How your personality shapes your leadership style
Why team leaders need to understand their type
In my quest to shine light on every aspect of excellent teamwork, my previous articles focused on the organizational elements you need to have in place:
Today, I highlight an entirely different side: how your personal psychology as the entrepreneur, CEO, COO, or team leader impacts the performance of your team.
This is the story of Mark - how his personality is both a strength and a weakness in his life as entrepreneur, business owner and team leader. It shows how his natural way of being contributes both to his business’ success, while also, simultaneously, causing its downfall and near bankruptcy.
(His real name is not Mark, by the way; I changed it for privacy reasons.)
A dire situation: bankruptcy is looming…
Mark is a small business owner who visited me and my partner Julia for a private in-depth business retreat. He needed help, as soon as possible.
In the past 8 years he had built up something beautiful: a team of twenty IT services professionals who loved working for him, and a good reputation in the market with happy clients and trusted partners.
Until one year ago it was smooth sailing, but now… the tide had turned.
Mark found himself in a dire situation. While his team and clients were happy, the sales pipeline had almost entirely dried up. New leads had stopped coming in, large contracts were ending, and they had only about 3.5 months runway left.
Additionally, what made it even worse: his team members no longer recognized him as their main leader. He had let his management team overrule him in several important decisions and when he called them in to formulate an emergency plan. Except… they simply wouldn’t listen.
“It’s not that bad. You are making a fuss for no reason,” was the main tendency.
Mark felt alone, unsure what to do. He travelled to see us and what emerged was a 2-day deep dive, both into his own mind and into his organization.
The goal: co-create a comprehensive emergency plan.
How the leader’s strengths and weaknesses shape a team’s dynamics
One of the first things I do when working with a coachee, is test his or her personality type and drivers. To understand whom we are dealing with. What is his personality like? Through which lens(es) does he/she interpret reality? What are his personal preferences, strengths, weaknesses, relationship and communication habits, stressors, and behavior under stress?
Once it is clear what type of “body-mind system” we are interacting with, we understand a person’s “programming” at a whole new level.
For this, I use a relatively new and, in my view, revolutionary way to discover the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator, also known as MBTI, or the 16 Personalities.
I learned it from my mentor and good friend Martijn Leonard, the founder of Next Talent. He works with professional athletes in football and Olympic sports and taught me a series of physical tests to discover somebody’s preferred motor skills, motivational drivers and cognitive preferences.
The breakthrough insight is this: our personality is the result of how we use our body. It was scientist Walter Lowen (1982) who showed that our personality (how our brain is wired) is shaped by our motor skills. In other words, how we interact with the world is a direct effect of how we were positioned in the womb and how we moved our bodies as a baby and child.
Throughout my career I’ve studied and used many models: DISC, Human Design, Gene Keys, numerology, astrology, the Big Five, Enneagram, and so on. But this new method is by far the most reliable, insightful, practical, and scientific, with roots going all the way back to Carl Jung and even the ancient Greek.
In the case of Mark too, we immediately discovered some interesting insights.
His type turned out to be ENFJ, also described as “the protagonist”, or “the giver”. An extraverted idealist who is great at creating harmony. The ENFJ’s natural enthusiasm and pleasing personality makes them natural at winning people over, sensing what they need, and giving it to them. This explains the happy employees, clients and partners in his space.
Whilst on the flipside, the same strengths come with a shadow side. His pleasing personality made it very difficult for him to set boundaries and hold tough conversations. His opinion would easily sway when meeting with a strong-willed person, and his desire to reach agreement on every topic often led him to give way and let others overrule him.
Overcoming your blind spots as a leader
Your business culture and team’s performance are, for a large part, an expression of your personality and your wholeness as a leader.
Because, as the central person in your organization, you are the main spaceholder of the energetic field within which the team operates.
Your blind spots form hidden energy leaks in that field. When you are not aware of them, your response to a challenge may be to work twice as hard, not realizing that this results in you causing twice the damage.
In the case of Mark, ENFJ, an important pitfall is the avoidance of radically honest confrontations. To call “bs” with people around him is sometimes necessary, but highly uncomfortable for his type (if this skill is not consciously trained and developed). His biggest growth opportunity is learning to stand his ground, being able to slam his fist on the table when necessary and deliver a harsh but honest message.
For some other types, this will be much easier. For example, the ESTP (the archetypical entrepreneur), the ENTJ (the “director”), and ESTJ (the “executive”) will find it much easier to speak their mind and care less about other people’s opinions of them. While, in their case, this comes with the disadvantage of a typically less developed sense of empathy, which may cause their team members to not feel as safe and welcome to speak their minds and share opposing ideas (especially feeling types).
The important insight is this: each natural strength is a double-edged sword and simultaneously implies a blind spot, a shadow side.
After two long, beautiful yet intense retreat days - with a rich mix of conversations, relaxation, brainstorming, meditation, reflection and planning - a clear emergency plan had emerged.
We covered the topics of sales, marketing, finance, operations, and each team member’s performance, but realized that Mark’s personal psychology is the true make-or-break factor to the survival of his business. After all, the entire plan would be useless if he would not be able to sell it to the management team and get them on board.
We ended the retreat with a late-night role play to practice delivering some important “tough love” feedback to his main team leader, an intelligent yet hard-headed, typically-not-very-cheerful character.
This will be Mark’s main challenge in life and business. To succeed he needs to overcome himself, integrate the shadow of his pleasing personality and show up firmer and more direct when needed.
The payoff, however, will be substantial: overcoming this weakness is simultaneously his greatest opportunity for growth. Developing this part of his personality will massively boost to his confidence, and he will feel stronger in every area of life because of it.
“The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed” (Carl Jung)
Conclusion
The main point is this: you as a leader - your thinking, your words, your behavior - are the main determinant for the performance of your team and your organization.
What are your natural tendencies, how do they define the vibe in the space you create, the (often unwritten) agreements, organizational habits, and communication style that together shape the culture of your organization?
If you are aiming for excellence, knowing your type is a must. Realize that if you used surveys in the past, there is a good chance you have been misguided. Over 70% of people I test have a different type than the survey told them.
Because a survey is filled in by your mind, and your mind doesn’t truly know itself. It has a blurred view on reality and easily repeats what others told you. Your mind interprets some words different than the creator of the survey. It chooses answers based on the outcome it wishes for. It chooses different choice options depending on the mood of the day, or because of what it coincidentally read that morning in a book or in an email.
But the body never lies. By testing the body, we circumvent those pitfalls so that you know your true type once and for all.
While currently only professional athletes benefit from this new knowledge, it is now, slowly, also becoming available to the world of business and education.
So, if you are reading this feeling curious, intrigued, and ready to discover your true personality type, make sure to get in touch (simply reply or fill in the contact form on my website).
To our continuous growth!
Alexander
P.S. If you already know your type, you may appreciate this video’s perspective on your major growth opportunity.
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