How Personality Affects Your Business

There are many different personality types in this world. I've learned that part of business is dealing with those different personality types.

There are four main personality types and each communicate differently. Therefore in order to be most affective, talking to the person you're doing business with in a way that best allows you to communicate with them and their personality type is key.

Before you determine another person's personality, you must know what your dominate personality type is.

To do this, I use a chart such as this one (the best I could find), to determine my own personality.

Personally, I have melancholy as my primary trait and choleric as my secondary.

Knowing what personality traits others have can really help you to understand them better and ultimately be able to communicate better with them.

Now, I'm not saying that you should be doing this for everyone, but for closer business contacts, it can dramatically help you.

Here are some good tips on how you can deal with each personality type.

With Choleric people:

• Build respect to avoid conflict
• Focus on facts and ideas rather than the people
• Have evidence to support your argument
• Be quick, focused, and to the point
• Ask what, not how
• Talk about how problems will hinder accomplishments
• Show them how they can succeed

With Sanguine people:

• Be social and friendly with them, building the relationship
• Listen to them talk about their ideas
• Help them find ways to translate the talk into useful action
• Don't spend much time on the details
• Motivate them to follow through to complete tasks
• Recognize their accomplishments

With Phlegmatic people:

• Be genuinely interested in them as a person
• Create a humane working environment for them
• Give them time to adjust to change
• Clearly define goals for them and provide ongoing support
• Recognize and appreciate their achievements
• Avoid hurry and pressure
• Present new ideas carefully

With Melancholy people:

• Warn them in time and generally avoid surprises
• Be prepared. Don't ad-lib with them if you can
• Be logical, accurate, and use clear data
• Show how things fit into the bigger picture
• Be specific in disagreement and focus on the facts
• Be patient, persistent, and diplomatic

(This list was taken from a leadership class I am taking that I believe is based on William Moulton Marston's work from the 1920's.)