Effectively Collaborate Across Personalities

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking to Devora Zack. She is CEO of Only Connect Consulting, a Washington Post best selling author with books in 20 languages, which in and of itself is amazing. Her clients include Deloitte, the Smithsonian, Delta Airlines, the FDA, and the National Institutes of Health.

She's been featured by The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, Fast Company, and many others. She is the author of The Cactus and Snowflake at Work. Thank you everybody for sending wonderful questions. Managing for people who hate managing and single tasking. Thank you. I know you're super busy. Thank you for carving out a bit of time for us today.

Devora Zack: My pleasure.

Anita Brick: I know many of the people listening have done the Myers-Briggs or the MBTI as it is also known, and one dimension is the one that you kind of focus on in the book, which is thinking and feeling. Maybe to start us off, I'll let you tell us what a cactus is and what a snowflake is.

Devora Zack: These are based in Carl Jung's personality typology, and in a nutshell, the cacti lead with their heads in the snowflake sleeve, with their hearts. So cacti are more logical, analytical, and direct, and snowflakes are more sensitive, empathetic, and diplomatic. However, one thing I want to point out is very few of us are entirely one or the other. Most of us have a little bit of each, and we're somewhere along a continuum. So there's many different versions of the cacti and the snowflakes, and many people can identify with some aspects of either end of the spectrum.

Anita Brick: So this leads us to our first question, which really fits in very nicely here. This came from an alum: “I took the assessment in the book, and I was a near even split. One more for cactus than snowflake. What does this mean and how do I leverage it?”

Devora Zack: Sometimes I do hear this question from people who are right at the middle or near the middle. What does this mean? Is there something wrong with these results? And in fact, what it really means is we can call you a cac-flake or snow cactus. That you're really a combination of both. And if anything, it's a benefit to you. Because while all of us can learn how to communicate with people and other ends of the spectrum, we can teach ourselves, it comes more naturally and easily to people that are in the middle. You can understand both sides of the spectrum inherently, because you have so much of each inside of your own temperament, and often people who are in the middle are gifted at being facilitators or managing conflict or bringing people together because it comes so naturally to understand both languages and both styles.

Anita Brick: And I love that because it is this versatility. Another alum a question–sort of related but as a team lead–and she said: “How would you advise a team leader to create a space to help both the cacti and the snowflakes incorporate the facts and the interpersonal dynamics to create an empathetic and practical solution for their clients?”

Devora Zack: So I have a two-part set of recommendations for this question. The first is, if possible, to have the people in your team take the assessment, the [inaudible 00:03:09] instrument to figure out where the team is on the spectrum, and to discuss different techniques that work with them in terms of building rapport or what motivates or drives them, or what they care about. Having an open conversation around it once people know where they are in the cactus snowflake dimensions.

And then for the leader, I would recommend that you work on something that I call language dexterity, which is modifying how you communicate with the cacti and the snowflakes based on their preferences. And a good place to start with that is, you might notice that some people in your team will say, what do you think about that? And the person might reply, well, I felt like it was really interesting. And the more people use one or the other, the more likely it is that they're either a snowflake or a cactus. So that's a clue you can pick up on and then match that language by being flexible in how you use not just the words think and feel, but translating cactus language into snowflake language and back again.

Anita Brick: What if the team is more one than the other and one is more dominant? How do you make sure that the other element is not lost?

Devora Zack: What if you don't know if there are snowflake or cacti? I mean, it's nice if they can all take the assessment, but what if that's not realistic? So I call it the big two. First, to observe and pick up on clues and cues about how people like to be spoken to and how they like to be engaged with and what motivates them. And then the next is simply to ask what's important to them.

Then to your point, if there is just, let's say, 1 or 2 snowflakes on a team and a whole bunch of cacti, having an open dialogue around it and asking people what matters to them, and giving people the lead in areas that are their natural strengths, all can contribute to a well-functioning team. So being cognizant of it and discussing it, coming up with strategies collectively.

Anita Brick: And I think it's really important. Later in the book you talk about introverts and extroverts, and if you have an introvert who is either a cactus or a snowflake. How do you draw them out to even get a feel for where they sit on that spectrum?

Devora Zack: One of the big components of being an introvert is that you think to talk. So one is by giving people time to process what you're asking or suggesting, or if you have an introducing a new concept, it's always good to give people time to process it. And if you are an introvert in that situation, a great thing to respond to people when they seem to expect an immediate reply is, let me process that. Let me have some time. Take into account that–to your point again–if there's many different components of personality, there's more than just cactus and snowflake, and there's also more than just introversion-extroversion. Even if we're tuned into just 1 or 2 aspects of personality, we're going to be way more effective in terms of how productive we are as a team and how much we connect and have positive outcomes as a team. Just increasing awareness without trying to overwhelm ourselves by taking every piece of a person's psyche into account.

