Employees are more than skillsets & resumes, beyond introvert/extrovert; your employees are personality. Having a balanced team of personality/culture is equally important.
If you’re thinking ahead to the New Year you may have an idea of the employees in your organization that are ready to take the next step into leadership. But be careful to take into account all of the other characteristics of a good leader beyond their resume skills. Here’s what you may have missed when planning your leadership team for 2021.
Personality and Your Leadership Team
The best managers are a good fit for the team they manage. That has something to do with their management style but it also has to do with their personality. Personality influences many aspects of life—including your leadership style.
Personality, as it relates to leadership, isn’t about being friendly or funny or some other human characteristic. Instead, it is about how they communicate and manage their team. An easy way to think of this is that a manager’s skills are what they do but their personality is how they do it. Personality is the innate preferences and choices that your leaders leverage when doing the work. It has a huge effect on how leaders interact with their teams.
When you think about personality in terms of leadership, it goes beyond being an introvert or extrovert. Instead, it should influence how managers make decisions, what type of information informs these decisions, and how they interpret and behave after those decisions.
According to research, many leaders have personalities that lean heavily toward thinking and judging under the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator metrics. This means they are analytical, systematic, decisive, and logical. But is that the best personality for the team they’re leading? What happens if all of your leaders have the same personality?
The personality of leaders in your organization must fit the culture of your organization. Personality should play more to the carrot and not the stick style of managing. Positive rewards, encouragement, and consistent feedback should be a natural part of the personality of your management team.
But why does this matter?
Why Personality Matters to Your Leaders
Forgetting about the personality of your potential leaders and then promoting them just based on their skills could create an unbalanced team. If your leaders are only logical thinkers, your organization may lack innovation. If the leaders only make decisions based on past metrics, they may avoid risks that could give you a competitive edge. If everyone thinks the same way, it creates a “group think” where thinking outside the box simply doesn’t happen.
While your leadership team should fit the overall culture you’re trying to build, they should also have balance. This means there should be a diversity of thought that goes beyond one type of personality. The leaders in your organization should be a mix of thinking and analytical, tough-minded, reasonable, systematic, creative, and passionate. This spice of these personalities can create a melting pot that will help your organization be more creative and innovative. Matching the team to the leader’s personality and leadership style will increase the productivity of the overall organization.
A.C.Coy matches the right leaders with your organization. Talk with our team about finding the perfect fit.
