Do you ever get frustrated with people on your leadership team while solving problems or brainstorming ideas? They may ask too many questions, jump to conclusions too fast, are too quiet, or are always a pessimist. Do you sometimes wish they all had your “MO” when discussing these things? Wouldn’t that be great? Or would it?
You might think it’s best to have all optimists on your leadership team or that it might be best to have all innovators or all realists, when in reality, my experience, after having observed over 100 leadership teams identify, discuss, and solve issues, is that you’ll actually benefit by having a balance of all types.
There are optimists and pessimists; introverts and extroverts; people who are detail oriented and people who aren’t; people who want to change everything and people who want to keep things the same; people who follow through and people who don’t; and people who are risk takers and people who are very conservative.
The strongest, healthiest, and most productive leadership teams are the ones that have a balance. When I work with leadership teams composed of all optimists with no follow-through, they tend to overshoot. When I work with leadership teams made up entirely of conservative pessimists, very little happens. The ones that are all detail-oriented tend to overanalyze and get paralyzed. When they aren’t detail-oriented, things tend to fall through the cracks.
I’m not talking about core values here; that’s different. Let’s assume everyone on your leadership team possesses your core values. Ideally, you want to make sure your team is made up of all the personality traits listed above. Ideally, make sure you’ve got one of each represented (a person can possess multiple characteristics).
Take a minute now and put the names of your leadership team members next to the characteristics below and see if you have balance.
- Optimist
- Pessimist
- Detail-oriented
- Detail-averse
- Introvert
- Extrovert
- Change agent
- Prefers status quo
- High follow-through
- Low follow-through
- Risk taker
- Conservative
