Difficulties in your life do not come to destroy you,
but to help you realize your hidden potential and power,
let difficulties know that you too are difficult.
Leadership can be a very challenging task. As a leader, you don’t always get to choose who is on your team. In fact very often, leaders inherit team members, and many of those team members may have been in place far longer than the new leader. They may also know more about the specifics or intricacies of the work than the new leader. Whatever the situation, one of the responsibilities of a leader is to motivate the team to work together as a cohesive unit toward the common goal. This can be a daunting challenge.
Strengths and weaknesses
Often teams are comprised of very diverse members, each of whom have their own strengths, weaknesses, personalities and work styles. The team dynamics can also often be complicated by internal disagreements and personal conflicts. The leader, not only has work with this group of people, but also needs to achieve the results expected.
Leaders can benefit greatly by being able to identify the types of personality characteristics of team members. By understanding the basics of personality types, the new leader can help use the individual strengths of members for the good of the whole team. They can also then assign tasks that individual team member’s will naturally excel in. A leader can additionally learn to communicate in a way that is motivating, by taking into account the needs, values and working preferences of different team members.
A good leader will see the greatest results by working and utilizing the strengths and working style characteristics of the personalities on the team. By correctly positioning the individual team member where their strengths will shine, and compensating for their weaknesses, a leader can bring the team into a productive balance and greater harmony.
A brief overview of the different values and working styles of the four main personality groups will demonstrate the importance that this knowledge plays in being a part of your successful leadership toolbox. And, please keep in mind that these are overviews. Very few people can be pigeonholed into a single personality type. The four types of personality will be described using the colors Gold, Blue, Green and Orange.
Know your team member’s personality type, learn their strengths and weaknesses, and coordinate your team efforts better. And, that is where we will pick up our discussion tomorrow…
Thoughts?
Photo Credit: John-Morgan via Compfight cc
Related articles
[…] especially when you inherit a team of people who may not be working at their peak performance. Yesterday we started talking about the ways in which leaders can benefit by being able to identify the types […]