KateNasser.com

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

1. 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!




2. 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.




3. 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.




4. 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

1. 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.




2. 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.




3. 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.




4. 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.

As I spend more time online for blogging, for business, and for personal purchases, I am struck by how many websites show no customer focus.

They show selfishness, desperation, and an insatiable craving for market research data.

It’s as if these websites have one people-skills message:

We are selfish!

Would you stand in front of a customer and say that to deliver an oustanding customer experience?

Pop-up ads at the very beginning, hidden contact information, squeeze pages that immediately ask for name and email, surveys that interrupt — all break 3 important rules of outstanding customer service experience:

1. Make it easy for the customer to find what they want and to contact you.
2. Listen and help before asking the customer to help you.
3. Deliver value to capture loyalty; don’t desperately capture the customer.

It reminds me of an in-person experience I had at a L’Occitane store.

---

I walked in and picked up the exact moisturizer I always used. I went to the checkout and the sales associate asked me if I needed anything else. I quickly said “no thanks and I’m in a hurry” and handed her my credit card. She held it in one hand and then picked up another product to upsell me. And then another all while holding my credit card hostage!

When I asked for my credit card back, she suddenly rang up my one purchase. I never went back and stopped using their products. Out of curiosity, I just checked their website and guess what — a pop-up squeeze page appeared right away.

I clicked twice to exit.  I don’t pay to be trapped.

---

Companies that think customers owe them information before buying, have the customer service experience backwards.  Perhaps if they experience a reversal of fortune, they will reverse course and deliver value to capture customer loyalty.


Every website has a people-skills message and a personality. What is your website’s message? Is it selfish or giving? Does it capture the customer’s attention with content and value or does it just try to capture the customer?


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 on customer service and teamwork, turning interaction obstacles into business successs. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

And 6 Tips To Quiet Noisy Knowledge!

Most leaders and teams hope their knowledge and experience will serve them well. We listen to it for guidance during uncertainty. Yet in times of change, is our knowledge too noisy to listen to new ideas?

How can knowledge serve us and our teams well if it screams inside when new ideas don’t fit it? Consider that:

Knowledge and experience are on a list of common listening barriers.


Interesting recent study results from the University of Pennsylvania suggest people are biased against creative (new) ideas.

---

So what does it matter?


Key Concerns About Noisy Knowledge

Is timely innovation in the workplace possible with bias against creative ideas that challenge existing knowledge?

When knowledge and experience are a buoy during times of change, will people ease their grip on that buoy — early on — to listen and consider creative, innovative ideas?

What are the risks of allowing noisy knowledge to slow or stop innovation? It happens and often in the shadows.

Quiet Noisy Knowledge With Awareness

1. Bring the issue into the light with your teams. Start using the phrase “noisy knowledge” as a cue with yourself and anyone in the room who is not listening to new ideas.




2. Position new ideas as new knowledge. If knowledge is the buoy, you can add more to the buoy instead of letting go of it. New knowledge is the buoy of security for continued success.




3. Note aloud the emotional reactions to the new ideas. Then put aside the emotion to consider the substance of the ideas. By separating the emotion from the thinking, new ideas have a chance! “My emotional reaction is …, now let me consider the idea.”




4. Ask yourself and others, how is my/your noisy knowledge impacting others, the business, and success? We are each responsible for the energy we bring to or drain from a workplace, a meeting, or a moment.




5. Leaders, consider having everyone take a social styles indicator (Amiable, Expressive, Analytic, Driver) so that everyone can own their type and understand how others communicate. Communication styles affect listening!




6. In advance of any major change initiative, help yourself and team members identify everyone’s change reactions. The KAI (Kirton Adaptive Innovation Inventory) is a great instrument to help each person see how open s/he is to change. Once known, then owned and managed!

The need for comfort and security is understandable. The need for timely change, inevitable. The pathway for both, around the noisy knowledge, is awareness, ownership, and communication.

What else would you add to overcome the barriers to listening to new ideas? What’s your #7 for this list?


With belief in everyone’s change-ability,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of 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 workshops outlines and customer results. Lead change with vision, courage, and communication.

Helpful can sound patronizing when said at the wrong time.

Whether you are a leader, manager, teammate, friend, or family member, these people-skills timing tips improve interactions, results, (and your individual people-skills image).

