We all work with people who think, communicate and do things differently than us. These differing perspectives, or varying energies, can either be something we appreciate or drive us crazy. Learning to work well with people different than us is a critical skill that we can improve upon with concerted effort.
When it comes to training people to work effectively with different energies, there are two ways to approach it: you can either set the people up for success and trust in them to do the necessary work, or you can set the system up for success and try to mitigate the people dynamics within it.
Let’s talk about the former option first.
The Self-Awareness Dilemma
You can’t really have a conversation about teaching people how to work together effectively without having self-awareness at the root of that conversation. However, awareness is a deceptively simple concept. According to Dr. Tascha Eurich, an organizational psychologist, “95 percent of people think they are self-aware while only 10-15 percent actually are.”
If you take just 1 minute, I bet you can think of at least five people you know who fully believe they are self-aware yet operate completely unaware of their behaviors. This is something we see a lot these days. If a person doesn’t see a problem, they aren’t doing anything to fix it, especially if they might be part of the problem they refuse to see.
Encouraging Personal Growth
This leads to an interesting conundrum – how do you make people who think they are self-aware realize they actually are not? How do you gently teach them to start being able to catch themselves in the moment? And, perhaps most challengingly, how do you do this within the confines of a workplace rather than a therapist’s office?
Creating a space that encourages personal growth is an important step, and modeling this behavior ourselves is key.
Self-awareness begins with curiosity. It requires humility and a willingness to see ourselves as we are. This can be quite scary and challenging at first. We are wired to judge and taught to criticize – “According to the National Science Foundation, the average person has about 12,000 to 60,00 thoughts per day. Of those, 80 percent are negative, and 95 percent are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.”
This startling statistic tells me that people are not self-aware and struggle with a negative inner dialogue that can feel overwhelming and daunting. Many people try to escape negative thoughts and fall back on familiar and perhaps undesirable behaviors.
While we can only do so much from a work perspective, cultivating a supportive environment that celebrates growth and change will help people feel more comfortable embarking on such an arduous journey.
Energetic evaluations such as 5 Dynamics are a good place to start to show how we learn, communicate, get things done, and make sense of the world around us. But, while having this information is a good first step, it doesn’t automatically equate to being fully self-aware. The real work comes after the initial insights.
Applying Insights for Better Team Dynamics
As we begin to understand better why we do what we do, we can learn how to catch and alter the behaviors that may need some tweaking with a curious and compassionate approach.
Someone recently shared a quote with me that said, “Leadership development is more about learning to back off your strengths and less about developing your weaknesses,” I think that’s also applicable here. You may naturally be high in execution and be great at driving things to completion, but that may mean you also tend to bulldoze and put unnecessary stress on people and projects. The important part is recognizing this and being able to back off, not necessarily replacing those tendencies with qualities more aligned with the Excite dynamic, per se.
After all of this laborious work, the icing on the cake is then being able to understand better and make the most of our natural gifts and, in turn, better understanding and appreciating the natural gifts of others, which leads to the next step in teaching people how to work effectively with different energies.
Seeing beyond someone’s personality and into their process allows you to filter through some of the more superficial things that can cause conflict so that you can get to a better working relationship faster.
For example, a few months ago, I was experiencing friction with a coworker, and while, of course, other factors were part of the overall experience, it occurred to me that I wasn’t frustrated with the person; I was frustrated with the process and the lack of communication around it. We were coming at it from two different energies and had not aligned on a process for the project, so we had two different expectations of where we were at with it and this was causing us to butt heads.
Recognizing that enabled us to resolve the issue and repair our working relationship quickly.
Having this lens is a skill that takes time and effort to learn, and again, where the 5 Dynamics methodology and the Simpli5 platform come into play, as it teaches us exactly that.
Implementing Structural Solutions
Now for the other approach.
Not everyone is ready or willing to do the deep work necessary to be a self-aware, well-adjusted, and emotionally mature individual, so it’s important to have a failsafe structure in place to help support working relationships.
One such instance is if a person habitually runs over on meeting times because they have a hard time wrapping up the conversation. You can use a 25-minute and 50-minute meeting rule and enforce stopping on time to automatically bake in a few minutes between meetings to give people a break and avoid having them run from one meeting to the next throughout the day.
Ensure you are making room for all energies to show up and be heard and are doing so in an inclusive way. Don’t put someone high in Examine on the spot in front of the whole team. Instead, send them an email beforehand and give them a chance to think about what they must say before the meeting to feel prepared when it comes time to share.
Lastly, encourage team members to align on goals and outcomes to work towards the same North Star. This, coupled with setting and respecting boundaries, allows individuals to see each other’s contributions as complementary rather than as a challenge by which they need to feel threatened.
A workplace fueled by relentless self-improvement that embraces diverse perspectives and establishes a strong foundation of respect and growth will lead to a thriving industry where individuals feel empowered to reach their full potential and teams are propelled toward unprecedented success. These strategies are not just tips; they are practices that can transform people and cultures, leading to a future where every voice is heard, every effort is magnified, and everyone is valued.
