How to Best Manage the 5 Personality Types in a Meeting
A good meeting always consists of people bringing something unique to the table. You want the best ideas to be incubated and tested, or else why even have the meeting? However, one of the hardest parts of being an effective meeting organizer is being able to manage different personality types and getting the most out of their unique perspectives and skillsets.
These personality types generally fall into 5 archetypes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. This article explains how to identify these archetypes, maximize their strengths, and minimize their weaknesses.
Expressives
These are the ones who share their ideas and opinions openly, making them pretty easy to identify. They’re great at getting the discussion going and really act as the lubricant for a well-oiled meeting. What you need to be careful of is letting the expressive types dominate the conversation, which can happen quickly the more there are in a room. The only thing you have to do as the organizer with this type is occasionally stop the conversation, bring things back to the bigger picture, and direct questions towards those who have not chimed in yet.
Passives
You could say these are the opposite of expressive types; they’re more introverted and likely to avoid conflict. Passive types can easily go the entire meeting without saying anything and are happy to go along with whatever the expressives are saying. It’s a shame though since passives tend to be more observant and creative, often having novel ways of looking at problems. If you’re aware of the passive types before the meeting starts, it’s best to ask them their opinion on a topic first thing. This reduces the odds of a herd mentality, where passive types simply agree with an idea already posed.
Skeptics
Also known as the nay-sayers. Similar to expressives, these types don’t mind giving their opinion, but usually it’s in opposition to someone else’s. It’s good to have skeptics in a meeting because it adds an element of practicality. Brainstorming can often lead to “pie-in-the-sky” concepts and skeptics help bring the conversation back down to earth by reminding everyone of real-world limitations. At the same time, you don’t want them to kill the creative juices the group could have going. To avoid this, when a skeptic stands in opposition to an idea, put them on the spot and ask for a more realistic alternative. If they don’t have one, they’re less likely to poo-poo ideas in the future without thinking proactively.
Custodians
The meticulous ones in the group. You’ll often see these types jotting down notes or drawing ideas on a whiteboard throughout a meeting. If you have one of these in attendance, take full advantage by asking them to take notes for the whole group, take photos of any whiteboarding, and share with everyone once the meeting’s done. The only problem to worry about as the organizer is if none of the attendees are custodians. In that case, it’s really up to you to act as the custodian, which you can do while still facilitating the meeting discussion.
The Boss
No need to identify this type, everyone should know right away. This is the decision-maker in the room who everyone stops to listen to when they speak. What’s great about having a boss type in the room is that they can be concise and reduce the amount of back and forth in a meeting. The danger is that they could be over-confident and have a predetermined outcome in mind regardless of the arguments put forth. This is the hardest archetype to manage since oftentimes they have a high position or status within the company. The goal here is to facilitate the conversation so that the boss figure has all the information and can make the most informed decision possible. If you’re the meeting organizer as well as the boss figure, the goal should remain the same.
Hopefully, this helps you get the most out of the meetings you organize going forward. However, managing personalities is just one aspect of running great meetings. For ways to make your remote meetings more effective, check out this article with some simple advice. Tendii also offers a web tool that helps facilitate better hybrid and remote meetings, you can learn more using the link below.
