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1
Understanding Yourself and Understanding People
1. Myers-Briggs Means Nothing; This Means Everything
Ugh, I thought. Another touchy-feely personality activity.
I was on a retreat at the Canyon Ranch resort in Miami with fellow forum members from the Entrepreneurs' Organization, a global network of CEOs that includes some of my best friends in the world. Normally, I'd be having the time of my life at such a retreat, but for me, a Type A personality who's always on the move and never likes to stop, at this time in this particular location I was struggling to stay engaged. Relax is not a word I'd ever liked, and after two rounds of yoga and meditation, the last thing I wanted to do was sit through four hours of a personality assessment I had never heard of.
But I braced myself and forced myself to keep an open mind and a positive attitude about the experience. I'm glad I did, because the four hours that followed changed my life and the way I communicate with others and understand myself forever.
"This is the Enneagram," our psychologist instructor, Brad Kerschensteiner, informed the eight of us. "While much less famous than the Myers-Briggs or DISC assessment, it's actually far more reliable than those two or any other personality assessment for that matter, and its wisdom has been used and passed on over centuries."
Now I was intrigued and paying attention. Over the four hours that followed, I picked up a wealth of information about myself and how people can best communicate with me. Moreover, I learned about the nine major motivators for people and how we can best communicate with all people on the basis of their Enneagram types, 1 through 9. As Brad assessed all eight of us and talked to us about our Enneagram types and the communication implications for each one, I was blown away by how accurate it all was. It was like he was reading my mind!
Self-awareness is the fundamental building block of the art of people. You can't understand and influence others until you fully understand yourself at a deep level.
In the year that followed, I became increasingly fluent with the Enneagram and its power in helping us understand ourselves as well as others. I administered the Enneagram to my management team, then to my whole staff, and then to my wife's company's whole team as well. I read whole books on the subject. I became totally engrossed with the value of the Enneagram for self-awareness. I also realized the following:
Self-awareness is the fundamental building block of the art of people. You can't understand and influence others until you fully understand yourself at a deep level.
Of course, like any personality assessment, the Enneagram isn't perfect. Any system that classifies people into only nine categories obviously has its limitations. Yet research has shown time and time again that the Myers-Briggs assessment, the most popular personality assessment, is highly flawed and unreliable over time. Take it twice and you'll probably get a different result than you got six months earlier. The results of the Enneagram, in contrast, don't change over time; they give you a sense of what motivates you most, what to look out for as potential detractors, and how people can best communicate with you, and those things are remarkably stable over time.
Before you read any further, turn to Appendix A and take the Enneagram assessment cowritten by Mario Sikora if you haven't already. An internationally recognized speaker and author, Mario is the coauthor of Awareness to Action: The Enneagram, Emotional Intelligence, and Change and the author of many articles on personality styles and leadership, performance improvement, and team building. Mario says, "The Enneagram is a great tool to better understand yourself, which in turn can help you take smarter action."
Once you have your score, look at the chart summarizing the nine major Enneagram types, their associated strengths, and the potential pitfalls to look out for. How well these elements resonate with you probably depends on how high your raw numerical score was for your type on the quiz.
For example, I am a strong Enneagram type 3, striving to be outstanding. One of my common pitfalls has been the "I'll Do It" syndrome, or saying yes to every offer, opportunity, and request I get, thinking that the more I accomplish--the more interviews I do, the more projects I agree to, and the more clients I take on--the more outstanding I'll be. This makes me sound like a real go-getter, but it became a real problem earlier in my career as I was stretched too thin and became worn out to the point where even my family life suffered. That is, it was a problem until I changed the script in my head according to my Enneagram assessment. If I said yes to fewer things, I realized, I could be more outstanding in the things I said yes to. It wasn't easy (fellow Threes out there can sympathize with me, I'm sure), but now I am able to say no to opportunities to speak or do interviews so that I can be more outstanding at other things. I rewrote the script once I understood what really motivates me, and you can do the same thing.
What are your pitfalls based on your Enneagram type? Choose the one that resonates most with you and keep it in mind as you read this book. By the end, I guarantee you'll have a better understanding of how to rewrite the script in light of all you've learned about how you communicate with others and how others communicate with you.
Now that you have a better understanding of yourself from the Enneagram, including your strengths and weaknesses in communication, it's time to take one more quiz: the PeopleStrengths quiz. We developed this assessment to help you understand, among the eleven essential people skills you'll learn in these pages, where your top strengths lie and where you may need more help. Take this now online at ArtofPeopleQuiz.com.
So are you a People-Pleaser? A People-Leader? A People-Guru? Or a People-Persuader? Whichever category you're in, we all know we have lots of room for improvement when it comes to dealing with and influencing people. The great news is that you've already begun the improvement process by getting to know yourself a little better than you did before you picked up this book.
Of course, there are hundreds of other assessments you can take to understand yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. I happen to be a huge fan of the Enneagram because it's time-tested, simple, and reliable, and of the People Strengths Quiz because, well, I wrote it. But of course, whatever your particular assessment is, the important takeaway is this:
The first step in learning how to better influence others to get what you want in your career and in life is to understand yourself.
The better you understand yourself--your unconscious motivations, what gets you up and what gets you down, what makes you tick, and how you best interact with others--the better off you'll be at understanding other people and getting them to do things for you.
FAST First Action Steps to Take:
1. Complete the Enneagram quiz in Appendix A if you haven't already done that.
2. Write down three people-related weaknesses you want to work on. Write down a solution for each one in light of your core Enneagram assessment.
