Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership, Personality Types, Teamwork, Thriving in Change
Behind the labels of personality types lie the secrets to more profitable leadership and teamwork.
Workplace leaders often assess team member personality types — amiable, expressive, analytic, driver — and then get busy and do little with it. As I work with them and their teams, I highlight the profitable secrets they can tap.
Personality type impacts understanding and outcomes of leaders and teams. It guides you on how best to engage employees. It can make or break employee ability to thrive in organizational change.
Secrets of Personality Types:
Employee Engagement
- Amiable personality types come alive through personal connection. If you want to tap the profit they can bring to the business, build interpersonal bonds with them. A just the facts approach makes them feel lonely and demoralized. You do not have to be their best friend yet if you skip the bonding you skip the profit. In today’s world of remote technology, remember to connect with amiable types face to face or on the phone. Video conference with remote amiable type employees for a winning solution!
- Expressive personality types shine in and through communication. Two-way communication, a critical skill of any good leader, brings these people to full contribution. If you are fast paced, results-oriented and minimize communication, these expressive types feel shunned. You are leaving the profit by the wayside.
- Analytic personality types function in an ordered thought process. They have much to contribute if you always allow for some ordered discussion. If you are brainstorming, take a small pause to capture the analytic’s ideas. If you are a highly creative leader, summarize your thoughts in an ordered manner after your creativity. Skip the order and you leave analytic types frustrated and the value they provide, suppressed.
- Driver personality types crave end results and achievement. Give them the big picture, highlight critical milestones and risk factors, and then let them deliver. If you micro-manage them or ask them to have lengthy discussions on non-critical factors, they feel trapped and repressed. Although many other types dislike micro-management, driver types resent it for you are keeping them from the brass ring! They may look for a new position that gives them a real shot.
During Times of Great Organizational Change
- Double driver leaders intent on pushing through massive change often overwhelm the other personality types because they focus only on the results. They issue announcements instead of holding all hands meetings. They tell themselves it’s all for organizational results. Yet the methods they use are self-serving and fulfill their driver personality type needs. Ironically, they are leaving the profit of personality types untapped and results suffer.
- Likewise, amiable type leaders can get caught up in feelings and bonding sacrificing the organizational change goal. It doesn’t have to be that way. I have seen amiable leaders use their incredible bonding skills to rally support for the change and tap everyone’s talent to make it happen.
- Analytic type leaders may falter in organizational change if they demand too much information before making decisions. In this case, analytics do well to trust the other personality types on the team and profit from their decision skills.
- Expressive type leaders often shine in organizational change because they are natural communicators. They must remember to engage in two-way communcation. Profit from the analytic, amiable, and driver types’ ideas by remembering to let them express!
To engage employees and lead them in tough times of change, tap the profit in their personality types.
If instead you revel in the comfort of your own personality type, you leave the profit for the (next) adaptable leader.
Related post: GPS Your Brain to Work With Any Personality Type
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™
©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

