I’m excited to announce that this month our company launched Essential Motivators™, a powerful new learning journey. What makes this offering so special is that it reinforces something I’ve been teaching for decades: Different Strokes for Different Folks! In other words, leadership shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all proposition. The way you communicate and work with others needs to be tailored to where they are, not where you are.
Back in the 1960s there was a debate about which leadership style was best: autocratic or democratic? It was widely assumed that one of these was the best for managing people. My friend and colleague, Paul Hersey, and I questioned that assumption. Our response was to develop a situational approach to leadership, which The Ken Blanchard Companies later developed into SLII®. What is the best leadership style? The one that matches the developmental needs of the person with whom you’re working.
A Powerful Tool for Working Together
Just as people have different levels of development, they also have different personality types. You may have taken a DiSC assessment or a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test to get a better sense of your personality. What’s great about the Essential Motivators™ framework is that the four types are user-friendly and easy to apply in moments of need. By becoming aware of your own and others’ unique personality patterns, you can be far more effective at work and at home. Here are the Essential Motivators™ four basic personality patterns:
FIRE. People of the Fire pattern tend to be improvisers. They focus on the present; they are tactical and seek results.
EARTH. People of the Earth pattern tend to be stabilizers. To plan for the future, they focus on the past; they are logistical and seek to establish and maintain structure.
AIR. People of the Air pattern tend to be theorists. They seek strategic solutions for complex problems. They want to understand how the world and things in it work.
WATER. People of the Water pattern tend to be catalysts. They look to the future and seek authentic connections to make the world a better place.
All four of these elements are required to create a healthy, balanced organization. When Margie and I started our company, we soon realized that we were both Water people. People like us have a psychological core need for a sense of purpose. We value ethics and empathic relationships. Our talents are diplomacy and advocacy—we like to inspire and praise people.
Those are all great Water characteristics, but they’re not necessarily the kinds of talents and skills that can build a successful business. In fact, when we started the company, we couldn’t even balance our own checkbook! For that, we needed people with the Earth personality pattern. Earth people are dependable and have a core need for responsibility. They value security and stability and have a talent for logistics and creating standards. The Earth people we hired early on were able to manage our finances and office administration, allowing us to focus on our strengths of inspiring and motivating others.
Our company never would have grown without the contributions of our talented Air people! These associates have a core psychological need for knowledge and competence. They value logic and expertise and are great at exploring ideas and designing programs. Anyone who’s taken one of our trainings has the contributions of our Air people to thank.
Finally, had it not been for the initiative of our Fire people, The Ken Blanchard Companies would have gone out of business several times. These are the people who need to act and make an impact. They are great at improvising in a crisis and being tactical, coming up with plans of action to achieve goals. My son, Scott, has a Fire personality pattern, which is evident by the way he has led our company as president.
So, what’s your personality type? Knowing your personality pattern is like discovering your superpower. You understand yourself at a deeper level. When you know the personality patterns of others, you begin to celebrate people for who they are. By knowing what makes others tick, it’s more fun to work together, and the work goes a whole lot better and faster.
Just as leaders need to adapt their leadership style to the development level of the person they’re leading, we all need to adapt our interactions to the different personality types of the people we work with. If you want to learn more about the Essential Motivators™ learning journey, listen to Chad Gordon’s interview with expert Linda Berens on our LeaderChat podcast.