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Using leadership to produce results personality styles
- 5. Popular Sanguine – Fun, Ideas, Creative Perfect Melancholy – Detailed, Processes Powerful Choleric – Driver, Delegator Peaceful Phlegmatic – Stable, Mediator
Editor's Notes
- A good leader can recognize how to motivate their subordinates to meet the goals of the group/organization/company. I have met some great leaders throughout my life and they seem to just know what would motivate each person in their team. I have been a part of many teams and noticed that each person has a very different personality and each person has very different motivators. How then does a good leader move every person towards the same goal and cater to each person’s different motivators? The first key is understanding personality styles.
- There are many different personality tests available on the internet. If you do not know your personality type, I encourage you to take a personality test to better understand your strengths and weaknesses. Here is one personality test you can take quickly on the internet: Personality Plus Test. Let’s take a look at some of the typical characteristics of each personality type. In the diagram below are the four main personality quadrants as found in the book Personality Plus by Florence Littauer
- Each person responds to direction differently and has a specific purpose on your team. You need each one of these personalities to achieve maximum results.Popular Sanguine will help motivate your team. They will be able to come up with new and creative ways to do things. These are your idea people.Perfect Melancholy will keep all the notes and put together the most thorough reports. This person is the data manager, highly detailed and can point out potential problems. This person is highly detail oriented.Powerful Choleric will keep the team moving. This person wants to see results. Highly goal oriented and and is a good organizer.Peaceful Phlegmatic is your mediator. This person is always steady and hard to rile up. They make great administrators and are impartial during disputes. They tend to find the easiest way to get things done.As you can imagine each one of these personality types is motivated differently, how is it possible to lead and motivate them all?
- To be an effective leader and motivator for your team, you must communicate and assign tasks with the personalities of your team in mind. Lots of details bog down your sanguines and cholerics, they want neat, direct communication like a bullet pointed list and a quick overview. Details really excite your melancholys and phlegmatics, they want to know everything they can.
- Presentations, for example, should be visually pleasing (fun for sanguines) with neatly organized bullet points or lists (for cholerics). Providing notes with more details on each point will help the melancholy and phlegmatic as they can review them in more detail and ask questions. All the personality types will appreciate a presentation like this.If you are conducting a brainstorming session, expect the sanguines to be having a blast, the cholerics to be contributing heavily, your melancholies to point out what will work and what won’t and your phlegmatics to look bored. Why? These are creative, idea events; there is not a lot of details and tasks to complete.If you need to pour over a government brief to apply new regulations, you want the phlegmatic and melacholy by your side. Once the details have been digested and condensed then bring in your choleric to help move everyone towards the goal and the sanguine to come up with creative ways to apply the new requirements.
- Can you see how each person has a place and that each is important to maximizing the result of their combined efforts? I am not saying that each task that needs to be performed can be modified and targeted to each person. Sometimes we have to do things we do not like in our daily work. What I am saying is that the more you understand your team and their strengths, the more you can play towards them to get the results you need and want.