People with a Perceiving preference – that's the "P" in their Briggs and Myers four-letter personality code – are spontaneous and adaptable workers. These types thrive in dynamic and ever-changing environments and may seek out employers that offer flexible working arrangements so they can remain wide open to schedule changes. If you need quick-thinking people who can respond resourcefully to changing situations, it pays to get a "P" or two on your team.
Take care if you think that Feelers are the peacekeepers of the workplace. While they certainly strive to maintain harmony and appear caring and tactful, the fact is: Feelers communicate differently than Thinkers and this can be to their own detriment. Feelers tend to argue less, apologize more, and personalize each and every experience – all of which can undermine the team's success.
Here are five ways that Feelers unwittingly sabotage communication in the workplace – and some tips on what you, as a boss, can do about it.
In an ideal world, personality type would not be a predictor of career success. But, we don't live in an ideal world.
Birds of a feather flock together, as the aphorism goes, and it's just as true for humans as it is for groups of animals in the wild. We all have a tendency to associate with people of similar personality to ourselves based on our shared attributes. This can affect our social networks. To cut a long story short, most of us have a stable network of contacts who look a lot like ourselves. What we're lacking are challengers, opinion leaders and mentors that can add a little salt to the soup.
Interaction. Connection. Honest commitment. Everyone knows that building a basic sense of trust among team members is essential for creating a synchronized and top-performing team. Even if an employee works alone on the frontline, he or she will always fit into a wider team with each member reliant on another and communicating constantly. Having the ability to trust your teammates and speak up when there's a problem is an absolute necessity.
To help your employees stay on track and to keep them engaged and productive, you'll need to set some metrics or milestones that you can measure and work towards. Most companies hand out performance goals at the annual performance review. Properly considered, they can help employees improve performance and job satisfaction.
The powers-that-be have announced it, the managers are fired up to implement it .... and the employees just aren't ready for it. So, they resist.
What are we talking about?
Leaders have the most challenging of jobs: leading a team of diverse employees to get behind a single vision and work collaboratively to achieve a common goal.
Not all leaders can do this effectively however.
Why do some leaders succeed while others fail?
One old adage of management theory is whether you motivate someone by dangling a juicy carrot in front of his nose (money, promotion or vacation time) or beating him with a stick (pay cuts, firing or being publicly lambasted for failing to hit sales targets).
As much as I like to sing the praises of the 9-to-5, the fact is, these hours are pretty much obsolete these days. From checking emails on weekends and phones keeping us on call 24/7 to the relentless rise of technology that lets workers access work at anytime from anywhere, the reality is, we're all working much longer hours than a decade ago.
THE FINE PRINT:
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