What Change Managers can learn about delivering training to different personality types

When you’re planning and delivering training as part of your change, it’s so important to recognise that it’s not a one-size-fits-all. Developing the training approach, content, and activities in line with the personality types who will be in the room, on the call, or receiving the training materials is critical. However, sometimes we think sussing out people’s personality has to take a lot of time and we couldn’t possibly gauge it just from first impressions, thereby foregoing our chances to build a better relationship and deliver to their preferences.

If you’re in my Leading Successful Change program, you’ll know that in Module 3 I share great ways to engage different personality types in communications and then we add to this in Module 4 when I share some creative ways to gauge people’s personality types before you even walk in the room or jump on a call with them!

But what I’d say is: it may not take as much time as you think to guess someone's primary personality type. 

Here are some quick and easy tips to make a great gauge in no time:

Think about the team they’re in

Different teams attract or foster particular personality types, so knowing ahead of time who’s in your training is a great way to make a fairly good guess as to who’ll most likely make up the group and you can tailor your training accordingly. 

Take note of their dress

They tell you not to judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to instantaneous stakeholder engagement you’ve got to use all the clues at your disposal. The way your stakeholders show up based on their attire can help you to start to get a read on what personality type they could be. 

The way they're sitting

Again, where and how people sit in the training can give you a good gauge on things such as whether they are more confident (usually more front or forward) or less (hiding further back or in a group).

The way they speak and the words they choose

You can very quickly pick up on someone’s likely personality type based on the tone, volume, and speed of their voice and the words and language they use.

And even if you don’t nail the personality types in the first instance, it’s not the end of the world. Rapport can always be rebuilt even if you get it wrong and lose connection. Just start taking notice and practising and it will become second nature to you, making it easier to gauge and guess in a flash.

Lata xx

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