Rocky relationship management leads to employee tension, poor performance, lack of emotional commitment and disengagement.
As an expert project or account manager you've likely learnt that there's no one size fits all when it comes to managing people. If we're gonna be precise there's 16 sizes according to the MyerBriggs Personality Test. In order to optimise your employees strengths and cohesively work towards better outcomes, you first need to understand their personality types. All it takes is a 1 hour workshop. Your team will leave with a deeper understanding of each other, and you'll leave with a personalised approach to managing each individual employee.
Get back to that raw, emotional drive
First let's consider the problem space. When looking into account or project management, most companies focus their efforts on practice over people. The emphasis lands on rational factors such as the project process, tools or client requests & outcomes and less on emotional drive. But it's the emotional drive - people's engagement and positive collaboration - that creates high calibre projects.
As an AM and PM, we're the type of people that are naturally good at working and managing others cohesively. The AM and PM life requires you to tailor your approach to project management on an individual level. However it takes a while to understand how each employee works and in turn how they should be managed to produce the best results. To be honest, you probably don't work seamlessly with absolutely everyone from the get-go either. There's always going to be a few hard nuts to crack despite your experience.
To make matters more complicated, within the 16 unique personality types you work with - there are different strengths and weakness, forms of communication, reinforcement, conflict management styles. It's pretty overwhelming when you consider all aspects of human behaviour.
And it's damn risky for AMs or PMs in new roles or companies. You have to figure this all out as you attempt to tackle a project scope, keeping it on budget and schedule, delivering a stellar outcome - all whilst balancing multiple team members, other workloads and adapting to an entirely new environment.
The cost of underutilised relationships
It's normal to undervalue individual relationships between you and your colleagues in the context of good project management. Many project managers are outcome focused or don't feel the need to overanalyse their relationships with others. It comes naturally to us, so why dig deeper right? Well the cost of misunderstood or underutilised colleague relationships is tangible.
Rocky relationship management leads to employee tension, poor performance, lack of emotional commitment and disengagement. It bubbles beneath the surface, infiltrates team morale and indirectly impacts other people and projects. It can literally cause heart faliure (yep). Staff with inconsiderate or uncommunicative managers were 60% more likely to suffer from heart trauma. Okay so I think we've pushed the point hard enough. It's bad.
I also want to point out that it's not a matter of things being bad before you pull the handbreak. You may have great relationships with your colleagues, but there's always room for growth. Proactively look for ways to improve your relationships and optimise your existing experiences.
Let's say you write out a list of feedback items for your designer to action. He prefers generalised feedback on the direction of his work, yet you put together a detailed to do list. You end up going through multiple rounds of revision because you each respond to different methods of communication. Sure nothing was glaringly wrong per se and you probably would've achieved a good outcome for your client. But had you known your designers preferences you could've saved a lot of time (and money) on both ends.
How to identify each personality type (in 20 minutes)
Okay so here's the juicy bit. This is where we help you navigate this mindfield of 16 personality types muddled with unique human behaviour.
I started a new Project Management position at an agency after four years in a previous, similar role. I was accustom to managing my old colleagues a specific way (and probably became a bit complacent in doing so).
Within one week of working with the team I realised my old PM habits didn't seamlessly transition into this new workplace as I'd hoped. With a background in psychology I'm mad for all things human behaviour (also love a good serial killer documentary). So I made the call to have each colleague complete a personality test through 16 Personalities. It's a free survey tool, takes 20 minutes and provides freakishly accurate descriptions of why you do things. It stems from the Myers-Briggs indicator of personality which is the most widely used psychological instrument in the world (so if you're unfamiliar with the term, hit that link and read up).
From master manipulator to trusted PM
My motives were pretty transparent. I needed to better understand each colleague and didn't have the luxury of learning over time (particularly with COVID prohibiting in-person contact). The vibes were pretty positive when I pitched this to the team, though some were sceptical of how applicable these results would be and whether I'd simply pigeon hole them on the basis of assumption. Would I turn into a master manipulator? Cue evil laugh.
In a way - yes. I needed to understand what really drives and inspires my new colleagues. It was a crucial step on the roadmap to success as the new kid on the block. Once I'd explained my deeper motives to the team and the benefits we could achieve collectively, everyone got onboard.
Opening the conversation
Each colleague shared their direct results with me through 16personalities. The data is a treasure trove. It provides a wealth of information; a foundation of goodness; pretty much a digital handbook to understanding your colleagues and how to manage them to achieve better outcomes.
I focused on pulling out the info applicable to our workplace and popped this in a slide deck:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Career Paths
Workplace Habits - as colleagues, subordinates & managers
Within a 1 hour workshop the team explored each others personality highlights and discussed how this would apply to our relationship in the office, project management, collaboration together.
The impact of understanding
I left with a personalised, employee handbook (so to speak) to help me smash project management goals and better manage my colleagues. I've been able to respond and communicate in a way that achieves better outcomes and a happier process along the way. Boo yah! I also showed initiative in my first few weeks in a new role, that whilst may have felt invasive initially proved valuable.
It wasn't just a benefical activity for me as the newbie or PM, but also for the remainder of the team (who at the time had been working for 4+ years together and knew a lot about each other). There were new learnings to uncover and laughs had over some of the glaringly obvious traits and celebrity comparisons (my personality matches that of Taylor Swift and Sansa Stark - go figure?).