How to deal with people according to personality type

At the beginning of April, Blanka Adamová, a GBM student at NEWTON, prepared a workshop for everyone on NEWTON’s Brno campus. The topic was personality typology, centred around four different characters. It was a brisk hour full of interesting suggestions and Blanka's insights from her business practice and experience managing a team of people. To begin, she said a few words about herself and created a nice atmosphere in NU Lounge Brno. Her presentation then started with the introduction of the four characters, which she described using an example of their interaction over dinner in a restaurant. She described the characters of a fighter, a consultant, an entertainer and a detective. When you understand the kind of people you have on your team, you can work better with them and lead the team to effective results.

Warrior

Positions themselves at the table so as to have an overview of the entire restaurant and a good view of all the participants. They choose exactly WHAT they like and do not argue long over the choice. 

Consultant

Is happy to sit next to someone with whom they can discuss in detail HOW best to do things. Usually they will wait to see what others choose for their meal and, after entertaining all possible options, they will choose the first one they considered. 

Entertainer

Doesn't even look at the food menu properly and lets themself be surprised. Their priority is to not take too long to choose so that they can get right down to entertaining the others and chatting about how EVERYONE is doing. 

Detective

silently observes the scene the whole time, choosing the best possible option after thoroughly analysing the entire menu from top to bottom. They don't explain much, but instead ask WHY and try to find the logic behind everything going on during the dining session.

So, have you met any of these characters?  When you think about it, these roles often fit the people around us. The great thing about it all was that Blanka brought these types of personalities to our attention based on authentic photos of people in her life. Whether it was her family, friends or work colleagues.

Some tips on how to spot and work with these personalities:

  • Focus on their facial expressions.
  • Do they automatically go in for a hug when they greet you (entertainer) or do they keep their distance (detective)?
  • Do they offer you a firm hand in greeting (fighter) or do they fix their gaze on the ground and not offer their hand at all (consultant)?
  • Be aware of how the clothes they are wearing speak to you.
  • Notice what their posture looks like when they are at their most confident; whether their hands are more likely to be in their pockets (consultant), folded (detective) or waving them around happily (entertainer).
  • If you get a chance, scroll through their Instagram feed and see what content they post most often. Whether they're taking selfies and showing off cool stuff (entertainer); sharing pics of groups of people and nature (consultant); snapping sports, competitions and achievements (warrior) or their only content is themselves (detective).
  • When you have the opportunity to visit their office or home, try to observe if they have trophies, medals, awards and diplomas all around (warrior) or photos of family and friends, postcards and products from their children (consultant) or if they are more of a minimalist and their surroundings strike you as functional and understated (detective).

Communicating with people is so simple and yet so challenging. However, all of us need to be able to master it. And it is beautiful to be inspired in our efforts to understand others by those whose profession is it to excel at human interaction on a daily basis.

Simply put, if you want to master the warrior, you have to learn to think like a warrior and adapt your communication accordingly. To those who need time to discuss things properly, give them time. To get to know someone who likes to have fun and to dream, learn to dream with them. Approach the person with detective tendencies to figure things out logically, rather than tackling them with rambling persuasion tactics. Not only will you be happy with the results, but so will they. And gaining such a win-win is always worth it. 

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How to deal with people according to personality type

If you sometimes think in vain about how to talk to some people in order to achieve satisfactory results, the typology of four personalities presented by our student Blanka Adamová will help you. Do you have a fighter, consultant, entertainer or detective in your team? Learn how to use them. Effective communication is sometimes easier than it seems.

Improve your presentation skills: learn to use silence and always be prepared