Unlocking Leadership Potential: Leveraging Personality Traits for Success
I have a quirky decision-making process that drives my wife crazy.
My subconscious is constantly working on things. Then, an idea will emerge, and I make an instant decision that I confidently announce and implement immediately. There is no looking back!
On the other hand, she likes to think things through, discuss options, and let ideas ruminate. Once a decision is made, she implements it methodically and is open to reversing course if necessary.
Both are valid ways to make decisions, but they are different. You can anticipate the issues that arise when we must decide together.
In the past, our differences were a source of frustration. When we honour our differences in decision-making, they become strengths and improve the quality of our choices.
As leaders, it is crucial to understand your and your team’s personality traits and leverage them to strengthen your business, not cause unproductive conflict.
At one of the companies I ran, we built a data platform for the amusement industry.
Initially, our journey was described as “having an answer and looking for the question.” We had developed a beta but had not defined the problem we were solving for our customers, and as a result, we did not have a “product market fit.”
Without a defined value proposition, our parent company sales organization would define our solution by the wearable we had developed — equivalent to defining a Tesla by its tires. Wearables were important, but they were not the solution’s value.
Our inability to articulate the value was frustrating but, in retrospect, understandable.
The sales organization excelled at selling manufactured fixed assets that were visually stunning and built with vibrant colours. Their customers were in the business of selling thrill seekers an adrenaline-fueled experience. They were motivated by things they could touch, feel, and see.
We were positioning our product as a digital overlay on an amusement park to create insights from data, a virtual concept well understood in technology circles but foreign to the amusement industry.
I didn’t understand the traits of our channel sales organization or end customers. As a result, despite an excellent idea, we struggled to scale.
Codifying observable traits and their implications for individuals and teams is a primary function of my role as a coach and strategist. When I was a corporate leader, I missed the repeating patterns. As I have learned, it is really hard to self-diagnose.
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is the best modern thinker on traits and personality. Grant emphasizes the importance of understanding personality in the context of leadership and team dynamics. Grant believes that a nuanced understanding of personality traits can significantly impact individual and team performance, starting with understanding yourself.
According to Grant, personality influences work behaviour, including communication styles, decision-making processes, and collaboration preferences. Leaders can foster a more inclusive and productive work environment by recognizing and leveraging each team member’s strengths and weaknesses.
Grant emphasizes that understanding personality is critical for leaders to manage teams and drive success effectively. However, he realized there needed to be a practical assessment strategy. Most assessments were either not backed by science or too academic to be helpful in a business context.
Grant and Ray Dalio, the Chief Investment Officer at Bridgewater, collaborated to build PrinciplesYou. Inspired by Ray Dalio’s Principles and backed by Grant’s science, PrinciplesYou emphasizes the importance of understanding oneself and others to achieve personal and professional success.
An insight I gained from the assessment was my propensity for gut-based decisions. Had I understood this earlier in my career, I would have ensured I had a “deliberative” team member who emphasizes systematic, logical, and data-driven decision-making.
The combination of my ability to sense opportunity and a team member who can verify opportunities through analysis would have been powerful. The tension these offsetting personality traits created would have enhanced the quality of our decisions and propelled success even faster.
The assessment is not deterministic, and there is no right or wrong. The value is understanding your and your team’s tendencies and how they appear in different situations.
The key message is that if I had better understood myself, I would have been more intentional about the team I built around me, ensuring that I captured as many different traits as possible. Then, I would have mined for the inevitable differences that would surface in service of the goals we set out to achieve.
By leveraging personality assessments and creating psychologically safe environments, leaders can capitalize on the diverse strengths of their team members, fostering collaboration, innovation, and high performance.
If you would like to join me as I continue exploring the science of personality, please get in touch with me here.
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