Assuming our words are not hurtful, we sound helpful not patronizing when we:

1. First learn what they think or feel instead of presuming to know. “How do you feel?” sounds helpful. “I’m sure you feel/think …” sounds patronizing.




2. Check our motives before we speak. Are we offering help because we have lost patience with them or how they work? That motive shows in our words and tone of voice and can sound patronizing. This is especially true when we have had previous disagreements.




3. Ask permission to help before we give advice or a helping hand — regardless of our motives. Unsolicited help can seem patronizing and demeaning. If we must jump in without asking, best to first offer the critical reason why.




4. Give help in a way that the other person will value.

   An amiable personality type focusing on emotions can sound patronizing to a results oriented driver.

   The get-it-done driver can sound patronizing to an analytic who wants all the details.

   The analytic can sound patronizing and preachy to those who want the main point first.

   The expressive risks patronizing others when they dwell on one subject for too long.




5. Use focused words instead of minimizing words. For example, primarily is a focused word whereas just and only are minimizing words. “Are you just concerned about the deadline?” can minimize someone’s perspective and sound dismissive and patronizing. “Are you primarily concerned about the deadline?” can fuel a valuable discussion.

It’s not what we say that matters. It’s what we say, how we say it, and when we say it.

When we take time to adapt, we succeed.

From my experience,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Related post on adapting to others GPS Your Brain to Work With Any Personality Type.

---

Kate Nasser, Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers workshops, keynotes, and consultations that turn interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. Leaders have booked Kate for 23 years to channel people-skills extremes into business gains. See this site for customer results and book Kate now.

The impression you make on others impacts the outcome.  The impression others make on you impacts what you will achieve together.  This is the world of people-skills.  What impression do you make? Is it the one you want?

A recent first time face-to-face meeting with a contact left me surprisingly annoyed.  He was a visual communicator. He drew everything he said.  His focus was on the drawing.  He drew at me instead of communicating with me.

The impression he made was isolated and professorial.  Yet, we met to network and explore business possibilities.  The outcome? Very little since he stayed in his own world of visuals.

There is nothing inherently wrong with using visuals.  They clarify when words can’t.   They expand understanding beyond the details.

Yet if you surrender your impression (especially your first impression) to any one aspect of your natural style, the end result may not be what you want or need.

Extremes separate you from the rest.

They can get you noticed or isolated.

---

This is the world of people-skills.
What’s your impression?

When you are online, do your short messages come across as marching orders or effectively concise human connections ? When you are on the phone, does your personality come through? Do you know what impression you make?

Driver personality types achieve results yet can turn people off because they sound like they are issuing orders.

Amiable personality types build connections yet can leave people confused about the message.

Expressives leave no doubt about the message but can strain people’s patience by talking too much.

Analytics draw people in with logic but can lose them by leaving the main point until the end.

Moderating extremes to better connect with others is the world of people-skills. What’s your impression? It’s yours to develop.

Want to learn more about how to adapt? Watch GPS Your People-Skills to Work with Any Personality Type (short video).

From my 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, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

---

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers workshops, keynotes, and consultations that turn interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. Leaders have been booking Kate for 21 years to turn people-skills extremes into business success. See this site for customer results and book Kate now.

Obviously, in sales and customer service, listening is critical to success. Not so obvious is how to listen for customer cares when your mind is processing your own perspective.

What’s in it for you to work on this? Sales & service fail when you don’t address customer cares. Moreover, customers even select higher priced products and services when you show them you get what they care about.

Winning Ways to Listen for Customer Cares

1. Hear the story as well as the details. If you are highly analytic, you may naturally listen for details. You may miss important customer cares because they emerge as the sum of the details. Do you listen for the whole point of the story?
   Winning way: If this is your listening challenge, say to the customer “I hear these details (a. b. c. …). If we put this together, what does it say about your key interest or concern?” It shows the customer you listen & you care!




2. Accept the obvious. Often customers are clearly stating their preferences. When it represents a challenge to what you want or can deliver, do you respond with what’s on your mind?
   Winning way: Paraphrase the customer’s preference then respond. If you do this consistently, you will listen better, sell more, and serve well. You and the customers will connect with mutual success.