Anita Brick: Oh, that's a really good point. And it goes back to that first question about how do you leverage this? And it sounds like being present is super important. Most people want to be heard regardless of whether they're a cactus or a snowflake.

Devora Zack: And also giving people the benefit of the doubt, understanding that people really are experiencing the world differently. And so to take what might pop up initially as a judgment around someone else's reaction is to replace that with compassion and even curiosity around where this person's coming from, if it's so different from how you experienced the same event.

Anita Brick: I love that the idea of curiosity isn't really judgmental. It's like, hm, I wonder what's going on here? And I like that because it creates an opening for engagement.

Devora Zack: That's right.

Anita Brick: Okay, so here are two related questions about a shut-down engagement, shall we say. So the first one is an MBA student and he said: “I was told by one of my coworkers that one of the leaders didn't like me and didn't think I was all that competent. I know I'm competent, but was still worried. I never asked the leader about this for six months and when I did, I was told it was untrue. What advice would you have to help me avoid jumping into such a negative conclusion?”

Devora Zack: First of all, I want to applaud this student, even though it took six months, but that eventually found out whether it was true or not, because that's hard to do. And so next time it might just be a shorter time frame. But one thing to keep in mind is that when you think you know everything about a situation, you're always wrong. We never have all the information about any situation.

Anita Brick: The related question is from an alumni. And he said: “I tend to react first and pause second, especially to negative information and feedback. How would you advise someone to learn how to pause first without jumping to the wrong conclusion?”

Devora Zack: First step is that self-awareness that that's something you want to work on. A couple of different techniques I can suggest. One is and we just talked about this in the context of an introvert, but it's really helpful for anyone, which is if somebody says something to you and it's potentially negative and you kind of want to jump in and react is to say, let me process this, give yourself that breathing time.

Couple other techniques are when someone says something and you, maybe you're in a group setting. If you have the opportunity to write down what you're thinking about, responding or saying before you speak it, that'll help you be clearer about what you really want to communicate.

And then finally, an acronym a client suggests to me who happened to be an extrovert. But it also is very helpful for all different types of personality styles, which is WAIT. And it stands for “Why am I talking?” So if you want to pause before you react and just remind yourself wait, wait, why am I talking? Give yourself that little bit of space before responding.

Anita Brick: I like that. So here's a question from a friend of CareerCast. So not a student, not an alum. And this person said: “I have a colleague who is very interested in providing unsolicited and unwanted advice. How do I stop him from doing this?”

Devora Zack: And this happens to all of us sometimes. The first thing is to make your response not arguable. If you say, well, I'm not interested in this advice because dot dot dot, then they can poke holes in that and say, oh no, that's not what's going to happen. Or they'll tell you why you're wrong for having that sense. So keep it simple.

If someone's giving you advice that you really don't want is to simply say, hey, I'm good, I've already made my decision. Thank you so much and watch your tone. You can make it friendly, but also conclusive. Thank you so much. We're actually past that decision point and that's it. So not because dot dot dot restrain yourself from going into too much detail.

Anita Brick: Well, and I think it's a really good point because the natural tendency, okay, I should say my natural tendency is to want to tell them to stop and to tell them why what they're sharing isn't good. And I have to, like, pause. I'll use that WAIT acronym, I like that. I have to pause because I tend to want to do that. This kind of goes along with a question that came from an alum. The self-honesty was admirable. So the alum said, “I hate to admit this, but I really do want the other person who is at fault to change. I hesitate even saying this knowing it's impossible. How can I change this pattern within me and where do I start?”

Devora Zack: The place to start is to eliminate the concept of somebody being at fault. People are how they're supposed to be. When we get aggravated by people, they can be our best teachers because they make us have to communicate more clearly or more succinctly or more openly. Those people that aggravate us, we want to say they're not at fault, they're just being who they are.

So if you notice that you're annoyed with someone for doing something that you don't think was right, all you're doing is hitting your head against the wall if you're focusing on the fact that they should change. And when we can notice that we use the word should a lot in our brains, it almost always means should not. So if you're thinking they should change, it means that they should not change. They’re just how they are.

