During the period while I was making my internship, the word "personality" adopted a special meaning on the daily development of my duties. A huge barrier between my female boss and me arouse, and conflict didn't take too long to appear. Was it that my performance was not being successful enough? Was it that my boss was the "bitter" component of the office as everybody used to say? Or was it maybe that personalities entered into conflict due to the ignorance of the fact that they were too different?
According to the American Psychological Association (2011), personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving [1]. Having this in mind, asking ourselves why is it important for managers and employees to be able to understand different types of personalities has a very simple answer: for not having an unbearable period together and to accomplish common goals!
Staying attached to my experience during my internship period, my boss could just not understand that the way I distributed my time was more than efficient for accomplishing the tasks I was appointed and that I just could not distribute it as she would, due to the simple fact that it was not my style to do so. However, I didn't understand either that she was absolutelly rigid in terms of time and exploitation methods of it, as well as should have also understood that she was a person accustomed to be obeyed just the way she said things and with no interest on having other opinions regarding that way. Not undestanding each other's styles made in fact a real chaos inside that office and 'unbearable' was a cute word to describe the feeling we had for each other. Nevertheless, studying international business had to work for something (I mean, I had paid very expensive semesters for not being that way) and fortunately, and with a little help of someone with whom I worked, she learnt to respect my time distribution way and I learnt to obey her orders, suggesting nicely my opinions from an approach she liked. We learnt to tolerate each other's personality and to work together as a team on behalf of the country's interests (we worked in the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
So, maybe as a short illustrative personal case study, this experience may serve in answering the posed question. Why is it then important? Because of the huge difficulty that we humans have to accept that others are different than us and to bear those differences, and in order to overcome difficulties arising from that condition, the understanding of and respect towards differences is the only way to smoothly achieve common goals and performance of tasks.
1. American Psychological Association, APA, 2011. Personality. http://www.apa.org/topics/personality/index.aspx. Accessed 7 March, 2011.
Image source:
Doug Savag, 2007.
Retreived on March, 2011, from:
http://www.savagechickens.com/2007/06/religious-differences.html
Hi Mauro, Thanks so much for sharing this experience. I guess that is the idea that we can see how theories work on real life or sometimes they just do not fit reality. The way I look at it is that at the end of the day we all are different, but then shared values is what let us work (and live)together...what do you think?
ResponderEliminarHmmm, well, I'd actually argue that shared values let us work or live together. I think that coexistence and teamwork results come to a satisfactory outcome (when it does), just because of material or legal pressures. Material in terms of money, goals or defined objectives, which underlie being willing to cooperate. And legal, well because consequences of acting as your impulses dictate are really nasty!
ResponderEliminarI'd actually like to discuss this more profoundly with you and know your opinion about it.