John and Susan are colleagues in a medium sized science and technology company. It is fair to say they have very different motivations for approaching their work. John prefers to take in information that is real and tangible. Susan on the other hand prefers to take in information by seeing the big picture, looking for connections between facts.
The long standing tension between these two has subsided in recent times in large part due to a session they attended on the topic of ‘Personality Differences in the Work Place’. John now accepts that Susan makes decisions by considering what is important to her and others involved. She is guided by her values, strives for harmony and wants everyone to be treated as individuals. Susan now accepts John contrasting her style as someone who likes to look at the logical consequences of a choice or action. John is guided by analysis, cause and effect reasoning and wants everyone to be treated equally. John is motivated by the task while susan has a focus on people. John has a preference for ‘Thinking’ and Susan has a preference for ‘Feeling’.
How do Susan and John’s natural personality differences of Thinking and Feeling play out in their workplace? Read below about the different ways these manifest.
What do Thinking people look like?
They tend to analyse issues and ignore (often unknowingly) peoples feelings
They solve problems with logic
They strive for objectivity in finding the right answers
They can be ‘tough minded’
They are fair - want everyone to be treated equally
What do Feeling people look like?
They tend to worry about how people feel through the decision making process
Their decisions are guided what they value
They assess the impact of decisions on people
They strive for harmony and positive interactions
They are fair - Want everyone treated as an individual
What are the implications of these natural preferences to the your work environment?
If your work environment is surrounded by conflict those people with Feeling preferences will suffer discomfort, tension and feel misunderstood.
If your work environment is laden with people with Thinking preferences this will lead to a less empathic and supportive culture.
Organisations laden with people with Feeling preferences will find it more difficult to make key decisions people will be worried about the impact these will have on others in the organisation.
With a focus on developing awareness and acceptance of personal differences by appropriate and targeted training workforce performance can left substantially.
Recruit on the basis of obtaining the best mix of employees so each stage of the decision making process is covered.
John and Susan have done really well to acknowledge and accept the personality differences between them. This means that it’s likely they will work more harmoniously together, thereby enabling the business to achieve more. How well do your people understand and appreciate their personality differences?
If you recall the last newsletter I wrote about Introversion and Extraversion preferences. Equally here, people can learn to adopt characteristics of the other preference type but under pressure or given a choice they will revert to their natural preferences. With this in mind people will always work best when there is a fit between their natural preference and their daily tasks. The real challenge for the management of John and Susan is to find away of working more cohesively together.
If you have any thoughts or experiences please share them with me. I can then post these (maintaining confidentiality) on a future blog to start a conversation about the topic. This may start a valuable conversation amongst like minded people to help all of us do things better. firstname.lastname@example.org