Years ago in the Chicago area I attended a weekend workshop on the Four Grid Personality Styles. About 20 of us gathered in a hotel meeting room near O'Hare Airport to pinpoint our own personality types and master communications techniques. As promised by the organizers, we would gain valuable self-understanding and improve our business and personal relationships with people of all four styles.
The atmosphere of this personal growth workshop was casual yet professional. However, just before the lunch break on Saturday one of our workshop attendees surprised us all. Sandra, a young suburban housewife, burst into tears.
Why would identifying her personality type on a four-section grid lead Sandra to cry uncontrollably?
Of course the facilitator stopped his presentation to question Sandra about the cause of her distress.
"I hate my work!" Sandra sobbed. "It's wearing me out. I'm absolutely exhausted from four years of doing what I detest. I'm sorry I made such a scene in here. But now I feel lots better after releasing all that tension."
With further questioning, over lunch, we learned that Sandra was in a business partnership with her husband Jerome. While Jerome was out every day doing their marketing and selling, Jerome insisted Sandra stay home in their office and manage inventory, organize sales receipts, and log all his business expenditures for tax purposes.
In the opening session of our Saturday workshop we had all replied to a simple set of questions about our natural ways of learning, acting, and relating to others.
While answering those questions, Sandra quickly re-discovered what she had always known about herself:
• She was never designed to focus constantly on details.
• She was, by nature and style, a "creator style" with a leaning toward "supporter."
• Her daily work, as assigned by Jerome, was all "analytical-style," a terrible fit. It was damaging her emotions and health.
• She desperately needed self-expression.
Since that workshop, I've run across a few more systems of "four grid personality" profiling. The concepts are pretty much the same no matter whose system (or brand) it is.
Basically, the concepts are:
• Everyone is either people-oriented (right-brained) or task-oriented (left-brained).
• The people-oriented are called Creators (aka Promoters) and Supporters (aka Helpers). The Creators are the more assertive of the people-oriented styles.
• The task-oriented styles are referred to as Directors (aka Controllers) and Analyzers. The Directors are more assertive than Analyzers.
• Most of us have elements of more than one style. Sandy was a Supportive Creator (strongest as a Creator, with Supporter aspects). Jerome later tested as an Analyzing Director (primarily a Director with Analytical leanings).
If you want to learn more about all the varieties of these four grid studies, do a search on the web under the keywords: personality styles, four grid, personal effectiveness, CORE.
Sandy eventually took over the marketing and sales position within their partnership (a better fit for a creator-style personality). She loves her innovative work and has dramatically increased the business' bottom line. Jerome now directs and manages their growing corporation (a role that suits him much better than people-oriented sales work).
Cait Stanley, formerly sales manager for the leading audio programs producer in the Midwest, now heads up her own company in the areas of global mentoring and training for business professionals.
