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I’ve seen this so many times—and I did this so many times in my early years as a manager: when you attempt to change someone’s personality to fit your idea of their role. Especially when you inherit staff that you didn’t hire, it can be difficult to accept that someone who is quiet is in a client facing role like an outreach worker. Likewise, it can be hard to understand how someone who is gregarious could do really well in a behind the scenes job like data entry or bookkeeping. While roles may be more well suited for some personalities over others, it’s important that we don’t make assumptions about what a person can do well with their personality.
After pushing a quiet outreach worker to get outside of her comfort zone, I realized that her quiet and unobtrusive ways were actually helping some clients feel that our services were more accessible. I had always assumed that outreach workers should be outgoing and chatty with everyone. And that works for some employees—and for some clients. But in this case, I learned that there’s room for a different style of outreach. And that by opening up my team to different personalities and styles of doing the same tasks, it actually made us stronger.
Consider diversifying the personality makeup of your team by hiring outside the box. If your team leans towards the introverted type, consider an extrovert to spice things up and bring out something new in the rest of your team.