3. Be excellent instead of right. Working with others, especially with customers, is first about excellence in connecting. It is the nexus of trust. Successful results come from excellent connections not from you pressing your points at the start. Once you are connected to the customers’ cares, they are more capable of hearing your perspective and valuable ideas.
   Winning way: Respect the differences, learn to love the differences, find the fit. One key step: Spot and Adapt to Personality Types.

Success in sales & service is within your easy reach if you reach outside your own perspective. Staying inside your own zone of communication style, knowledge, and control keeps you comfortably disconnected — from success. Think about it …

Yours in service,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

What is your best listening skills tip? Please share your people-skills experience in the comments field below.


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

---

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, has amassed 21 years of stellar results with corporate customers turning interpersonal obstacles into business success. Her energy is legendary, her insight objective, and her results tangible. See this site for info about her keynotes, workshops, and dvds.

Most leaders address tangible gaps that block success – gaps in resources, raw materials, knowledge, distribution mechanisms and the like.  Many have also learned to address generational and cultural gaps to ensure global success.

Great leaders mind the energy gap as well. They enable and empower team members to bridge the energy gap and plug into success.

The energy gap between team members can build walls, interrupt the flow of teamwork, and detour the team from its mission.  Great leaders see this as a true and tangible barrier.

They mind this interpersonal energy gap and teach team members how to convert it to a powerful connection.

Interpersonal Energy Gap

---

Example #1
Team members who work harder or less hard than other team members yet all produce substantially the same results

The barrier to success: Teamwork and morale can falter if team members mistake energy levels for results. They begin to label the harder workers as inefficient and those that work less hard as lazy.

Great leaders focus on results.  They teach team members to work together to analyze inefficiencies, improve processes, and share talents for maximum success.  They spot team members who are capable of greater responsibility and guide them to collaborate and do more.

Distributed (virtual) teams embrace this end result focus early on because they are working from different locations and sometimes different time zones. The distance compels them to address issues of responsiveness, timeliness, and efficiency to deliver on the mission.

Great leaders remind shared workplace teams to address these issues instead of labeling the behaviors and detouring success.

---

Example #2
High energy emotional temperaments interacting with more even paced dispositions

The barrier to success: Communication can falter when team members infer intention, intelligence, and/or ability just from the others’ temperament.

Great leaders see energy and emotion differences as natural. A team is a microcosm of the human population. They teach team members to assess contributions with tangible evidence not by inferences about others’ disposition. Great leaders respect the differences and find the fit.

Team building exercises can transform a team to work well with different personality styles. In these exercises, they learn to interpret emotion levels appropriately, understand the value of each temperament, and use the differences to fill their own talent gaps.

Here is a short video to illustrate: GPS Your Team to Work With Different Personality Types.

How well do your teams address these energy gaps? Do they know how to mind the gap and turn it into a powerful connection? Ask them … and let me know!

Yours in service,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com.

---

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, is well respected for her results in turning interpersonal obstacles into interaction success in leadership, teamwork, and customer service. See this site for keynote topics, workshop outlines, and customer feedback.

I wrote a post in 2009 asking if Leaders Are Wearing Corrective Lenses. Since your vision impacts and often determines the ultimate outcome, it’s important that it be sharp at every turn or corrected.

Well isn’t that the purpose of those that work with and for you? To provide knowledge, experience, insight, and accurate updates to clarify and develop the vision? In truth leaders, diverse collaborators are your corrective lenses.

Leader’s Dilemma.
What happens to the vision when you have collaborators with personality types quite different from yours? Highly experienced people with diverse knowledge come in different personality types. Can they still be your corrective lenses if they interact very differently than you do? Consider the following challenges.

If you are a driver personality, you may miss what is right in front of you. Caring primarily about the end-result, you often see the distance better than anyone yet your near vision is blurred. Analytic collaborators have great near vision for all the details. Are you patient enough to work with them?

If you are an analytic personality type, your vision of details is superb yet you may miss the ultimate destination because you aren’t looking far enough ahead. Driver type collaborators can correct this skew. How do you react to them? Do you delay drivers’ input or embrace their drive to the end-result?

If you are an amiable personality type, your desire for harmony creates great bonds yet a team of amiables may falter in the completion of tasks. Your vision can benefit from a more diverse team including analytic, expressive and driver type collaborators. The question is are you put off by their personality types?

If you are an expressive, your collaborators will know exactly what you want yet you may not truly listen to their questions or input. If you can’t hear it, how can it correct your vision?

