Over the past 18 years I’ve had the opportunity to work with a wide range of personalities in my executive coaching practice.
I’ve seen a great number of excellent business plans, business models and business opportunities fall short because of a failure to learn how to minimize the impact of differing personalities.
I leave it to the psychologists to do the research and hard work of trying to actually define and analyze why personalities develop and manifest themselves in organizations and families. I take a simple approach to dealing with the issue.
Here’s a few proven steps I’ve developed to help clients work more effectively to deal with other personality types.
Get Better at Identifying Styles So You Can Learn How to Work with Them
One of the pivotal moments of my business career was when I started to actually understand and identify the different personality types. The sooner you can find an assessment tool that you like and begin to more reliably identify people’s different styles, the sooner you’ll be able to develop strategies for effective ways to more effectively deal with different styles.
Take Accountability for Your Own Style and its Impact
Once you begin to understand other people’s styles it’s really important for you to take a hard look in the mirror and understand your own style and the positive and negative attributes and impact of your style.
It’s not acceptable to simply say, “That’s the way I am – learn to deal with it!” Rather take responsibility for your impact on others and learn to modify your approach in a way that suits your teammates and organization.
Never Stop Practicing Self-Awareness and Self-Improvement
Every high-performing athlete and musician knows that they need to keep practicing to be their very best. It’s good to have insight and learn about your style and other’s styles. What’s even more important is to keep practicing staying self-aware and mindful and continue to identify ways to improve your performance and interaction with others.
Practice Love and Compassion with Others and Equally Important… Yourself
I’m continually reminded how precious and short life can be. Dealing with difficult people or different personality types can be straining but at the end of the day when you can learn to have love and compassion for others’ shortcomings and challenges, you’ll be on the road to being a better teammate, leader and human being.
If the idea of personality types and personality disorders intrigues you, here’s a great article in Psychology Today to help you learn more about it, The Eight Basic Qualities in All Personality Disorders. Read the article here.
Pete Walsh is a demanding, courageous and playful Master Certified Coach in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the founder of Peak Workout Business Coaching and the Family Business Performance Center and the author of the 40 Skills Assessment in his Leadership Development Playbook. Email Coach Pete at pete@peakcoach.com for a free copy of the assessment to use with your team!