What you can focus on is this RAR model. First, recognize what you're thinking and then accept the fact that you had that thought that they were at fault. But then to revise your self-talk, to revise what you say to yourself. So not to beat up on yourself for what you're thinking initially, not to have negative self-talk about your negative self-talk. See it, be aware of it, accept it, and then just revise how you explain the situation in your mind. And there's three things that we each control in the world. And that's it our thoughts, our words, and our actions. What we think, what we say, and what we do. Can't control that other person. So that's a dead end. So just focus on what you can control.

Anita Brick: So this kind of goes a nice segue into a question from an MBA student about events and nonevents. And maybe you can share a little bit about that. But let me give you the question first: “I'm starting a new job and would really like to know what criteria you would use to assess nonevents from important ones.”

Devora Zack: A very important concept, which is what I call a nonevent. And there's two different ways to look at this reframing model. One is yourself and others and the other is just within yourself. So we'll start with yourself and others. You might walk out of a meeting with a colleague. You might think that the meeting was fine, and your colleague is completely upset and undone because they think it was a disaster and you could think, well, that person's wrong, or they're overreacting. In fact, what was a nonevent to you may have been a major event to the other person. You may not even be aware of something unusual happening, and the other person might think that it was like a showstopper. We don't want to be judging other people for what they experience as an event if we have a nonevent. We just want to say they experienced it differently than us.

However, what about if it's within yourself? If you get worked up about something and you really think it might not be that important, but you're still feeling worked up? One tool I suggest is a simple ruler 1 to 12 inches. Or you can use, of course metrics. And to say when you have an experience that you seem agitated by and you're not sure how significant it was, if it was an event or nonevent is to say, where is this incident on this ruler from 1 to 12, in terms of importance in my life, and very rarely do we get above like a three, how likely am I to remember this a year from now?

And that'll help us assess what are truly nonevents about things that seem important in the moment. Another thing to think about in particular if someone else maybe your impression is, is that they dissed you or that they weren't polite to you. Another acronym I suggest is what I call N-A-Y, which stands for not about you. And more often than not, whatever occurred, if they didn't look up when you walked by or they didn't ask you how you were doing at the beginning of a zoom meeting, it's very often not about you. We can remind ourselves of that when we start to get offended or feelings are hurt, or we feel misunderstood, that it might not even be about you at all.

Anita Brick: In the book you have this–I thought it was really hilarious–you have a story called “beans up your nose.”

Devora Zack: Yeah.

Anita Brick: See, even just saying it makes us laugh, right? It's very funny. It's a story about a teacher, and the teacher tells the students who are doing very well and very well behaved. I believe they were in kindergarten or first grade.

Devora Zack: Something like that, for either age.

Anita Brick: Yeah. Little ones. The teacher had a momentary lapse of wisdom and said, don't put beans up your nose, which clearly created more than a little chaos. So the alum said: “It really made me chuckle about your story about beans up your nose. I tend to point out the wrong things when I'm nervous. Any thoughts or advice about how to change this would be greatly appreciated.”

Devora Zack: Keep this concept in your mind to ask yourself before you say something in particular. The great example in the context of pointing out the wrong things when nervous is, ask yourself, am I putting beans up this person's nose? I ask myself that a few times a day, and occasionally I still put beans up people's noses. Having that kind of go-to inner reminder, you'll start noticing that it'll diminish how many times you say the wrong things when you're nervous. So just practice makes perfect. And because it's such a visceral, fun metaphor, it's easy to remember.

Anita Brick: It's very easy to remember, clearly. It's good.

So shifting gears a little bit. “I'm in the process of starting a new venture”–this is what the MBA students said–”and want to create an effective and unified team. What advice would you have to create a team that has the right balance of the logical cacti and sensitive snowflakes?”

Devora Zack: So I definitely recommend that you go for a mix. And when you're first meeting the people, deciding who'd be a good fit for the team, there's certain questions you can ask that can help you determine if they're more leaning towards one end of the spectrum or the other, asking them what they enjoy about their work. For example, a cactus might say solving problems and a snowflake might say building bridges among people, picking up on what they seem motivated by, what excites them. Ask them what drives them, what they care about. All these questions will help you determine whether they're more prone to cacti or snowflake ends of the spectrum. And then to go for a mix.

Anita Brick: When you think about that, Devora, do you think that cacti and snowflakes have specific functions that they prefer? Or is it you'll find cactus in everything from marketing to finance and snowflake in the same.

Devora Zack: In my experience, certain types of work tend to attract cacti versus snowflakes. However, it's really what motivates someone about their work. For example, I work with a lot of engineers. The stereotype would be okay, well, you would expect them to be more cacti over there because it's such a logical, systematic, scientific kind of field. And when I talk to people that work in that field are in fact cacti, they might say, I love to overcome challenges and to find new solutions. But there are still snowflakes that go into fields like that. What they say, what excites them about it, is that we're helping so many people. So it's really the motivators behind the work that can tell us what's predisposed towards in terms of temperament.

