In a Harvard Business Review article January 25, 2017, called “Great Teams Are About Personalities, Not Just Skills” by Dave Winsborough and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, the authors mention a study done by Google in 2016 in which Google said they had found “the secret ingredients for the perfect team.” At Google “people are preselected on the basis of their personality (or ‘Googliness’). Many large organizations use some type of personality assessment to assist in hiring, promoting, and matching individuals with certain jobs and departments.
As speakers and writers, we sometimes feel that we are in a solo occupation and don’t need to discuss team building or personalities. However, the opposite is true.
If you are a writer, you have an entire team waiting to help you get your work published. You must interact with editors of various sorts, the design team, publishers, and the like. Then once your work is in print, there are marketers, readers, and the general public.
Speakers must have good communication with event planners, those who help with book tables, accommodation hostesses, and the audience after you speak. Click To TweetYou may have never thought about the role personality plays in your work or ministry. But if you can master just a few relationship skills by learning about the personalities – both yours and those you work with – you will find that you can work more effectively with those around you.
There are many assessments that use different words to describe each personality but you will find that most can be cross-referenced to determine which one you are.
You are either a mobilizer, a socializer, a stabilizer, or an organizer. Maybe the words extrovert and introvert are more familiar to you. The extroverts are the mobilizers and the socializers while the introverts are the stabilizers and organizers. When we narrow it down a little you might recognize yourself below.
Mobilizer – the get-it-done person
Socializer – the life-of-the-party person
Stabilizer – the keep-it-peaceful person
Organizer – the everything-in-order person
Once you identify your personality, you can then discover how it will benefit you to know the personality of your event planner, publisher, and others you work with.
For example, if you are a mobilizer speaker, you know exactly how things ought to be done and want them done that way immediately. However, if your event planner is a socializer, she will not be as excited as you are to discuss all the plans and details of the event. The promise of lunch after your meeting (if you are in the same town) may help him or her to focus while discussing the logistics since there is the promise of fun soon after.
If your event planner is a stabilizer, you may find him or her agreeing with everything you suggest in order to keep peace in your meeting. Click To TweetYou and the organizer will find common delight in working out the details of the event but take care not to create debate over whose way is the best way. You both have set ideas on that. But if you are the speaker you must remember that the event planner has brought you to the venue and you are under his or her authority. You are in his or her territory and he or she has authority over your wishes.
In every case remember to be respectful.
If you are a writer, you need to be aware that you are a very important part of a team. You cannot be successful in your calling as a writer unless you can work well with those up the ladder of publishing. Likewise, publishers, editors, designers, and typesetters depend on writers to have the material they need to produce their publications.
As with speakers and event planners, writers will find it much more effective to work with those in the industry if they understand a bit about those they work with.
Suppose you are an organizer writer who is a perfectionist. First of all, it was probably hard for you to hit the send button. You wanted to make sure that your manuscript was perfect. But at the other end of that send button is a mobilizer editor who just loves to get a manuscript and waste no time in making notes and a list of changes for the author. If you know yourself well, you know that you cannot take the editor’s comments personally. If you know your editor and understand his or her personality, you are able to look at the comments as constructive criticism that is an effort to make your work shine. It probably just comes with less fluff and flowers than you would like!
As a writer, you also know that you will have readers read your work who are of all personalities. Therefore, as you write, you must include something for your get-it-done person, your life-of-the-party person, your keep-it-peaceful person, and your everything-in-order person. If you can do that, you will broaden your readership as well as the scope of the reach of your message.
A little personality knowledge will go a long way in helping you to understand those around you both personally and professionally. Before you label your event planner, editor, publisher, or friend as someone who is hard to get along with, find out what their personality is. You will be able to work with them and respect their positions as you understand what motivates them to react the way they do in your relationships.