All Work and No Play?

When Cindy and I work with teams on building stronger and more effective communication into their cultures, The Model of Human Behavior is one of the tools we share because it provides a simple and extremely practical approach that can be implemented right away. As we do this, we emphasize that our team members often do the exact same things but for VERY different reasons depending on their own unique behavioral style. Cindy goes on to explain that I, as one of those highly DRIVEN folks I mentioned last time, serve the people I care about by working as hard as I possibly can to achieve results. While my focus is primarily on the task at hand, I’m doing it to provide for my family or my team…

Here’s the thing: I’m in the small minority of the population that actually enjoys working! Accomplishing things and checking tasks off my list fills my tank. And praise God everyone you deal with isn’t like me, right! (For many reasons…) Seriously though, acting as a servant leader to someone like me is often fairly simple. Just tell me what needs to be done, give me some autonomy to take action, and provide me with some guidance from time to time to keep me between the ditches. I’d like to think of that as being relatively low maintenance but it really depends on who you ask!

The folks with the next primary behavioral style we’ll look at, however, will likely perceive that same treatment as anything but being served… This group represents around 30% of society as a whole but that can certainly vary depending on the organization or the work that’s being done. While they’re usually just as Fast-Paced in their approach to life as the DRIVEN group, they’re far more focused on the People involved than the task that needs to be accomplished. One of the things that energizes them the most is making sure everyone around them is having the best time possible while they’re working on whatever needs done. They truly enjoy bringing excitement to everything they're involved in!

With that in mind, being an effective servant leader will look completely different to someone with this primary behavioral style than someone with the last one we looked at. When we recognize that someone is wired this way, we should understand that they have different needs and they won’t view service the same way. As leaders, it’s still our responsibility to make sure the tasks get done but we’d do well to build as much fun as we possibly can into the process and allow them to have some laughs along the way. Again, just pushing for results won’t serve these folks. It will seem more like punishment!

This Inspiring bunch will feel like their needs have been met and we’ve provided them with great servant leadership when we’ve done all we can to celebrate them throughout the process of accomplishing whatever needed to be done. That said, the folks with the next primary behavioral style we’ll look at have a similar focus on people but are much more reserved in their approach so they’ll appreciate us serving them in a very different way than we’ve looked at so far...