ready for an inspection on Monday, he did not tell the workers that they had to work on Saturday. He told them that, in order to have the job done by Monday morning, some work needed to be done on Saturday. He told them that he’d be on the job-site at 7:00 a.m. with coffee and donuts; then, he asked who would be there at 8:00 a.m. to help him get the job done. He never lacked help; and, they usually showed up well before 8:00 and found him hard at work. His crew knew that they were a team; that they would succeed or fail as a team; and, that the leader of the team would work as hard, or harder, than he asked of them.

Can a Relater Personality by a Great Leader?  Comment here and tell us what you think?

Tom Hoisington is a speaker, trainer, and author whose goal is to provide leaders and potential leaders with tools that empower them to build teams that are creative and cost effective along with a clearer understanding of how personality types interact within those teams. He can be contacted at tom.hoisington@eagleoneresources.com

Filed Under: Dynamic Leadership, Great Leaders, How personality type impacts leadership, Lead from strength, Lead with Integrity, Leadership, Personal Coaching, Personality Assessment, Personality types, What characterizes good leaders Tagged With: , , , , ,

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT’S ALREADY 2013?

January 11, 2013 By

It’s hard to believe, but not only is 2013 already here, nearly two full weeks are already gone!  Do you have goals for the new year; a plan for reaching those goals?  If you haven’t already done so, now would be a good time to …

•    Write down your goals – Write down what the goal is, what it looks like, how it will feel to achieve it.  Be specific.  The more specific the goal, the easier it will be to see where you stand as you work toward it and know when you’ve reached it.

•    Tell others what your goals are – This is not about “bragging rights”.  Rather, it is about accountability.  In the Speakers’ Academy, we have accountability partners; someone who will help us hold ourselves accountable for working toward and ultimately attaining the goals that we have set for ourselves.  Your accountability partner can be a single individual or a group of people who support you and want to see you succeed; your personal “board of directors”.

•    Believe that you can reach your goals – You’ve got to believe in yourself and in your ability to achieve the goals that you have set for yourself.  The great W. Clement Stone wrote that, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”.  When you believe in yourself, really believe, your brain has the capacity to focus like a laser on the goal and the actions that must be taken to reach it.  Without belief, there can be no focus.

•   Make the goals measurable – Earlier, I said “be specific”.  Specificity makes it easy to measure your progress.  A vague goal such as “I’m going to make more sales this year” has no real power, no real motivation, and no clearly defined actions that must be taken.  A specific goal, “I’m going to increase sales by 10%” leads to specific action steps such as, “To increase sales by 10%, I must make three additional sales presentations every week, which means I must add ten additional qualified prospects to my sales pipeline every week.” With these specific action steps, you can measure your progress every day.

•    Challenge yourself – While it may feel good to reach the same easy goal every year, it’s not possible to grow by pursuing this strategy.  A wise man once told me that “when you’re green, you grow … when you’re ripe, you rot”.  Goals that do not challenge us do not empower us to grow.  Many performance reviews are based on a three step model … Base Acceptable Minimum Performance (BAM), Desired Goal, and Stretch Goal.  BAM may allow you  to keep your job (for now), but it probably puts you #1 on the list of people to cut if the company decides it needs to reduce personnel.  Dare to dream … dream big … it’s impossible to soar with the eagles if you’re not willing to reach for the stars.  Make your goals big enough to inspire you to strive for greatness; to motivate you to “go the extra mile”.

•    Set a deadline for reaching each of your goals – my first agency manager constantly reminded the new and veteran agents in the office that “goals are simply dreams with deadlines”.  Without a “due date”, goals are little more than dreams that are seldom achieved.  When you commit to reaching the goal by a specific date, you have committed yourself to doing what is needed to reach the goal by that date.

Now is the time to map out the goals, the destinations, that you want to reach in 2013.  The goals you set and the actions that you take to reach them will determine how you see this year when you look back at it from some future date.  The future is in your hands.  Make it a great one!

Filed Under: Goal Setting, Personal Coaching Tagged With: ,

Personality Types and Leadership – Do Leaders Have Multiple Personalities?

May 17, 2012 By
I had a fascinating conversation last week with a client who had recently completed a COREMAP assessment.  After discussing the outcomes of the assessment, we determined that his dominant personality was that of a Commander with highly developed Organizer traits as his secondary or back-up personality.  This is a relatively common combination, but what made him atypical was that he also had highly developed Relater traits as well and Relater was his tertiary personality.  When I told him about this, he was concerned that these different facets of the same person would create mental conflicts.  He laughingly asked if I was suggesting that he had some kind of “multiple personality thingy” … was I saying that “someday, someone would write a book or make a movie about the multiple faces of ME?”
After we both laughed, I explained that each of us contains all four personality types and that, at various times, we all call upon each of those personalities to help us deal with situations.  To explain how we use them, the following scenario was created —
Let’s assume that the team you lead at work has encountered a problem that must be solved.

• Your Relater tells your mind, “we have a problem that is causing disharmony … it must be resolved in order to restore harmony”.  Your Relater identifies the problem.

•Your Organizer tells your mind, “here are the steps that must be taken to solve the problem and restore harmony”.  It provides the details to the solution.

• Your Commander now instructs the team to take the steps necessary to solve the problem and the time frame in which they must be taken.  In essence, the Commander says, “here’s what must be done, let’s do it!”
Rather than creating conflict, each facet of our personality steps up and does what it does best helping us solve problems and resolve conflict.
Filed Under: Dynamic Leadership, How personality type impacts leadership, Lead from strength, Leadership, Personal Coaching, 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