Coming Up Today
What each of the four personality Roles tends to need from a new leader
How to bring personality language into your team’s shared conversation
A simple question to ask your team this week that opens the door to everything else
When I first became a team lead, I made a mistake. I assumed that getting to know my team would happen organically – that over enough standups, I’d eventually figure out what each person on my team needed from me.
Some of that did happen.
But what I missed for too long was that you can’t lead a team you haven’t actively tried to get to know. There’s a real difference between knowing someone’s name and knowing what they need to produce great work and feel good doing it.
Today, we’re going to start closing that gap.
Welcome to the fifth and final day in our 5-Day New Leader Challenge, where we’re pivoting from inward to outward.
The first four days have been about you – your personality, your trade-offs, your emotional intelligence, your confidence. Today is about the people on the other side of all that. Specifically, how to start seeing each of them clearly enough to lead them well.
Before we jump in, here’s a reminder of all that we’ve covered together in this challenge:
Day 5: Knowing Who You’re Leading (You Are Here)
You Can’t Lead a Team You Don’t Know
Everything we’ve covered so far in this challenge is in service of one thing: leading the humans on the other side of you well.
And you can’t lead a team you don’t really know.
Knowing your team isn’t just about knowing their names, or where they’re working from, or whether they have kids or a dog or in-laws who live with them. It’s about knowing what they need from you in order to work well and feel good doing it.
Can you answer these questions about each person on your team?
What kind of work do they do their best in?
What kind of feedback lands for them?
What energizes them, and what drains them?
What do they tend to need from you when something gets hard?
Most new leaders can’t answer these for their full team. But don’t worry, that’s normal, and it comes with time. Today, we’re going to take the first steps toward knowing your team well enough that you can answer them.
What Each Role Tends to Need from a New Leader
In case you’re newer to our framework, let me give you the lowdown. We group the 16 personality types into four broader Role groups based on shared personality traits:
Explorers (share the Observant and Prospecting traits)
Each Role contains four personality types that tend to have similar goals, interests, and preferred activities. When you don’t know a team member’s personality type, trying to guess their Role can be a bit easier, making it a useful leadership tool.
So you can use these Role groupings as a starting hypothesis about what each person on your team might need and want from you in those first few months as a new leader.
Here’s how to adjust your leadership for each personality Role to earn their respect:
