“Alert the Media: People are Different!”
by Chris Reinhardt, feedlot specialist
People are different. We all understand that implicitly. But in reality, our nature and our reflex is to interact with people like we would interact with ourselves. Unfortunately, that might not be the straightest and smoothest path to good results.
During Operation Desert Storm, General Norman Schwartzkopf posted his Myers-Briggs Type (an assessment of preferences for how you relate to the world) above his cot, and his Chief of Staff required that every single person who ever needed to meet with the General read a synopsis of this Type before having the opportunity to interact with the General. This ensured that each person understood how to most efficiently communicate with the General to save time. It is probably unnecessary to state here that the General DID NOT read everyone else’s Type.
It is seductive to think of this type of management style for your individual organization. “I’m the General of this team; you need to communicate with ME how I want to be communicated with!” Well, that was a war, and that General had the very lives of over 500,000 men and women in his hands.
You and I are not in a war, and the lives of thousands don’t hang in the balance—although sometimes we feel like it. And we respond to those very real business pressures by pushing and demanding. Unfortunately, while that was needed during wartime, it is most certainly counter-productive in our business and in our teams. We would never dream of treating our customers like we sometimes (hopefully rarely) treat our teammates.
It requires planning, patience, compassion, and understanding, to stretch ourselves as managers and reach out—cross the bridge, so to speak—in order to relate to those around us how they will best respond. It seems reasonable to assume that once we start speaking the language of our colleagues, they just might more accurately interpret and better understand what we’re saying.
