Sherrie Haynie, Director of US Professional Services for The Myers-Briggs Company, leads Practitioner Development and Consulting Services.
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Major changes, even those that are extremely positive, can create a great deal of anxiety in any company. Sometimes what top leadership views as great news, such as being acquired by a larger organization with more resources, or being spun off as an independent unit, are viewed with suspicion by employees.
This in turn can lead to undesirable outcomes like higher attrition rates and disrupted workflows. An understanding of personality types can help organizations navigate some of the pitfalls of such events, which can range from a major acquisition or merger to a rebranding effort or even simply a new executive team member.
People respond in extremely varied ways to such situations, making it difficult to address major organizational change scenarios in a strategic way. While a person’s personality type doesn’t dictate their behavior, it does influence their likely response to a range of scenarios and also sheds light on the things that are most likely to stress them out.
Here are a few guidelines for implementing a personality type-based program to help your organization navigate change.
Create a common language for training programs.
When considering how people will respond to a major change, it’s helpful to have a common framework for understanding and discussing how people think and behave. For instance, most of us intuitively understand that there are some people who thrive on order and well-established policies while others prefer flexibility and open-endedness. In the parlance of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument (Disclosure: My firm publishes this instrument), the former is referred to as a preference for Judging, while the latter is referred to as a preference for Perceiving.
These differences are common sources of friction for teams during a transition, as such situations often involve major changes in structure and policy. Without any common terminology for discussing this difference, however, people may talk in cross-purposes. If managers and employees are describing the same thing but in different terms, much of the meaning may be lost in translation.
Even worse, people may resort to stereotyping each other. Employee A might be viewed as “uptight and rigid” by some, while employee B is viewed as “a procrastinator” or “undisciplined” by others. In reality, these individuals are simply expressing their natural preferences for Judging and Perceiving. Without a structured understanding of these differences, people are often inclined to assume the worst about each other, which may lead to conflict of the unproductive variety.
But if you have a common syntax, you can more easily identify problems and work together to define productive solutions. If employee A has a preference for Judging, people can quickly understand that having policy and structure upended may be extremely disconcerting. If employee B is known to have a preference for Perceiving, people can likewise handily discern that having an entirely new set of policies thrown at them may be equally overwhelming.
Make it personal.
These concepts can seem abstract until people connect them to how they interact with co-workers on a daily basis. If you help them observe ways that their type preferences have played out recently in interactions with colleagues, the training will sink in more quickly.
For example, find out if there’s a co-worker they find to be frustrating and mine their perception of that relationship to see if there’s a type-based connection to the problems encountered. Once they learn that they have the power to influence these working relationships through self-awareness and behavior, they’re more likely to apply the learnings from the training.
Understand how change may trigger stress for different personality types.
Change is stressful for most everyone. It’s easy to assume that what stresses you out stresses other people out, too. It’s also easy to assume that other people show external signs of stress the same way you do. In fact, neither of these is true.
For example, consider the people with a preference for Judging that we discussed earlier. While you might expect that the same thing tends to stress out anyone with a Judging preference, in fact, it can differ quite a bit based on the other dimensions of their personality.
For example, someone with an ISTJ (Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging) preference may be stressed out by things that take them away from their routine. But if you switch the Thinking preference with a preference for Feeling, that person may be stressed out more by personal interaction (or a lack thereof), such as feeling that they’re not appreciated or that their own feelings are being dismissed.
Spotting stress responses can be tricky, as they also vary tremendously by personality type. Under more normal stress levels, people may accentuate their preferences. Someone who prefers Introversion may become even more withdrawn. But, under extreme stress, they may act like immature versions of their opposite personality type. A person who normally prefers Introversion may act out in uncharacteristically loud and brash ways (a phenomenon referred to as a "Grip" experience).
If those around them are aware of what’s going on, they can offer help. But if your culture is clueless, this kind of stress response will probably come across as bewildering and offensive and will likely erode teamwork.
Don’t wait to implement a type-based change management program.
In conclusion, most of these suggestions are things that will be most effective if they are put into place long before a major transition takes place. Having a common language to discuss people’s differences is something that takes time and effort to cultivate. If you’re trying to implement it at the last minute, learnings may not have the same staying power they’d have if you were to implement it well in advance of any major transitions.
Most organizations don’t know when a major change will happen. Sometimes it’ll be planned well in advance, but at other times it’ll take you by surprise. Now is the time to develop a personality type-based framework for managing transition.
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