Solution.
You can balance out your dominant trait to allow these diverse collaborators to be your corrective lenses. They do sharpen your leadership vision and correct your blind spots. Is that enough to justify your effort to learn how to work with their personality types?

If yes, here is a resource for you: GPS Your Brain to Work With Any Personality Type.

What success have you had in working with diverse collaborators of different personality types? How did you do it and what was the value?

©2011 Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, Founder & President, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or re-publish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission.

---

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers keynotes, workshops, consultations, and DVDs to turn interaction obstacles into interpersonal success in business, teamwork, customer relations, and leading change.

“Finding fault stops progress; finding solutions ignites success.” I recently wrote and posted that thought on Twitter. Many re-tweeted it and sent various replies. This particular reply caught my eye:

What  do  you  do  when  those  around  you  want  to  find fault  instead  of  finding  solutions?

A great question. Dealing with chronic naysayers can demoralize a team. Dan Rockwell, The LeadershipFreak, notes “Negative people always work to solidify the status quo.” He offers an except from Dr. Robert Sutton’s new book Good Boss, Bad Boss: “Teams with downers produce 40 to 60% less than teams without whiners and complainers.” That rang true to me. When I am around chronic naysayers, I feel like I am pushing a truck up a hill without a motor.

Conversely, when I am around people who focus on finding solutions, they ignite other innovative thoughts that can lead to success. When you watch teams of inventors, they actually highlight failures as steps toward success. They don’t wallow in finding fault with the ideas. They highlight the faulty ideas as a pathway for success!

So what professional people skills would you use with a peer who always finds fault and complains rather than offers solutions to problems?

Awareness, Attitude, & Personality Type

1. Are they aware that they come across as negative vs. positive? You might think this is a ridiculous question yet many people never think about how they come across. One safe yet effective way of showing this to a peer is to ask them a “how to” question when they are simply complaining. If they reply “I don’t know how to fix it but this won’t work”, let them know that you would value their ideas and solutions. Continue on to say that you “respect their right to focus on what won’t work yet you find that it demoralizes you. Perhaps they could share those thoughts with someone else.” If someone is going to change their attitude, they must first be aware of how their attitude is impacting others and the bottom line.
2. If the complaining continues, say “I may be wrong about this yet I perceive your remarks as an attempt to slow the change. Is that correct?” I did this one day and the complainer said “yes”! Once his attitude was out on the table, the leader addressed the change resistance with the complainer in private.
3. What personality type are they?  Driver types are so focused on the end result they assume that others are too. They often skip telling you the positive aspects of your idea and jump to the faults with the intention of reaching success more quickly. If you are not a driver personality type, you may likely see this as negativity or a personal slight to your value. Drivers are not the classic naysayer type. Nonetheless, their abrupt approach can demoralize and slow a team’s progress just like a chronic naysayer. Tell the driver type that you also are focusing on the end result. Yet you need to hear the positives as well as the faults to innovate and reach success.

Achieving success requires a great attitude, communication, awareness, and action.

Attitudes of fear and selfishness breed pure fault finding that can derail success. Awareness of those attitudes is the first step to return you all to the success track. Communicating only the negatives when you see the positives robs some teammates of the inspiration to continue innovating. If you are a driver type, don’t mistake the need to hear the positives as a lack of action. It spurs many non-drivers on to the finish line!

What else would you say or do with a peer who is always finding fault instead of solutions? I welcome your ideas in the comment section below.

---

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, develops teamwork through workshops that bridge the gaps in communication. Participants in global corporations have remarked, “It was a revelation that transformed our results once we understood each other.” Tap Kate’s people-skills experience in webinars, workshops, blog posts. and DVDs.

(Footage by http://dolcevideo.com capturing Kate Nasser’s key messages on personality type to the Annual Gov’t Customer Service Conference.)

In this info-packed and humorous session on GPS Your Brain to Connect & Work Better with Anyone, Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, shows you how to spot personality types and easily adapt. Imagine the success you will have in customer relations, customer service, teamwork, and leadership when you better understand the behavior you see and how to thrive with it!

Diversity is everywhere and if you learn to identify the differences in personality type, learn to love the differences, and find the fit — your career (or business) and your life chart a new path of success.

Kate delivers short focused workshops and webinars on this hot topic.  She is also writing a book with a very interesting twist on personality types!