Posted by Nathalia Lopes on 14 Junho, 2022
Each professional has their own characteristics of experience, training and curriculum, but all fall, with minor variations, into four distinct and well defined behavioral profiles.
Understanding these bases of human behavior is an essential weapon for increasing productivity in any company. A boss who knows how to anticipate the reactions of his team is hardly surprised and can plan and organize his work better, so as to meet the goals that are imposed on him.
There are four basic behavioral profiles - in any person, there is one that is predominant and, with this, has great chances of determining the individual’s reactions when faced with virtually any type of situation.
Applying the theory to the business and business field, we can separate the vast majority of a company’s employees into four types: communicators, executors, planners and analysts.
Separating into groups
Even before conducting experiments and applying maps that can objectively evaluate a staff according to the behavioral profile of each one, it is necessary to understand why such a division. Well, with a few predominant features in each of these profiles, it’s easy to understand why they’re separate:
Communicator: is a communicative person and usually endowed with great charisma and power of persuasion. He is always enthusiastic about projects and novelties, tends to be very optimistic and relates with ease;
Executor: endowed with extreme self-confidence, this type of professional is dominant and, in extreme cases, can be authoritarian and dictatorial. Accepts and gets along well with challenges and difficulties, has a sense of extreme competitiveness and is usually courageous in their postures and in defending their points of view;
Planner: they are stable and patient people, of constant rhythm and high degree of conservatism. They hardly panic, but they have a small improv ability;
Analyst: Thorough and meticulous, the analyst is organized, responsible and highly conservative, being skilled at controlling repetitive processes and routines.
The separation into groups is not about creating rivals, different types or anything like that - it serves only as a tool for managing and managing human resources, not just for the benefit of the company’s productivity, but also in order to create more effective methods and dynamics of collaboration among the various members of the same team or company.
Once everyone is separated into groups, it’s time to understand how each profile can be used in its strengths, and also in order to balance teams and compensate for weaknesses in distinct profiles, without losing the direction of productivity and excellence.
The communicator
People with a predominantly communicative profile are more dispatched, exert influence and empathy over others, and tend to be creative and communicative. These people can be used as instruments of socialization in teams, making their members more united and generating a lighter environment, where communication takes place in a more natural way.
Insertion should be done carefully, because although communicators print energy, they do not necessarily excel at results and have serious difficulties in complying with schedules, standards and procedures. They are strong to motivate, but hardly to follow something to the letter.
Teams with few communicators tend to not communicate well with the other departments of the company, have lower morale and do not perform tasks in a vibrant or exciting way. The lack of communicators can also undermine the team’s self-confidence.
On the other hand, teams that have a very strong communicative character can promise more than they are actually able to fulfill, tend to ignore higher and other departments' determinations and have an impulsive character and little self-control. The organization is usually flawed and delays are constant in deliveries and commitments - several projects can even be completed, since people with this profile get bored easily and lose interest in an activity or goal.
The possibilities are countless and, even with only four types of profiles, and for you to understand and locate where are the focuses of problems, it is necessary that the mapping is performed frequently (2x per year on average).
The executor
Teams with many performers usually pursue results frantically. People of this character are objective and direct, waste no time in detail and concentrate all their efforts on the accomplishment of a task.
They are determined and rarely give up on a goal, even when it seems to prove unattainable or unnecessary. The challenges and the ambition are usually the engines that drive the performers forward, which in addition need some freedom of action to develop.
Teams with an excessively executing profile will probably meet their goals, but will not follow the dictates of the company and, at the same time, will stop working together with other departments, or even dispersed within the same team. They rely excessively on their own capabilities.
On the other hand, teams that lack executioners tend to be less enterprising and tend to hesitate long before making decisions. These teams may also feel cornered and intimidated not only in the face of goals, but in relation to customers or suppliers.
The planner
Planners are calm and reliable and, although less communicative, tend to be easy to live with. They avoid direct conflict and have an exacerbated sense of justice. In the execution of tasks they act with peace of mind, but can postpone or postpone achievements in the name of better planning or strategy, regardless of the urgency of results.
These people influence a group in order to stabilize conflicts and bring everyone closer to a point of balance. Generally loyal to the company, the planner is a good contact and follow-up vehicle within a team, informing and giving feedbacks. His pessimism and fear, however, is a point to be worked on - which can be mitigated by the presence of a strong communicator in the same group.
Teams with planners do not cause many problems, are excellent at reporting, but hardly produce impressive results. Many of the decisions are not taken and remain under review until someone with a more dominant profile takes the reins.
The analyst
Analysts never pass on details - for them everything needs to be done with method, fulfilling details, following step by step and offering security, guarantees and perfectionism. It’s for people with that profile that pressure has the most devastating effect. When over-pressured, analysts shut down or leave the scene, leaving everything behind.
Teams that require a high degree of expertise tend to have many analysts. Under the positive aspect, these teams develop flawless work, without errors and with surgical precision. However, without command or decision, they tend to waste too much time developing something that doesn’t need to be taken to the letter or contain all the details.
Your excess of caution can lead to stressful situations when, subsequently, part of your work is ignored in the name of productivity.
Predominantly analytical teams can be indecisive and impractical. Excess pride is another of the problems, and while the work or creation of an analyst is perfect, he will generally view his own work in an extremely critical way.
However, especially in areas related to knowledge and research, the lack of analysts can create useless results, without science, imperfect and poorly realized.
Assembling pieces
As we have seen, it is not just specific functions that require particular profiles. Entire sectors within a company need to have a predominance of one of these categories, depending on their duties and obligations.
For example, it’s almost impossible to imagine a research and development team that only contains communicators, or a marketing team that has an overwhelming majority of analysts.
However, we should still not be guided by stereotypes. Things like "marketing people are creative" or "engineers are too detail-oriented" just make you make the wrong decisions, even when you have access to the profiles of each of your employees.
Each company has distinct goals and you must evaluate the role of each department and after each job individually, so as to build cycles that produce the results you seek quickly, functioning as a gear in which the four profiles complement each other (and do not cancel each other out).
A very interesting idea when it comes to assembling and adjusting your frames according to profiles is design thinking - nothing better than drawing sketches and organigrams, so that you can see in images the way in which the various sectors of the company interact, simulating clashes and conflicts of profiles and creating production routes that can actually move between them. Don’t just draw squares for each department - define the routes visually and ask yourself about problems that may arise in each department.
Whenever you’re not sure, experiment with your drafts - what happens if you put the financial and legal departments to work on a joint project? Is your communications department really the one with the most communicators? What is the predominant profile in your sales department and how is this helping or disrupting performance?
Source: https://blog.solides.com.br/os-4-tipos-de-perfis-dentro-de-sua-empresa/