Adapt Your Management Personality Type to Your Team

What can you do with your management personality type so others find it easier to work with you?

 

Over the last couple weeks, we’ve discussed how to identify the four primary personality types and how to manage different personality types on your team. Today, we will take a closer look at your management personality type, and how to adapt it to your team’s types.

1. You are an analytical management personality type

If you’re an analytical personality type, you want to consider all the facts and variables before you make a decision. But, once you have the facts make a decision. Your followers would rather you made a bad decision than no decision at all, so you need to learn to be more decisive.

Also, don’t be so negative. If you’re an analytical leader or manager, you often come across as a little bit negative and this will certainly impact your team. Get more involved with people. We know you’re not as social as expressives or amiables, but you need to stretch yourself and try to be more social with your team.

If you’re an analytical leader, you need to be careful of making your standard so high that you could be discouraging your employees. Lighten up about imperfections, they happen!

2. You are a driver management personality type

If you are a driver manager, you are the type of leader that is very task-oriented and you just want the job to get done. Be careful of how demanding you can be, and don’t feel the need to debate and correct everybody.

Drivers don’t like to admit they’re wrong, so you may find yourself correcting people over things that really don’t matter. It’s okay that you want to get things done and you want to correct people over things that do matter but stop arguing over the little things.

Also, curb your sarcasm as a driver and practice listening to people. If you’re a driver, you tend to be one of those people that is formulating your comeback in your mind when someone is talking to you. Be mindful of that and really work on your active listening skills.

3. You are an amiable management personality type

If you’re an amiable manager, you need to work on sharing your opinions. Take a stand on issues. Your team would rather you disagree with them than to not have an opinion about the issue at all. Push yourself to take some risks.

If you are an amiable, you need to work on being able to address disciplinary issues and conflict in the workplace. Lastly, as an amiable manager or leader, you need to work on your self-motivation because it’s easier sometimes to procrastinate then it is to jump on a project as an amiable.

4. You are an expressive management personality type

As an expressive, you want to be an initiator. Instead, reserve your opinion and don’t interrupt people when they’re talking. Be careful of exaggerating as an expressive and exercise more patience with your team.

As an expressive, you also need to work on your follow through. Expressives like to start big, complicated projects and then they get bored with it. This can become very frustrating for your team, who will often be the ones responsible for the details of completing the project.

Can you change your management personality type?

Technically you can’t, but you can change behavior. You may appear to be an amiable because of the behavior you have chosen to exhibit, but it doesn’t change your personality style. Your personality style is defined by what comes naturally and instinctively to you.

So as a driver, which is what I am, my natural instinct is total and utter impatience. So people don’t drive fast enough, I get impatient. If they’re not moving fast enough in the checkout line, I get impatient. That doesn’t mean that I have to act impatiently does it? So I can choose the behavior trait of an analytical or an amiable in that situation and not act impatiently.

What management personality type makes the best leader?

All of them! Consider the strengths and weaknesses of each of the four personality styles we have been discussing. If all you did as a manager or leader was show the positive side of your personality style, everybody would love you as a manager or leader. If all you did was show the weaknesses of your personality style, everybody would not love you as a manager or leader.

Your goal is to look at your natural tendencies, your personality type, and identify your strengths and weaknesses, and then work to maximize your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses. As you become a student of personality types and you understand people better, you will begin to see them as they are instead of as you are. When you do, you will become a much better manager and leader.