Anita Brick: That's sort of a running thread. It's not the actions but the underlying motivation of those actions.

Devora Zack: Exactly. That's right. I call it the reasons behind behaviors.

Anita Brick: I like that. It's good. Can you tell me a little bit more of what you mean by that?

Devora Zack: Sure. I can just give you a specific example. We might observe someone who's, let's say, vegetarian, and we might just jump to the conclusion, well, that person must be a snowflake because they don't want to eat animals, and they're sensitive to being kind to all creatures on Earth. And all these stereotypical reasons why someone might be a vegetarian.

However, someone could also be vegetarian because it makes more sense globally, that it uses up less land, that it's very practical. When you meet someone who seems to have a job, let's say a kindergarten teacher, and that seems, oh, of course, that person must be a snowflake. Cacti might also really enjoy being a kindergarten teacher, but for a different reason. They like to create structure and have control over the environment. They like to teach in a practical way. We want to be careful about judgments in all components of personality. What we observe doesn't necessarily tell us the reasons behind someone's interest or belief system or focus.

Anita Brick: Good point. Do you have time for a couple more questions?

Devora Zack: Sure thing.

Anita Brick: Okay, so one actually plays off of what you just said, and this is an MBA student. She said: “I self-identify as female and growing up wanted to have nothing to do with the women’s conversations at family events because they seemed way too emotional for me. How can I reintegrate a little bit of the snowflake side without losing the importance of my being logical?”

Devora Zack: Okay, so the first is to be true to yourself. It sounds like what this student wants is to be somewhere, a place on this dimension where they can integrate emotions and empathy with practicality and analysis. I suggest, first of all, disassociating this component of personality from male-female. There's been recent studies on the percentages in the general population.

People who identify as male, about 68% are primarily cacti and 32% are primarily snowflakes. Whereas people who identify primarily as female are 38% primarily cacti and 62% primarily snowflake. So while there is a difference, it's not 100% at all. So to separate out what that necessarily means in terms of gender biases.

Anita Brick: Okay, so how could she reintegrate a little bit of the snowflake side into her, what sounds like, strongly logical side.

Devora Zack: So it sounds like from the way the question is phrased, that she wants to engage in some of the conversations that are more about emotions and snowflakes’ interests, almost like she wants to give yourself permission to do that. On the one hand, she's saying some conversations seem way too emotional, and on the other hand, she wants to reintegrate that side of herself. So I think it's accepting herself as having both components within her and to take the judgment away from that. Also, we talked about judgment of other people, but judgment away from yourself. To see that each aspect of personality is its own superpower, that they each bring a lot to the table, and there's not like one's better or worse, or snowflake is somehow weak. It really just brings another piece of herself to the table and kind of letting that out without having that inner judgment around it.

Anita Brick: That makes sense. Given our audience, they like to run a lot of experiments. So let's just say someone is primarily a cactus. What would be a small experiment that that person could run to experiment a bit with the snowflake side.

Devora Zack: First thing I would say is to find a snowflake friend or colleague. Let's say it's in the context of being on a team and you run team meetings. You say, hey, I'm a total cacti. At the same time, I see the benefit to what snowflakes are good at bringing to groups in terms of sensitivity. What advice can you give me? What do you do to help fortify that aspect of a team? Are there any techniques that you can share with me? So that's one way to do it. Another is to get a snowflake to come to your next meeting. Model some of these activities or methods to integrate snowflakery into the team. And at the same time, to let your team know that this is something you're experimenting with and you welcome feedback.

Anita Brick: Okay, good. All right. Let's do it the other way around. You're a snowflake and you want to be more logical and practical perhaps. What experiment would you run on that side?

Devora Zack: These questions you’re asking is what I call flexing your style. So what you're really asking is, is how can people flex their style? Because of that such a great thing to practice doing. I also want to make clear that there's a difference between learned behavior and inner preferences. It doesn't mean you're somehow being fake or phony if you're trying new behaviors. It actually is just making you more flexible in how you lead and work with others. Let's just put that down as the foundation. And then to know that it doesn't change who you are, just to take on behaviors of the opposite side of the spectrum. You're still true to yourself. You're just learning how to expand your toolkit of how you engage.

