20,000 Leagues of Personality, Part 2

It’s easy to feel detached, maybe even isolated in modern-day flexible workplaces. Communication channels perhaps seem muddled, not as buoyant as before. Worst still are the potentially submerged meanings and subsequent tidal wave of potential interpretations behind contemporary means of communication—messages sent through Teams, Slack, and the like.

Now, perhaps more than ever, it’s vital that we understand not just how to communicate with one another, but who we are communicating with. While there are certain anchors weighing down flexible office structures--primarily the loss of social engagement--understanding the personalities and needs of those we work with can keep us afloat in these riptides.

While addressing and accounting for the numerous personality types on our teams may seem like maneuvering through a miasma of Kraken tentacles, it’s through this successful maneuvering that we can better determine the context behind a colleague’s message, or how to express ourselves to a supervisor, as discussed here by Fast Company.

Further conveyed in this TED-Ed video, we and our colleagues are more than stereotypical concepts of introvert and extrovert. The depths of our character venture beyond the basic types described by commonplace personality realms of structure, people, action, and vision. Our personalities are one component of a deeper combination of these realms, realms that can even shift under pressure.

As explored by SurePeople, we are multifaceted prisms. We are multidimensional.

Instead of rapidly responding to that text message, consider the real message behind the visible words. Read it not from a view saturated in our own perspective. Consider how that message reads from the sender’s point of view, from under their pressure, or from their needs.

We see more from the elevated crow’s nest than from the broadside porthole, after all.

“The development of language is part of the development of the personality, for words are the natural means of expressing thoughts and establishing understanding between people.”
- Maria Montessori