By Pete Liska https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteliska/
To wrap up this blog series on personalities I am going to share another example. During a conversation with a manager at a local hardware store, I used my learning from coach training to observe, identify, and adjust to an individual.
From my training at the Center for Coaching Certification, CCC, I determined that the manager is a Pleaser and Investigator, both Passive personality types. When talking with him he looked away at times. He answered all my questions about an installation at my house calmly and with soft tones, plus had the information about the associated paperwork. As I talked about the installation at our home and asked questions, he started to relate the information he had on hand about the project, and then added some of his experiences. After I asked something he answered my questions and even added additional insight from his experiences. From my coach training class on communication the class discussed asking instead of telling. It worked with this manager! When I told him anything about the installation he didn’t say much. When I asked questions he gave me all kinds of information.
What I found for the Investigator side of his personality is that he was accurate about the timing of our initial order. Because he was only involved with part of what was happening, he stated he would research a few things to get it right for me. During my coach training we talked about instead of friendly chit-chat to stick with facts for an Investigator. With the Investigator personality type, it works to talk about research, the detail, planning, and the accuracy. I asked him some technical questions and asked him for a solution, and he came up with an idea.
Knowing personality types plus the Do’s and Don’ts of how to interact with them helps understand them, understand how they think, and helps you as a coach to know what and how to ask a question during the coaching session to be effective and keep in a moving forward. Plus, learning about this during coaching certification helps me in all of my interactions with people everywhere.
