Personalities and communication: MBTI vs. “the quadrants”

by | Nov 15, 2014

MBTI-vs-4-Quadrants

If you’ve followed my blog, you know I’m a huge fan of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. What you may not know is that I’ve seen a few other personality indicators in my day. At last count, I’ve been through at least ten different personality-based team building or self-improvement events in my career.

I continue to come back to the MBTI for both self-understanding and team building. If you are willing to invest the time, MBTI is the “Cadillac” of personality indicators in corporate America, especially if you do the Step II program, which goes into the facets. I have a fairly in-depth understanding of the indicator and use it daily in my interactions with clients and colleagues.

That said, at Thought Ensemble we’ve recently discussed a much simpler framework that I find to be very useful, specifically for communication. Coincidentally, this is my husband’s favorite personality framework. I just asked him again why he loves it so much and he said, “If you know what quadrant someone is, you can give them what they want. Understanding leads to compassion and empathy.” He uses this framework regularly in working with clients and colleagues.

So, what is this voodoo? I’m actually not sure what the official name for the framework is, but it is based on only two questions. The questions are:

  1. Are they task oriented or people oriented?
  2. Do they “ask” or “tell”?


Based on that, there are four types:

  1. The Analytical who wants to know “how” things work, wants to be accurate, values numbers, statistics and ideas and loves details
  2. The Amiable who wants to know “why”, wants to build relationships, loves to give others support and attention and values suggestions from others
  3. The Driver who wants to know “what”, wants to save time, values results and loves being in control
  4. The Expressive who wants to know “who”, values appreciation, loves social situations and parties and likes to inspire others

For such a simple framework, it is actually pretty darn useful. Even if you’ve never been exposed to it before, you can probably pretty quickly surmise how differently you’d communicate to each of these types.

In my husband’s business of financial planning, he has the advantage of working 1:1 or 1:2 with people most of the time. In our business, we are often interacting with multiple personality types at the same time, in the same meetings. Jonathan’s recent blog talks through some of the challenges of that. It isn’t always easy, but frameworks like this help heighten our awareness and remind us that different people process things differently and we shouldn’t treat them all the same.

 

READ MORE

The Magic of Mortals

The Magic of Mortals

Daily we wake up to new developments in automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML). Across sectors and industries, automated solutions prove highly successful in surpassing the capacity of the human brain for certain tasks, improving...

read more
Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leaders have been trying to crack the code on talent development for years. Recent studies have shown, however, that strength-focused leadership [read: intentionally elevating the qualities that already come naturally to us] is the clear winner for developing talent...

read more
Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

  Listen to any earnings call or executive presentation and you will likely hear the terms “top line” and “bottom line.” These are words used to describe a business’s performance. According to Investopedia, the words are defined as follows: Top line refers to the...

read more
Your Personality Is Showing

Your Personality Is Showing

There I was, minding my own business one evening, digging into my organization's SEO performance (as one does), when I came across something interesting. Search terms related to "MBTI" — or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, developed by Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel...

read more
Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Hello. My name is Monique, and I’m a change manager who hates change.   After years of receiving “consulting therapy” from various mentors, I am now able to say these words out loud and proudly. But for a long time, it felt more like an admission of guilt. I mean, who...

read more
Creativity as a Cure

Creativity as a Cure

The topic of creative solutioning has been front and center these days as we talk more and more about organizational adaptability in the face of dynamic and uncertain times. For example, I recently read about a project that got me thinking about specific priorities...

read more
Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Big news over here as we close out the year - we have been acquired by Pariveda, a 750-person consulting firm in 12 markets across North America! We are now “Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company” and I’ll be serving as the Managing Vice President continuing to lead...

read more
Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Dallas, December 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pariveda, a leader specializing in solving complex technology and business problems, announces the acquisition of Thought Ensemble. With the addition of Thought Ensemble, Pariveda now provides holistic business strategy,...

read more
Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

It was about a year ago that we first started hearing about Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (SB19-085) and I knew it was going to be national news. We’d just gotten past the “Rocky Mountain High” jokes, and our lovely state was trying to break new ground...

read more