There are starters and finishers. There are big-picture people and detail people. Some are great at conceiving plans but lose interest in following through on them, while others are tenacious in seeing a project through but ill suited to dreaming up the next idea.
You benefit when you involve people in your projects who have traits and perspective that are the opposite of yours.
Dr. Howard Murad is a Los Angeles–area dermatologist who concluded that many of his patients’ concerns about appearance fell at the intersection of medicine and beauty care.
He believed no one in either business fully appreciated that potential. “I wanted to address the patient’s concerns, and if that meant using a facialist instead of laser surgery, then that’s what I’d do.”
Dr. Murad says the important question is, “If you had no disease, would you really be healthy? The answer often is no. What you need to be healthy is a sense of well-being, a sense of the ability to function at your highest level.”
Twenty years after merging health and beauty care, Dr. Murad’s business selling cosmetic products and spa treatments brings in $60 million a year. But he says none of this would have been possible if not for the fact that “I’m open-minded, I look at things differently, and I bring in people who know things I don’t.”
Teams in the workplace composed of people with differing personalities are 14 percent more productive than teams composed of more compatible individuals.
Fisher, Macrosson, and Wong 1998