Navigating Differences in Personality Types

Dear S.H.,

Hopefully you read my column last week on behavioral style, because in reading this I am first going to guess you have a very strong behavioral disconnect here. She is likely “high D” in the DISC process. On the Dominance scale where the emotion is anger, it often manifests in frustration and impatience with others. She likely comes “at” you because she is irritated you aren’t contributing more or bothered that you don’t seem as motivated as you should be.

Please don’t interpret me as saying you are not motivated; you may be very “low D,” in which case you don’t act with urgency and aggression but rather with a calm confidence, taking your time to take whatever steps are necessary to get to where you need to be. When a high D person perceives a low D person as non-responsive, they do “come out swinging.” This, of course, leads you to withdraw even further because it doesn’t feel great to be attacked.

If other people are observing this, it is possible she has received feedback on her behavior. However, we can’t be sure. Is there a colleague you trust who could suggest to “Susan” that her behavior is a bit out of line with you and others are noticing it? Sometimes when a third party reflects something to someone, it is more easily heard rather than you trying to bring this up to her.

A next option might be to go to HR and ask that a 360 Report be done on Susan, giving you a chance to anonymously give some feedback and perhaps gathering validation from others on the team about her behaviors. This could be a little tricky; you’d have to ensure you were one of the chosen ones to give the feedback because a 360 doesn’t always include every single person on the team.

A third option (which comes with a warning, because you may not like this one), is to ask her to sit down with you and give you some guidance on where you could become a stronger advisor and a bigger contributor to the branch. If you are lower on the list, and you know this is triggering some of her behavior, then take the elephant-in-the-room approach and address it directly with her. You don’t want to confront her, per se. You want to seek her guidance. Maybe if you were to make her an ally instead of an adversary and she thought you were trying harder, she would come around. Again, it’s important for me to qualify that I am not suggesting you aren’t trying as hard as you can, but her perception might be such.

Ultimately what you are describing is abusive workplace behavior. I have clients who have left abusive situations and have had lingering PTSD as a result. It is a real thing — I even teach about it in my graduate Leadership classes. Taking the abuse for too long can eat away at your self-confidence and your self-worth.

With that said, I have offered some productive options for you, but I by no means suggest you continue to take this from her. If you cannot re-orient the relationship somehow, you need to consider if you can develop a Teflon exterior that doesn’t allow her to get to you or you need to consider what’s next on your career journey. The clear research from Gallup polls done year after year tell us that the main reason someone takes a job is for the job itself and the opportunity provided, but the main reason people leave is the boss. It’s hard to work daily with and for someone who clearly doesn’t like you or want you to succeed.

Dear Bev,

I appreciate the article on behavioral style. I have known this for years but haven’t implemented it as much as I should. At 67 years old I’m not sure if there is a way to leverage it in my team (I manage seven people) or with my clients. You didn’t outline a lot of tips for us for clear implementation so I’d appreciate anything easy I could do that would help me improve as a professional.

L.K.

Dear L.K.,

Even though you’ve known it and you can’t figure out how to do it at 67 years old, you are asking for help. You have some of the main criteria I look for in my coaching work – a willingness to understand, to consider and to learn. Kudos to you!

Some easy tips to continue to learn how to implement these concepts:

1. Know your style. If you have run a profile in the past and you have your information available, keep it handy. For the first ten years after I’d run mine I kept it in my top drawer. When someone would say something to me about my behavior (including my family – my kids were the best teachers), I would pull it out and review it to see how the findings connected (or didn’t) with what I was hearing. It didn’t mean I could fix everything, but it did help me understand what they were experiencing, which in turn helped me to make different choices the next time around.
2. Learn to listen. I want to repeat this one even though my fabulous editors might not like it: Learn to listen. Hear how someone conveys something – the tone, the pace with which they speak and act, their word choice, their body language. Learn to listen not for what’s said, but for how it is said. Then take it a step further and listen for what’s not said. What might be missing from what they are sharing? Why are they sharing this now? What do they most care about? This takes discipline and hard work but it really pays off.
3. Understand how the different styles interpret one another. If I am “high S” (for Steadiness) and you are high D (for Dominance), when I hesitate — or want to be sure of my word choice or need time to process and think about something — you may see me as weak or stubborn. But I really just need digestion time that you might not need. If I am “high I” (for Influencing) and you are “high C” (for Compliance) and I am joking with you over some compliance blunder I have made, you won’t think I am very funny. You think I don’t take things seriously.

These disconnects affect everything. How we deal with others, what we believe about them and so on. Pay attention. My favorite thing is watching people interact with one another, even when I don’t have the benefit of the profiles, and thinking about their sameness and difference. You can learn so much by seeing the differences play out.

4. My last idea is to talk with your team about style and how it impacts communication. Ask them to place a prospect or client on the scale and make a guess about where they are high or low. They won’t always get it right, but just having the conversation keeps this in front of you at all times so you can start connecting the dots to make it make sense.

I work with plenty of advisors in their 50s, 60s, 70s and even a couple in their 80s. Many stay open to live and learn, so don’t give up. You will find ways to apply this if you keep paying attention to it and make a commitment to learn.

Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022, 2023 and 2024. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).

She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.

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