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
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Motivating & Inspiring Others
-
Listening Skills
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Recognizing and Meeting Needs
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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.
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Identify
a targeted problem or situation. This is a behavior that you and/or your
employee no longer wish to experience.
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Help
your employee see that continuing with this problem or situation without
addressing it will ultimately cost him or her in many painful ways.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Do
not judge! This can only be done if you have taken time to understand and
relate to your employee.
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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.