Leadership in the Dental Practice
Understanding Personality Types
August, 2015
“The makeup is simply an extension of the personality and colors, clothing, makeup all express something.” Gene Simmons
“I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn't met me yet.” Rodney Dangerfield
“If he were mean or vicious, or if he’d bawl me out or something, I’d like him much better.” Kitty March, Scarlet Street (1945)
In this series of blogs, we’re discussing Leadership. In July, I addressed “Retaining Valuable Employees”. This month, we’ll talk about Understanding Personality Types
- Motivating & Inspiring Others
- Listening Skills
- Recognizing and Meeting Needs
- Retaining Valuable Employees
- Understanding Personality Types
I don’t need to tell you that everybody is different; in fact, some are more different than others. People will perceive and react to a situation based on an entire lifetime of experiences, up-bringing, & interactions with others. Throw in their age, ethnic identity, education, etc. and you get a small idea of how complex people are. You can also throw into that mix the experiences that have impacted them since they left work yesterday and arrived at work this morning.
There are entire cohorts made up of people with shared experiences that have given them some common, very basic ways of looking at the world. How many of you are “Baby Boomers”? “GenX”? “Millennials”? (There’s a group that come before baby boomers; they’re called “Builders” (Espinoza, Ukleja, & Rusch, 2010)
The authors of Managing the Millennials (2010) tell us that three generations have been playing nice for over a decade, then came the Millennials. The experiences of the millennials are re-defining how we recruit, train, reward, & discipline our employees (Espinoza, Ukleja, & Rusch, 2010). These authors identified nine points of tension from clashing value systems in the workplace that require nine competencies required to mitigate each point.
What about other considerations? Attitudes are our way of responding to others or events. They predispose us to respond positively or negatively to people, situations, ideas, & etc. (Harris, 2014). Stereotypes have a huge impact on attitudes. We react to a person’s sex, age, ethnic makeup, economic class, religion, etc. Because of the part stereotypes play in attitude, we can take a quick scan of a person and make up our mind very quickly about how we feel about them. Ever heard, “You never have a second chance to make a good first impression?” Yup!
If we truly care about managing people effectively, we need to adjust our attitudes and take each person as an individual. Some employees react well to tight discipline. Others prefer a measure of autonomy to be at their best.
Let me tell you about my personality. I tend to feel more creative under pressure. I will percolate ideas until the deadline is almost there, and then deliver my work product. It’s how I work best. If you force me to report on a project daily, it’ll just drive me nuts and I’m more liable to just get something done to get you off my back. Once I had a major presentation to make at a company sales meeting. My boss was sweating because he was sure I’d miss the deadline. He went to his supervisor, for whom I had previously worked, to complain about my perceived lack of performance. My old boss told him, “Don’t worry about Kim, he’ll have it done on time and it’ll be great.”
My old boss knew how I worked best and adjusted circumstances to meet my way of working.
Have you ever heard of “Maslow’s Hammer”? Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who developed a number of tools used in predicting or explaining human behavior. Here’s the ‘Hammer’: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
Managers must not treat everyone the same because they’ll all react differently to the input. It will make some better and some much, much worse.
So, what now? How do we approach this?
You need to get to know your employees’ personalities and attitudes to be able to help them be more effective in helping you. How? Observe! Listen! See how they react in different situations. See how they react to situations and interactions. Care!
In Covert Persuasion (2006) the authors point out different steps towards a desired outcome in sales. I’ve adapted them to the subject of this blog. They may be used in combination, individually, or just a select few, depending upon the situation. They are more or less universal in their application (also great for interrogation/torture – and sales!), but your employees’ perceptions will be determined in a big way by your approach to them as an individual.
- Identify a targeted problem or situation. This is a behavior that you and/or your employee no longer wish to experience.
- Help your employee see that continuing with this problem or situation without addressing it will ultimately cost him or her in many painful ways.
- Have your employee identify a preferred outcome. Ask them what they’d rather have happen than the current possible outcomes of their behavior.
- Have your employee identify the consequences of the new outcome. You are showing them what the outcome means to them and it will help you help them own it.
- Confirm that this new outcome is what they really want. Make sure that they’re not telling you what they think you want to hear.
- You need to be sure that the new outcome is truly going to be good for the employee. Make sure that they will benefit from it.
- Do not judge! This can only be done if you have taken time to understand and relate to your employee.
- Never tell them that they’re wrong. This is a tricky one, but if you’ve involved them in the process it’s most likely that they won’t be. In fact, unless it would be costly, tell them, “OK, we’ll try it your way and see how it works.”
Like I said, you may want to use one, all, or any combination of the above to arrive at the best outcomes. For example, I can tell you right now that number 2 would tend to discourage more than encourage me. Also keep in mind that, when there is something that needs fixing in your practice, many of these questions could be used in a staff meeting to arrive at consensus.
In summary, Gene Simmons, Rodney Dangerfield, and Kitty March tell us about their attitudes, needs, and personalities. Everyone is different, and to be effective in managing those differences we must overcome some of our attitudes, get to know our employees’ attitudes, needs, and what makes them tick; then use this information to help us help them help us.
Works Cited
Espinoza, C., Ukleja, M., & Rusch, C. (2010). Managing the Millenials. Hoboken: Wiley.
Harris, T. (2014). Applied Organizational Communication: Principles and Pragmatics for Future Practice. New York: Psychology Press.
Hogan, K., & Speakman, J. (2006). Covert Persuasion. Hoboken: Wiley.