Visit any workplace—not just a veterinary practice—and chances are you’ll recognize your staff. You’ll recognize the players not by name or looks, but by the way they approach their work, clients, and colleagues. What often stands out are the personalities that make us uncomfortable. That might include the micromanagers who nitpick every detail, the achievers driving the team to finish a project, the extrovert chatting at length, and the cynic who sees the negative of every idea.
Without a doubt, working with individuals who think and react similarly to us is easier than facing a group of folks who think and react differently. Generally, unpredictability makes people uncomfortable. Therefore, when we work with someone who shares our approach to communication and problem-solving, we can more easily anticipate a reaction.
However, there is a costly trade-off.
“What we give up is productivity. Teams made up of people with diverse perspectives outperform groups of like-minded people,” says Jim Asplund, Gallup’s chief scientist of strengths development. “Diverse teams are better at solving problems and are more innovative. I tend to look at diversity as a form of risk management. Many—me included—also find diverse teams to be more engaging and fun.”
Another benefit to creating a practice team with multiple personalities and communication styles is client satisfaction. This is because your practice serves individuals with a variety of personalities.
“If our team is homogenous, we are not able to service clients and meet their needs,” says Colleen Best, DVM, PhD, BScH, founder of BestVet Coaching and Consulting. “Having a wide range of personalities and backgrounds on our team means we are better able to provide care for those clients as we walk through the barn door.”
Managing a diverse group of personalities in the office or the field isn’t easy, but it’s necessary. Ultimately, a vet practice’s success hinges on an owner or a manager who recognizes the strengths of each team member. Then, the manager can leverage each person’s unique abilities and encourage them to work together.
Personality Styles and Strengths
Successfully working with different personalities begins with self-awareness. You must first understand your own personality traits and how you lead to empower individuals and teams to engage in their work.
“The more we understand ourselves and our reactions, the better we’re able to engage with others,” Best says.
An online traits assessment tool can help you gain insights into how you are naturally programmed to complete tasks and lead others.
There are many assessments within workplace settings to build awareness around how each person interacts with the world, as well as how they approach a job or task. Some tools have decades of science and data backing them, while others have less research behind their development.
Here are some of the most common assessments:
CliftonStrengths provides a performance-based tool to help individuals understand their intrinsic skills related to seeing the world, interacting with their colleagues, and getting things done. It is not a personality test but a performance-based tool to help individuals understand their intrinsic skills that fall into four domains across 34 themes.
DiSC is based on four personality profiles: (D)ominance, (i)nfluence, (S)teadiness, and (C)onscientiousness. The tools are designed to predict job performance based on the emotional and behavioral theory of psychologist William Moulton.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) reveals an individual’s personality type, communication style, and learning style. The results show 16 MBTI personality types, which identify one’s natural preferences in four personality areas:
- How they direct and receive energy.
- How they take in information.
- How they form decisions.
- How they approach the outside world.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) tests are available from several organizations. These assessments evaluate an individual’s ability to identify and manage his or her own emotions as well as other people’s emotions across five dimensions—social skills, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and motivation.
Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) is a five-factor personality model based on socioanalytic theory, according to which, “getting along with others” and “getting ahead in the social hierarchy” are the dominant themes in social life. The HPI captures key behavioral tendencies relevant to these objectives.
Avoid sweeping judgments about certain traits regardless of the assessment you use. Steer clear of labeling any style as “good” or “bad.” Each descriptor creates an understanding of how each person operates in the world around them and allows them to naturally excel in those areas.
After you’ve learned your strengths, have your staff complete the same assessment. Then have a facilitator work with your team to help individuals gain a deeper understanding of the varying ways people see the world and interact with others to get things done. This also can reveal opportunities to leverage those talents to boost job satisfaction and practice performance. Understanding that everyone doesn’t interact with the world and other people the same way can help create a common language between colleagues for discussing challenges that arise.
“Others on our team may not be self-aware, so engaging the team as well as the leadership in reflective activities about how they are as a person and learning the differences in the way other people work is helpful,” Best says. “Often, we’re naïve about our uniqueness and may not be aware when we’re really good at something. Then we get frustrated with someone else who doesn’t share that strength.”
She added that the better owners and managers support self-awareness, the better aligned the staff can be with others and how they work together.
“Some team members may notice that their colleagues see the world a bit differently due to their natural gifts,” adds Asplund. “Rather than seeing them as a source of unnecessary friction, consider how they bring something unique to the table. What can they do well that nobody else on the team can do? Once you know how each team member is uniquely valuable, everyone feels more included and valued.”
Leveraging Employee Strengths
Staff members who work within areas of their strengths are 7% more engaged at work, Best notes. That is critical in practice today amid staffing shortages and high burnout levels. Finding ways, even small opportunities, to bring these tasks into an individual’s role can profoundly impact practice efficiency and retention.
