How CEOs use personality

Managing people, though rewarding, is incredibly exhausting.

If you’re anything like me, you can sometimes feel rundown when overwhelmed with jumping between tasks like caring for your employees’ well-being, maintaining a positive work environment, persuasively selling your product, working to solve potential production problems, overseeing long-term operations… It feels like the list is never-ending. While the payoff of seeing your company succeed makes everything feel worthwhile, you can’t help but wonder if there was a way to make it all a little easier.

CEOs wear many hats, but usually, our job is primarily people-oriented; we are constantly switching between selling to customers, convincing investors to fund our company, hiring great leaders, and managing a strong team. It can be draining to constantly need to appeal to everyone from an intense, assertive shareholder to a supportive, reserved product designer. Without help, adapting your communication to fit so many unique people with different personalities is nearly impossible. 

Here at Crystal, we’ve created a new, innovative technology that harnesses Personality AI to quickly assess someone’s personality through their social profile online. Once it predicts a personality type, you can see personality insights for them that will help you understand more about their tendencies, preferences, and communication styles. You can also view advice on how to best communicate with them based on different situations. 

Why continue to communicate with guess-work? By taking the time to learn more about someone’s personality, you can help relieve everyone of stress and make sure your message is conveyed in a way that will be easily understood by others. 

Introducing DISC

At Crystal, we use a framework called DISC to better understand individual personalities. This classifies personalities into a few categories that we refer to as D (dominance), I (influence), S (steadiness), and C (conscientiousness). By categorizing personalities in this way, we can communicate with others in a way that helps them understand and relate to us. For example, a prospect who is an S-type (supportive and people-oriented) is unlikely to appreciate a data-focused, impersonal conversation. They may become bored or frustrated, missing the point of the discussion entirely. On the other hand, if they were a C-type (analytical and questioning), they would probably appreciate a discussion that focuses on specific, concrete facts and avoids involving personal feelings. To read more about DISC types, visit our Personality Hub.

Good impressions during outreach

It can be difficult to know how to make a good impression on everyone when you’re constantly meeting new people every day. Whether you’re speaking to a potential client, a small team from a company you’re looking to partner with, or an important, potential investor, it’s important to know how to leave everyone wanting to know more about you and your company. 

Developing a deeper understanding of personality differences can really have a positive impact on everyday outreach. This is because each personality type tends to have unique preferences on what it takes to make a good impression with them.

Straightforward, confident D-types appreciate when someone gets right to the point. Greet them in a serious, businesslike manner, projecting confidence in your product and company. Avoid talking too much or appearing passive.

Excitable, creative I-types tend to enjoy a more light-hearted meeting that allows you to establish personal connections. Try to keep the conversation positive and lively by including interesting, personal stories. With I-types, it’s important to avoid appearing negative or skeptical.

Supportive, peaceful S-types like to feel welcome and appreciated. Invite them to emotionally invest in the conversation by asking them questions about themselves. Avoid pushing too much or prying for specific information, though.

Logical, calculated C-types appreciate when someone seems prepared, respectful, and knowledgeable. If they ask questions, be ready to support your answers with concrete evidence. Be careful to maintain a level-head; avoid being overly enthusiastic or idealistic.

Click the link to learn more about making a good impression.

Hiring

Running a company tends to come with the task of hiring the best people to help lead everyone else to success. Without great managers, work will fall through the cracks, efficiency will decline, and great employees may leave to find work elsewhere. 

CEOs need an easy, effective way to make sure they are hiring the right people to build a strong leadership team. 

Role Reports can make the hiring process so much easier. Members of the team who will be impacted by who’s hired can take a Role Expectations Survey to provide more information about the behaviors they expect from whoever fills the position. This survey allows them to rank characteristics on a scale from Unimportant to Important, which will help you effectively gather information about what others are looking for from a candidate, as well. 

When everyone finishes the survey, you’ll be able to see the ideal personality type for the role. This doesn’t mean you’ll only find your perfect person in a certain type for a role, but rather that the specific type will likely feel the most energized and excited by the expected behaviors for the position. 

The candidates can then complete the Personality Assessment, which will help you learn more about them and see how they compare to your company’s expectations. You’ll be able to see more about their working styles, communication preferences, and natural tendencies. 

This easy tool will help ensure that you hire the person that’s right for each specific role. It helps eliminate bias, reduce human error, and find the perfect candidate by ensuring that each individual’s abilities and behaviors are compared to the expectations of each role, provided by the team as a whole. 

Click the link to learn more about how Role Reports work.

Managing

In order to run a successful, impactful organization, CEOs need to know how to manage a great leadership team, which can be difficult, even with a small group. 

Personality tools can be used to help build balanced teams, delegate the right responsibilities for each person, and resolve conflict more easily. When managers have access to personality insights, after employees take a Personality Assessment, they are able to better understand how each person works independently and how they contribute to the team as a whole. Leaders are also able to understand which tasks help each individual feel energized and excited for work and which will likely lead them to feel drained or upset. 

Personality insights can also help provide an easier solution to conflict by helping create a more comprehensive, empathetic understanding of why people think, act, and communicate the way they do. They will also help you learn how to speak to them in a way that they best understand and appreciate. Resolving conflict becomes much easier when everyone considers how others best interpret a message.

Read more about how managers use personality tools.

Succeed Through Communication

Being a CEO requires a lot of work; there’s no magic formula to make the job effortless. While there will still be product flops and accounting problems, a significant amount of stress will be lifted when you make an effort to improve your communication skills. You can help your company succeed by understanding how people think and behave. Soon, your sales pitches, team meetings, and hiring processes will feel much easier; effective communication comes naturally once you learn how to talk to people in their preferred style.

Try out the tool for free by creating a free account.