Leveraging Personality for Business Success

Over a five-year period, I have been helping an engineering consulting firm to learn about how personality can proactively improve reaching company-wide business goals. The process started with leadership development programs in which trait inventories based on Dr. Carl Jung’s theory of personality were administered to the firm’s staff. The assessment results were used to develop professional growth plans and pinpoint areas of strength and weakness. Over time, the firm’s leaders began to see a correlation between professional success and knowledge of personality.

In 2004, Stacey Griesmer, one of the firm’s leaders, posed a challenging question: How can we identify the personality types of our clients unobtrusively so as to increase their positive perception of the firm? The dynamics of most client–consultant relationships preclude a request for one’s personality type. But by using the firm’s previously established practice of conducting annual client performance reviews, we agreed to transform the review process into a personality data-gathering exercise. With Stacey’s support, the firm agreed to a pilot program focused on a small set of key clients.

The firm established three objectives for the pilot:

First, we attempted to craft a survey based on classic personality theory. According to Jung’s theory, the human personality is based on four functions: sensation, thinking, intuition, and feeling. Everyone demonstrates these four functions to differing degrees. Jung described sensation and intuition as the perceptive functions—the two processes our personalities use for collecting data. The sensation function includes the five senses—touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. The intuitive function is the sixth sense—that ability we all have for vision and to see around corners. For example, our intuition often reveals itself as the “hunch” many good managers use to make critical business decisions. These types of perception are considered irrational because there are no easy, tangible ways to improve them.

The thinking and feeling functions are the decision-making processes of our personalities. Jung saw these functions as rational because we can exert conscious control over them. The thinking function applies logical, numerical, and analytical factors to a decision, a frequent trait associated with engineers and like-minded fields. The feeling function (not to be confused with emotion) applies moral factors to a decision. For example, an individual with a strong feeling function will provide excellent client service because it feels right. A dominant thinker, on the other hand, will assess his or her own customer service skills based on analytical models.

In 1923, renowned Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung published his seminal work, Psychological Types, which laid the theoretical foundation for the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory and Keirsey-Bates Sorter, two well-known assessment tools. Employees often are first introduced to personality by taking the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) at the request of corporate HR departments. There are sixteen different MBTI personality types, and even if you have taken an MBTI and learned your type, you have probably found it difficult to identify which one of the sixteen types applies to the individuals in your work environment.

Personality scholars have constructed a simpler, more general method to identify personality types by integrating Jung’s perceiving and judging functions into combinations of sensate-feeler (SF), sensate-thinker (ST), intuitive-feeler (NF), and intuitive-thinker (NT). These combinations are known as couplings, each with a distinct mode of collecting data (perceiving) and making decisions (judging). The term “couplings” refers to the pairing of both the rational and irrational functions. Nature wires individuals with a unique configuration of the couplings, but one coupling is always dominant and it shapes conscious personality. For those who have taken an MBTI, the middle two letters represent the dominant coupling. For example, if the MBTI indicated an employee had an ESTJ personality type, the dominant coupling is the sensate-thinker (ST). The same logic applies to the other fifteen MBTI personality designations.

While Jung’s couplings were named for components of the personality, we identified characteristics of each coupling to correspond with a specific managerial type for the purpose of this survey:

We designed the survey based on the critical premise that we could create questions that elicited responses associated with a coupling. The survey was crafted with two sets of questions. The first set of twenty-seven questions identified the client’s perception of the firm’s couplings. Clients were asked on a strongly agree, agree, no opinion, disagree, and strongly disagree scale to respond to each question. For example, if the client agreed or strongly agreed that the firm had low fees, met schedules, and delivered timely reports, we could assume that the client had a positive perception of the firm’s ST (committed manager) coupling. For brevity’s sake, only a sampling of the questions associated with the four couplings are listed here.

