Nancy Pulciano is a producer and the CEO of Silent Crowd, a clothing company based in San Diego. She’s a manager with experience in Hollywood as a producer and in the action sports and restaurant industries, so she knows a thing or two about managing creative, diverse, and sometimes difficult personalities.
Writing for Rolling Stone online, she says that the key to successful teams is understanding the mix of personalities and helping to balance their attributes. I’ve written before about how “get it done” people can clash with their “get it right” teammates. Both personalities are essential to successful projects, but they come together like oil and water and can create serious conflicts that might hurt the whole team.
Pulciano suggests using online assessments to get a quick picture of who you team consists of and how they operate. She recommends the Smalley personality test because it is a quick five-minute quiz that identifies individuals across four primary personality types. These types are symbolized by animals: Lion, Otter, Golden Retriever and Beaver.
Full disclosure: otters are one of my favorite creatures. They are highly social animals, often living in family groups. They’re playful and easygoing, except when someone crowds into their hunting territory. They dine frequently on oysters, and are smart enough to use tools to open the shells. Plus, they’re adorable.
In business, (according to the Smalley quiz; I don’t know many otters in business) Otters tend to be energetic, optimistic, and enthusiastic, especially about new, shiny ideas. They’re team players and the team cheerleaders. What they’re not, usually, is very detail-oriented or concerned about follow-through (or how feasible their new idea might be.) They’re brainstormers who often expect everyone else to make the plan work.
Too many Otters on your team may mean that good ideas never actually get implemented, because they HATE drafting business plans and weekly progress reports.
On the other hand, their aquatic counterparts (according to the Smalley quiz), the Beavers, live for accuracy, precision, and finding problems to point out, if not exactly to solve. They often come off as critical and negative, which they consider needed qualities in a room full of otters. Both are inclined to ask “what if” questions, but where otters happily imagine “what if we win Product of the Year?” Beavers are over in the corner muttering, “what if we get sued because the product fell apart?” You can see how project meetings could get tense.
But Beavers are essential to any team’s success, with their commitment to getting it right and asking the tough questions. They care about details, and they’re analytical and persistent, especially when they think they’re right (which is most of the time.) They respect only facts and figures, and they don’t believe any detail is too small for a deep discussion before making a decision. They’re people you want on the team, even if they drive you crazy.
Sometimes, style and personality difference can create an impasse. That’s where the leader comes in, and possibly the loveable peacemaker. Meet the Lion and the Golden Retriever in a future post.
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