Sunday, November 28, 2010
All of us are different. It’s a well-known and proven fact that humans have different personalities and that their way of working and approach to life is dependent on that – some are organized, some are spontaneous, and some fall in between. As earthlings, we survive because of the complementarity of our skills, mind sets, and ways of working.
Why do we always try to change the way people work? We may have someone who is an extrovert, has no fear of speaking in public, and can come up with new ideas and also implement them, but we still may say that he is not enough process- or detail-oriented. It’s very rare to find someone who can come up with unthought-of ideas and also be happy with routine tasks. These two different things require completely different mind sets and personalities. When it’s proven that one person can’t be all these things, we still try to find a jack of all trades.
I would think that the best strategy is to identify the positives of everyone and leverage on that in order to have satisfaction on both sides. Trying to focus too much on the deficiencies and converting them into positives is sometimes achievable, but it is much less so and takes much longer as well as additional efforts. In an organization, the best way is to find employees with complementary skills and mind sets instead of having doppelgangers.