So with that in mind, another experiment and I suggest that you do this experiment, practice run with someone filling in for the person you're giving feedback to instead of a real life scenario. If you give feedback to someone, find someone to practice with the way that you would like to have feedback given to you. If you're a snowflake, then it would be along the lines of, oh, you know, I want to soften the blow and I want to, you know, talk about all the great things this person did. And I want to hear about their weekend first before I give feedback. And that might work for a snowflake, but that would drive a cactus nuts if that's how you gave feedback. So to practice flexing your style in terms of how you give–I'm just giving this one example of giving feedback to others, not how you would want to receive feedback, but how would how it would resonate best with a cactus. Starting off by saying something like, okay, so as you know, it's time for me to give you your annual feedback. And I found three areas for you to improve upon and work on. And I have some strategies of how we can address it. And that would work great for a cactus. Trying these different behaviors out.

This is actually why I'm not a big fan of the Golden Rule, which to paraphrase is treat others how you want to be treated because then you won't be as effective as you could be about half of the time. So instead, I say that we should take on the platinum rule, which is treat others how they want to be treated. It's a lot more challenging and more work because you need to customize how you engage with others. However, you'll be a lot more effective.

Anita Brick: It is an iterative process. It is a bit of experimentation because you don't always know, especially if it's somebody new to the team, how they want to be treated.

Devora Zack: That's right. Definitely not make the assumption. This is a big shift for a lot of people, that people want to be treated the way you want to be treated. Respect is relative. So we show our respect to people in very different ways. And that's why in so many organizations, it's a challenge. People say, why can't we just respect each other? And it's because it's not a flat term. It's not just one set of behaviors.

By way of example, let's say someone goes away on personal leave for three months and you work with them, but you're not super close. But you haven't worked together for a few years when they suddenly reappear. How do you show respect to them? So if you're a snowflake and you use the golden rule, you treat people how you'd want to be treated. You might say, hey, welcome back. We all missed you. I hope everything's okay. Let me know if you want to talk about anything. And a cactus might think that is really intrusive and out of line and inappropriate for the workplace and on and on and on.

So if you want to show respect to a cactus who's been away on leave for three months without explanation and what they had, they would find you being respectful is to say, hey, nice to see you.

Anita Brick: It's great, but it's very, very interesting. Most people come from a good place, regardless of whether it's just like, good to see you. And if you're a snowflake, aren't you going to ask me anything? On the other hand, the opposite is also true. It's really very interesting because then people get their feelings hurt and they don't do it again.

But I guess maybe snowflakes get their feelings hurt. Not so much the cacti.

Devora Zack: Well, the cacti get irked.

Anita Brick: They get irked. Yeah I got that.

Devora Zack: That's right. That ties in nicely with what we were talking about before, which is to give people the benefit of the doubt, first of all, and also to focus on our own thoughts, words, and actions in congruence with the big two, which is to observe what other people behavior is and what they seem to prefer, and to ask them. And then to modify how we engage with people in a way that's going to be as effective as possible.

Anita Brick: I like that. You've given us a lot to think about. And as I said, I really did enjoy The Cactus and Snowflake at Work. And the subtitle, actually, that part resonated because I didn't really know what Cactus and Snowflake meant, but maybe that was the whole point to like, get you to think about it. But the subtitle is how the logical and sensitive can thrive side by side.

I just have like a concluding question. And the concluding question is, if you want to thrive side by side, what are three things you would advise someone to do to create that engagement and solid collaboration?

Devora Zack: First is to focus on yourself. Decide that you're the one that's going to meet people where they're at. So focus on your own thoughts, words, and actions instead of trying to fix everybody else. Which reminds me of another important one, which is that nobody needs to be fixed. So everybody is how they're supposed to be. Your job is to find out what is a personally relevant benefit to other people. Work with what matters most to other people.

Another is, is working on your own benefit of the doubt for other people. And I remember that if you think you do know everything about somebody else or a situation that you never do. And so I just start from that point when you're engaging with others.

Anita Brick: Anything else?

Devora Zack: I have a million more tips in the book.

Anita Brick: All right. Sounds good. I will say that just like that, the way you responded to that is how you wrote the book. It is funny and I would say it's solid in terms of how you present things, but you do it with a little bit of flavor, of irreverence. And I really like that a lot.

Devora Zack: So you saying that reminded me. So one more tip. It's definitely with that flavor of irreverence is to keep in mind to mind your own business.

Anita Brick: There you go.

Devora Zack: Instead of dwelling in other people's issues to let them be who they are.

Anita Brick: Good point. Well, thank you so much, Devora. It was great. Your approach is very practical and fun. We need a little bit of both in the world, especially right now. So thanks so much for writing it and having this conversation with us today.

Devora Zack: Thank you, Anita. It was great talking with you.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.