For example, an individual might be highly organized and eager to take on inventory—a task that can make others groan at the thought of restocking, billing, and tracking supplies. Although not a personality trait, if a technician is passionate about nutrition, finding ways to provide education, encourage their interest, and involve them in palliative care can boost retention.
“It’s important to have conversations with your staff about what ‘fills their bucket’ and how they do their job,” Best says. “For example, if a current team really loves animals but is not particularly passionate about the humans who accompany them, then the practice needs a receptionist who is an outgoing person and is not going to be exhausted by talking to people all day.”
It is important to think about and appreciate the way people use their strengths because it fuels job satisfaction and ultimately feeds into practice performance. Depending on the person, it takes more or less energy to achieve a task. That doesn’t necessarily mean a role should be designed to eliminate all those discomforts, but having other staff members with complementary strengths creates a balance that benefits the individual, the practice, and the clients.
“We all have blind spots that create obstacles for us. One of the most powerful reasons for teaming up is working with someone who is strong where you are weak, and vice versa,” Asplund says. “Specialization allows both people to spend more time doing what each does best and allows the two to tackle together challenges neither could alone.”
Making space for staff to discuss their strengths, goals, and aspirations is crucial to creating a practice that appreciates and leverages personalities for the benefit of the practice and employees.
Scheduling periodic, at least quarterly, meetings with each staff member is ideal. Within these conversations, consider asking:
- What is your biggest strength at work?
- What about your role energizes you most?
- What about your role do you find draining?
- What do you find most motivating about your position and why?
- Is there something you would like to learn at work?
- Who in the practice might you want to learn from?
- What would you like to achieve in the next 30/60/90 days?
- What support do you need to succeed?
- How can we define success?
- How would you like to be recognized for your accomplishments?
Follow-through and follow-up are essential to long-term success. Include check-ins to ask employees what is working, what might not be working, and what additional support they need to achieve stated goals.
Considering Personalities in Hiring
Hiring is about more than skills and accomplishments. Whenever you hire, you hope the person you bring on board is actively engaged and stays for the long haul. A significant part of that is pairing a person to a role where they can use their intrinsic strengths and personality. Using the results from assessment tools like those mentioned above in the hiring process can help you identify candidates who will be the right fit for your practice and the position.
Using assessment tools as one piece of the hiring process can also reduce discrimination in hiring. In 1984, researchers John E. Hunter and Ronda F. Hunter published results from their study Validity and utility of alternative predictors of job performance revealing cognitive ability tests have had an adverse impact on certain demographic groups.
However, personality assessments generally do not have the same results, according to Robert Hogan’s In Defense of Personality: New Wine for Old Whiners. When used properly in the hiring process, personality- and strengths-based assessments can help practice owners identify candidates who can fill critical gaps in the current team, increase job satisfaction, and contribute to retention.
Remember, hiring the right person for the job depends on many variables. Considering personalities and strengths as part of a multidimensional interview process can help you find staff who support your practice and the clients you serve.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
When our colleagues respond or react to something we say or do differently than we do, it can create moments of conflict. Understanding different traits and having a common language for talking through challenging moments are critical to working together with less dissension.
Without a shared understanding to guide a conversation with the other person, we craft stories about what happened and the other person’s intent.
Colleen Best, DVM, PhD, BScH, founder of BestVet Coaching and Consulting, remembered holding a naughty young horse years ago when a colleague stepped in and took over.
The story she could have told herself might be any iteration of:
- “This person didn’t trust my horse-handling skills.”
- “This person has a really big ego.”
- “This person knows I dislocated my shoulder 10 times and is looking out for me.”
- “This person heard me say that I had to leave early, and they are trying to be a pal.”
“We don’t always get these stories right. Just understanding how people approach situations can help us decide how best to support our team,” Best says.
Conflict is often the most challenging byproduct of interacting with and leading people with different communication and work styles. Understanding and appreciating the value of intrinsic approaches to work and relationships cuts both ways, meaning leaders must recognize these in others and be aware of their own styles and how colleagues or clients might perceive them.
Moving in the Same Direction
Managing multiple personalities is a lot like driving multi-horse hitches, Best says. Many straps, lines, and buckles connect the horses to one another, the wagon, and the driver.
But each mind might have a different idea about which way to go or how fast to proceed. Moving forward simultaneously toward the intended goal requires connection and leaning into the strengths of each person in the team’s “hitch.”
“Even if the horses are excellent, the wagon is in good shape, and the driver knows what she is doing, that is not enough without the buckles and lines (communication and understanding) that let them do their job,” Best says. “As we learn about each other’s strengths and how they handle things, all of those are forming those lines and connections pulling everybody together.”
Related Reading
- The Business of Practice: Personalities in the Workplace
- The Basics of Negotiation for Equine Veterinarians
- Business Briefs: New Thoughts on Communication for Equine Veterinarians
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