Sample questions associated with the SF coupling (wise leader):Sample questions associated with the ST (committed manager) coupling:Sample questions associated with the NF (creative facilitator) coupling:Sample questions associated with the NT (organizational visionary) coupling:

The firm’s principals conducted twenty-two interviews over ten months. To analyze the results, we calculated the percent of responses for which the client indicated either strongly agree or agree, and then we summed them for each coupling. The overall results are shown in Figure 1. As can be seen in the figure, the summary of the responses show the client has a strong perception of the firm’s ST, SF, and NF couplings. This finding implies that the firm’s representatives are demonstrating leadership from each of the personality couplings. On the other hand, we also see that only 64 percent of the clients strongly agree or agree that the firm is demonstrating leadership from the NT coupling. We believe that the NT questions are associated with technical leadership, and one potential conclusion is that the firm should focus its efforts to significantly improve clients’ perception of the firm’s technical leadership.

The results also confirmed the firm’s strategy to develop strong relationships with its customers. Several years ago, the firm began assigning client representatives to customers to act as the principal point of contact for defining needs, translating the needs into projects, ensuring quality of project deliverables, and embedding the firm into the customer organization. Typically, the NF coupling is associated with developing and maintaining relationships. The firm received high marks on this crucial “customer care” attribute. For example, 96 percent of the customers strongly agreed or agreed that the firm’s people were passionate about their work.

The second set of questions attempted to assess the customer’s personality by asking them to choose the most important deliverable from multiple sets. Five sets were populated with a total twenty-six deliverables associated with the four couplings (SF, ST, NF, NT). We were testing a hypothesis that a customer would tend to select a deliverable based on their dominant coupling. Below is a brief list of two of the five sets of deliverables. Associated couplings are shown in parentheses, and the bold sections represent customers’ highest rankings.

Energy deliverables:Information deliverables:

The top five deliverables and deliverables not chosen by the customer, with associated couplings, are listed below.

Top five deliverables chosen by the customer:Deliverables not chosen by the customer:

In analyzing these results, we discussed the balance of the couplings in the top-ranked deliverables. One conclusion is that the customer wants civil engineering firms to lead from all four components of their personalities. Asking why the ST coupling dominates the lowest five deliverables may support this conclusion. One might also ask why none of the twenty-two customers chose the two deliverables commonly associated with high levels of satisfaction—fees comparable with value and meets schedules. The sample size is too small to make any general conclusions, but the results provoked the firm to question their assumptions about their customers’ priorities.

After reviewing the results of the survey, the firm decided to expand the survey to all its customers on a rolling three-year schedule and to broadly explore the following ideas:

In particular, the firm decided to strengthen the client’s perception of its technical leadership by pursuing the following action items:

This pilot began with three objectives. First, the firm wanted to establish their customers’ personality types. Unfortunately, the survey tool did not prove to be a reliable predictor of an individual customer’s personality type. However, there were two critical findings: overall, the customer’s personality is balanced in the sense that it is wise for the firm to apply leadership skills that pull from each of the four couplings; further, the surveyors require more training in personality theory in order to ask pertinent follow-up questions to truly get an understanding of the customers’ personality.

Second, the firm wanted to understand the customers’ perception of the firm’s personality type, particularly the perception of the firm as a leader. The survey results revealed that the customers have strong perceptions of the firm’s leadership in deliverables associated with the SF, ST, and NF couplings. This result confirmed the effectiveness of strategies that the firm had undertaken to improve customer service. In addition, the firm concluded that it needed to strengthen deliverables associated with the NT coupling and display more technical leadership to its customers.

Third, the firm wanted to identify action steps to improve the firm’s performance and sales capabilities. It has broadened the survey and is committed to several concrete action steps to accomplish this purpose.

In the left-brained world of engineering where spreadsheets and plans assess project management, success rates, and client retention rates, one firm learned the value of taking a more innovative, “right-brained” approach to understanding the impact of client perceptions on the firm and its leadership. Further, the lesson remains for engineering firms and professional services firms alike that understanding the motivations and behaviors of clients can teach valuable insights on the nuances of delivering a balanced, strategic approach as a trusted advisor. This not only helps retain clients and build business, but it creates a halo effect of leadership and innovation for the firm and the brand.

Baron, Renee. (1998). What type am I? Discover who you really are, Penguin, New York.Giannini, John. (2004). Compass of the Soul: Archetypal guides to a fuller life, Center for Applications of Psychological Type, Gainesville, Fla.Carl Jung. (1976). Psychological types, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.