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TRANSCRIPT
All of my team, in fact, everybody who starts at Laing+Simmons goes through a behavioural profiling tool called a ‘strength deployment inventory’. I don’t think it actually matters which one, I mean that one just works for us. There are lots of different ones. That one works for me and I understand it really well.
What that allows me to do is understand better how to communicate with that personality, because I’m very direct, I’m quite assertive and I’m fast. I like things to be done quickly. And that can really intimidate some people and make some people feel really uncomfortable. And so, now I know I’m a ‘red’ – what a shock – personality.
I’ve got members of the team that are ‘green’ and so they’re very thoughtful and reflective and analytical and I know I need to slow down when I talk to them, and I need to give them space to answer the questions and maybe time for feedback.
The ‘blue’ personalities in our team are the ones that like to have fun and want everyone to feel good. They don’t like conflict and so I need to be really careful with how I manage conflict with them and how I communicate difficult conversations with them. It’s a really hard thing and it’s about understanding the personalities.
So, I would really recommend doing a little bit of study in that space because it has changed my team and its changed the way I manage people.
