Episode 307: Who are you really working with?
In this episode, Fiona discusses the importance of understanding the personality traits and intrinsic drivers of the people you work with through personality tests. She recommends using 16personalities.com and explains how this can help create a more positive and productive work environment. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Understanding the people you work with through personality tests
A free and easy-to-use personality test
How to identify personality traits and intrinsic drivers of individuals
Importance of understanding how people work best in terms of incentivization and engagement
Create a psychologically safe and encouraging work environment
Personality types are not set in stone and can change over time
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 307 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today it is a quick tip episode, and this one's a little controversial. The scary controversial music. Before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which I record this. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to mention is, as you may have heard, we have rebranded just slightly. You can find all the courses that we sell, coaching packages, templates, tools, and a whole bunch of other fun things, including a signed copy of my book, Passion Purpose Profit over at mydailybusiness.com/shop. Let's get into today's controversial small business tip episode.
I bet you are wondering what is so controversial. It's not that controversial, but today I want to talk about knowing who you are working with and knowing this through personality tests. Before you switch off thinking, this is such a waste of time. I had to do a Myers-Briggs one once when I was working back in corporate and never want to do that again. Just bear with me.
What I mean by personality tests is understanding the personality traits and the intrinsic drivers of the people that you work with. It might be you're lucky enough to have staff. It could be staff, it could be your business partner if you're in a partnership, or maybe there are three or four of you. It could be your biggest supplier or biggest stockist. It could be somebody that you have a strong working relationship with, and that is important and valued in your business.
For me, this may be my assistant, my OBM, Yricka. It could also be other people that we are working with on the periphery who don't work consistently in the business. But it's about figuring out who are you working with and how they work best. In terms of personality tests, I like to use 16personalities.com because it's free. I know a lot of them can be very expensive, and I just find that over the years I've been using this and working with clients to use it, I think I first started using this in 2013. I have to say that everyone who has used it, even people who have anti-this, some of my clients who are like, “I will do the homework, but just telling you I don't believe in any of this stuff” has come to the next session, be like, “Okay, I stand corrected.”
There was a lot in there that is very much me and feels very spot on. 16 personalities, I even mentioned them in the first book, Passion Purpose Profit. It takes almost like a chunk from Myers Briggs, a chunk from Carl Jung, a chunk from all different places, and has created this easy-to-do quiz that takes about five minutes. I think on the site they say it takes 15 minutes. I don't know who takes 15 minutes to do it, but it's a multiple-choice questionnaire. You can do it online just at 16personalities.com. And it shows you are one of the 16 personalities that your answers most fit with. Inside that personality analysis is an overview of yourself, but also how you work. It has all sorts of things like what you like in relationships, what you think of society, all of that stuff, what are you driven by and what do you not like and a whole bunch of other things.
One of the areas that it looks at is, I think it's called work and career. Particularly when you're working with people, it's important to understand what drives them. Maybe they are a completely different personality type to you, or maybe you're very similar. I often find that, particularly in group coaching, I find that I seem to attract people who are similar personality types to me, and maybe even similar to each other. It's also interesting to see in business partnerships, that people are the same personality type, or they are total opposites. I'd never see that they're just somewhere in between. And that's just from my own experience, but it's something that I think that people need to do, especially if they're in partnership with somebody, but also if they are hiring people into any role where they're going to have to manage them and help them enjoy that work that they're coming to do.
Because everyone will have different ways of being driven and being excited and engaged in their work. That could be for some people who enjoy praise and public acclaim and winning employee of the month or that public acknowledgement of what they have done. Other people could not care less about that, and they prefer to be paid a bit more or to be given a bonus. Maybe they prefer to be given more of a senior role, for example, or a promotion, whereas other people will be happy to stay in their role, but to be seen publicly as doing a good job.
There's no good or bad there, it's just that some people enjoy one and other people enjoy the other. It's a case of understanding that if you are going to have things that incentivize your staff, that it's going to incentivize that particular person in the way that works for them versus just having one blanket way of trying to incentivize your staff, but it's also thinking about what is important to that person so that if opportunities come up in your business, you're like, “You know what? That would be a great fit.” Because based on her personality type, she's intrinsically excited or driven or encouraged by X, Y, and Z, and this opportunity allows for that.
Whereas Simon over there is driven by other things. I'm going to keep him on the different opportunities that we have without understanding who we are working with, we're often not really aware of how we can best create an environment where they feel psychologically safe, where they feel happy and encouraged and excited about coming in and working on you, on you working with you, on your business. Or maybe they're working on you because you need some help. But one thing to get clear on in this is that it's not set and concrete. You can get this personality type and go through the test and see what it comes out as. It's not to say you can never change or that person will never change, or that every single time that you talk to them, you need to talk like this.
But it's allowing you to see them as a whole person first. Also, uncover things about them that aren't obvious in things like a cover letter or an interview process. Particularly when you're working remotely, as so many people are now, you don't get that daily interaction physically to pick up on things like verbal cues and other sorts of sorry, non-verbal cues that are coming up when you just have normal interaction in a physical space. If you are working remotely, you may not even see them. You may not even be doing zooms every week. It might be a lot of emails, a lot of things on Slack. Having that understanding of their personality type can help you engage with them and create an environment where they feel like they're looked after.
That is it for today. It's thinking about who are you working with and looking at a personality type like 16personalities.com to go through and figure out how can I best work with this person. How can I bring the best out of them? One way that you can do this is just in your onboarding for new staff or new suppliers or people that you're going to have a lot of dealing with, maybe a contractor, to ask them if they're comfortable to do it, doing 16 personalities and also always sharing your own. I don't think you should ask people to do something that you're not willing to do, particularly as the leader of a small business. I know that when I've asked my staff in the past and more recently with other staff, I've always shared, here's what I am here's a bit more about it in case it helps you because it's also about them understanding you as their manager or you as the leader of the business, how they best work with you as well.
That is it for today's quick tip episode. A link to 16 personalities can be found in the show notes over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/307. And of course, you can just go to 16personalities.com. We are not sponsored in any way by 16 personalities. We just think it is a great tool. A free one and just interesting to read. If nothing else, check it out. Just out of curiosity for yourself. Thanks again for reading. I'll see you next time.
