If you are engaged with others at work for any reason, it is likely that your daily dose of misunderstandings and tension leaves you less productive, creatively blocked, more prone to errors, and emotionally drained. Slogging through your workday may have become the norm for you.
Take Bill and Jesse for example. They had been assigned to a team charged with making changes in the office that were aligned with the company’s new “Get Green” philosophy. There were several other members on the team, but Bill and Jesse were the co-team leaders.
Right from the first meeting (in fact, even before the first meeting), Bill and Jesse were butting heads. Meetings would either last for hours and hours with no resulting action plan, or would dissolve out of mutual aggravation. What could Bill and Jesse have done to boost the effectiveness of their team leadership?
The Work Styles Report
Successfully dealing with interpersonal relationships involves a multitude of soft skills, attitudes, and adjustments to our preferred behavioral style. The Work Styles Report, which is generated from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™ (MBTI®) assessment, can be a valuable tool in helping to understand the real differences between you and another person and how those differences may impact your work relationship.
The Work Styles Report provides an in-depth analysis and comparison of your and your co-worker’s:
- behavioral styles,
- primary motivators,
- workplace values,
- preferred work style,
- preferred work environment,
- methods of dealing with change, and
- potential problems.
Four Key Aspects
Beyond the overview of differences based on the behavioral styles (personality type), the Work Styles Report addresses differences in four major workplace skills:
- Communications
- Information Gathering
- Decision-making
- Management of Tasks and Projects
For Bill and Jesse, these four areas were at the heart of their team leadership problems. Disconnects in communication happened frequently. Neither could agree on what information to collect and consider. Issues, even minor ones, could not be settled amicably. Goals were not determined and consequently, milestones (set by senior management) were not met.
Communication Style
Learning how to eliminate misunderstandings and annoyances was not easy for Bill and Jesse. But they were motivated to improve their results and the Work Styles Report pointed the way out of their communications impasse.
As an Extrovert (E), Bill preferred informal discussions and felt he arrived at his best solutions through discussions – the more the better. Soliciting real-time, constant feedback during a meeting was an essential tool for Bill, so he made a point of asking for it. He also moved quickly from one idea to another with few pauses in between.
Jesse, an Introvert (I), agreed discussions were important, but preferred that those discussions should occur only after sufficient time had elapsed where he could have the opportunity to do research, read, and think about ideas and issues by himself. That is what he needed to arrive at his best solutions. Jesse felt feedback should only be solicited in writing, so there could be time to digest the information before the next meeting. Bill’s fast-paced style of introducing and dealing with topics overwhelmed Jesse, who preferred to collect his thoughts about each topic before moving on to another.
Joint Action Plan
The added benefit of the Work Styles Report is the suggested Joint Action Plan for each of the four workplace skills listed above. The action plan recognizes that both people bring strengths to the relationship, and capitalizes on the behavioral differences of the two people.
For Bill and Jesse, agreeing to disagree and still respect each other was the start. They were able to negotiate uninterrupted thinking time for Jesse, while Bill used that time to discuss his ideas with others. They then checked in with each other to compare ideas afterwards.
Most importantly, they settled upon a specific period of time for Jesse’s thinking process, which coincided with the amount of time that Bill was willing to wait. Their team was encouraged to submit feedback in writing prior to a meeting. Feedback that occurred during the meeting was captured on a flipchart, consolidated, and emailed after the meeting to all the team members for further input and suggestions.
With both co-workers committed to the steps in the joint action plan, as well as open discussion, incremental progress was realized. The rest of the team remarked on the new spirit of cooperation and understanding between Bill and Jesse. They even looked to Bill and Jesse as role models for solving communications problems!
© Copyright, 2010, Susan Guarneri. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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About the Author
Job-Hunt's Career Assessments Expert, Susan Guarneri, known as the Career Assessment Goddess, specializes in using personal branding and career assessments to empower professionals, executives, and budding entrepreneurs with career insight and action. Author of the Career Goddess Blog and co-author of Job Search Bloopers, Susan holds 16 career certifications, including National Certified Career Counselor, Master Career Counselor, Certified Master Branding Strategist, and Certified Online Identity Management Strategist. She has a Masters Degree in Counseling from The Johns Hopkins University and 24 years of experience.