3. Write down your greatest strength. How can you improve on it as you read this book?
2. How to "Get" Anyone (Even If You Don't Like Him)
I just don't get him," I muttered to myself after hanging up the phone. I had just finished a phone call with the senior person at a company that was an important business partner of ours, and I felt frustrated, angry, and confused. We had been struggling to get this business partnership off the ground for months, and I believed I had key insights into understanding why and helping rectify the problem. But John (as we'll call him) just didn't want to listen to me or cooperate or be helpful in any way.
John was mean and grumpy, and I just didn't get him. He seemed to have a huge chip on his shoulder, was angry at the world, and was determined to plow down anyone who stood in his way. He seemed a lot like the hard-driving, take-no-prisoners self-promoter I described in Chapter 1, good at making orders but not good at making relationships. In several face-to-face meetings I had never once seen him even hint at a smile.
The first step in influencing people is understanding them, and I simply didn't understand John. I had tried for months to connect with him, but to no avail. How could I work effectively with someone I didn't like? How could I work with someone I didn't even understand?
Feeling utterly defeated, I approached my wife, Carrie, with the problem: "I just don't get this man, Carrie. What can I do?"
Carrie, the person who gets people better than anyone I've ever met, replied right away: "If you say you don't get him, you'll definitely never get him."
We all have people we don't get at first or maybe ever. Everyone's different, and sometimes it's hard to understand people who are very different from ourselves. Many times that may be okay because you may not need to interact with some person you don't get, but often it does matter. If you're ever going to want or need to have a meaningful or productive interaction with someone, whether it's a colleague at work, a client of your business, or a cousin at family gatherings, it pays to figure out a way to get that person.
Step 1, as Carrie shared with me, is to refuse to believe that you can't. No matter how different a person is, no matter how you may feel when you're around her, no matter what her actions are, you have to believe that with some effort you will be able to understand her.
Self-determination is a powerful force, and once you refuse to say "I don't get him," you'll be better off. But that alone isn't enough.
"Take him out for coffee," Carrie suggested about John, the man I was now determined to get.
"But I absolutely loathe him," I replied, cringing at the thought.
"See it as an experiment, then," Carrie said. "An experiment to see if you can understand someone very different from you. Ask questions, then shut up and listen."
As much as I protested, Carrie's advice, as usual, turned out to be spot-on. Two weeks and one coffee later, I got John. I still didn't like him very much, but after sitting down with him for coffee outside the office and getting the opportunity to talk (and listen) face-to-face for just thirty minutes, I really did feel that I understood where John was coming from. As it turns out, John had had a tough stretch of several years as a child with just one parent, and it seemed that somewhere along the way he had decided to become fiercely independent. John was unmistakably an Enneagram type 8--driven to be powerful--and sometimes that drive for independence could make him abrasive and standoffish and generally tough to be around.
John's behaviors didn't change as a result of our meeting, of course, but just a little bit of understanding made a big difference in my future interactions with him. Over the weeks that followed, our conversations got more congenial, and we actually made some progress toward driving the mutual business results we were both looking for. He even cracked a smile at one face-to-face meeting a few months later. I ended up getting most of what I wanted out of the business dealings and the relationship.
I never would have had that opportunity, though, if I had resigned myself to the fact that I didn't get John and left it at that. Who do you work with whom you just don't get? Who do you come into contact with on a regular basis whom you can't seem to understand no matter how much you scratch your head?
The first step is to insist that you can get that person. The next step is to invest fifteen minutes and five dollars in having a cup of coffee with that person.
You may not walk away understanding the person completely or even liking him any better. But you'll have a fighting chance to build a more productive and beneficial relationship from then on.
John, wherever you are today, I hope you're still enjoying your coffee black and occasionally cracking a smile.
FAST First Action Steps to Take:
1. Write down the names of three people in your life whom you're struggling to get.
2. Commit to asking one to have coffee with you after you finish this chapter.
3. Walk into the coffee meeting determined to get this person (even if you still don't like her).
3. How to Understand Someone Better Than You Do Your Friends (in Just Three Minutes)
Now you're going to get to know the person next to you better than you know many of your friends, in just three minutes with just three questions!" said the tall, enthusiastic speaker on stage in front of 1,200 people.
I sat in the front row, excited but dubious about the claim that Larry Benet had just made at the Social Media Marketing World conference in spring 2013. Larry is a man on a networking mission. Often referred to as one of the "Most Connected People on the Planet," Larry Benet builds much more than just passing friendships. He has earned a sterling reputation as a master relationship builder as well as a thought-provoking and highly entertaining seminar speaker.
But this was my first experience with Larry Benet, and I must admit that I was a doubter. Larry was the first keynote speaker at the conference, and I knew he was there to teach people how to network better. Still, the notion that he could teach me to understand someone better than I know many of my friends in three minutes seemed a bit far-fetched even for an expert.
"Question number one: What is the most exciting thing you're working on right now? On your marks, get set, go!" Larry said confidently.
I turned to my left and very quickly introduced myself to the man next to me. We didn't have much time, so I quickly told Steven about Likeable Local, the new company I was getting ready to launch, and he told me about a science project in a box his company was about to unveil. Whew, just under the deadline.
"Question number two!" Larry's big voice bellowed from the center of the stage. "If you had enough money to retire and then some, what would you be doing?"
The pressure was on with only a minute to share answers, and so I quickly learned that Steven would travel the world with his wife, going to all seven continents, and I said that I would run for office, perhaps for mayor of New York City or governor of the state. Again, we made it in just under a minute. This was proving to be a very interesting experiment!
