Navigate 5 Personality Types in the Workplace with Dr. Sherene McHenry
Episode 162
Are you feeling trapped in a never-ending cycle of workplace drama and exhaustion? Maybe you're frustrated with working with teammates who seem to speak a different language of motivation or the constant dance around conflict that drains the joy from your career.
In this power-packed episode of the Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo, we sit down with the phenomenal Dr. Sherene McHenry, whose insights redefine the way you interact with your co-workers and yourself. You'll discover the secret language of the workplace - a lexicon to navigate through the five unique personality types that can transform your professional environment and your personal satisfaction within it.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ...
Identify your personal work styles
Create a psychologically safe workplace where each team member feels valued
Tailor your leadership approach to various personality types
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Book: Navigate: Understanding the Five Types of People
About the Guest
Dr. Sherene McHenry, CSP
Long a keen observer of people and relationships, Sherene offered her first, albeit unsolicited, marriage advice before she could drive. Although it was rejected, Sherene went on to earn a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and has spoken on three continents and extensively throughout the United States.
She started her career as a college administrator, but after discovering her passion for unlocking “the light bulb of learning”, Sherene became a professor. After 18 ½ years of pouring into graduate students, she transitioned into being a full-time motivational speaker.
Sherene is the author of Navigate: Understanding the Five Types of People, Pick: Choose to Create a Life You Love, Seven Ways To Get Your Team Fully Empowered and Engaged Guidebook, and The Busy Students' Guide to College and Career Success. She also addresses leadership and workplace issues as a syndicated magazine columnist and has been cited in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal and Speaker Magazine.
Connect with Dr. Sherene McHenry:
Website
LinkedIn
About the Host:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
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I'm excited because today's guest has 18 years as a professor pouring into graduate students. She is a wealth of knowledge. She is a three-time author and the author of the book, Navigate, Understand the Five Types of People.
And that's what we're going to be digging into today, understanding the different types of people, who we are, and who other people are. So that we can better work together in building grit and resilience and showing up in this world. I’m excited to have Dr. Shereen McHenry.
I am thrilled to be with you, Danielle.
Well, so you wrote this book, Navigate, and I want to understand what inspired you to write the book, Navigate, and describe what these five types of people are.
So what inspired me was Dr. Gary Chapman. He wrote The Five Love Languages. And he radically changed my life and all of my relationships changed with that little bit of information and I have faith is a very large part of my life.
One day I was praying, it's like, would you please give me something as simple and profound as the love languages that would transform individuals, relationships, and organizations around the globe? And this is what got downloaded to me over time. It took me a while to see it. I was talking about it one day to my dad and he looked at me, he's like that's your five types.
And I'm like, I didn't even realize it right there.
The Five Love Languages is one of my favorite books. I will oftentimes refer to the Five Languages of Appreciation in the workplace because I found that to be extremely valuable in understanding my team's core values, and understanding the different various ways that they like to feel appreciated.
For our listeners out there, if you go back, I'll have to remember even what the episode is, but over a year ago, I did do an episode based on the five languages of appreciation in the workplace by Dr. Gary Chapman. So go ahead and circle back and find that one.
So Gary Chapman was one of my college professors.
And as I wrote the book, I reached out to him and he did the testimonial for it. So of course, that's a great point of pride for me.
High-Flyers and the Risk of Burnout
So the five types are high flyers, steady gliders, slackers, and hackers.
And so my hunch is the vast majority of your listeners are high flyers.
They're driven and hardworking. They would rather dive and let somebody down. They're competitive. They want to be the best at what they do, and anything worth doing is worth doing right, they have this standard of excellence that makes them an incredible person, an incredible employee, incredibly reliable, and incredibly at risk for burnout.
Because people either inadvertently overload their work capacity, or take advantage of their generosity and their work ethic.
All you have to do is give them a task. It will be done early and it will be done well. But what we have to do with these as leaders is we must ensure that we understand how much work they're doing and quit using them as our go-to easy default.
Because if you're not thinking about it, you're just going to give it to your right-hand person because then the stress is off your plate. And what we've got to do is take care of them and what high flyers have to learn to do is to say no, no thank you if they want to be polite.
And in the book we have seven ways that you can say no without soundbite.
What I've learned in setting boundaries is yes, you can say no. I also believe in reframing it and saying, let's say, for example, somebody asks you to help with a project leading with yes, while also creating boundaries.
So yes, I can help with that project. I currently have a time-sensitive project that I'm working on right now. So. can I start helping you next week when this project is complete? Or should we find somebody else, to help with this project if it is time-sensitive as well? So it's a way of leading with yes, while also setting boundaries.
I love it. It's very skillful. It's very helpful. It doesn't put you on somebody else's ride and timetable, and yet it still shows that wonderful willingness. Leading with a yes is a brilliant way to do that.
I've also learned, too, that when we are saying yes to one thing, one action, We're saying no to another.
And I recently experienced a burnout where I found myself saying yes to everybody. I was working all day and then I didn't have time to necessarily have calls. And so people would ask me, Oh, can you talk in the evening? And so I'd work during the day, then I'd help my kids with their homework and bedtime routine, and then put them to bed.
And then I'd be on phone calls at night. And I finally said, Enough is enough. I'm saying yes to myself, my time for me to relax and recharge, because otherwise I'm saying yes to everybody else, and no to myself.
And what I want to say is, so many people fail to realize that and they don't say yes to themselves and then they're doing everybody else's work.
I call them the parade pooper scoopers and what happens is their dreams get squandered and they aren't accomplished because there's only so much energy and time that each of us has.
You worked all day, then you gave to your kids, and then you gave away your own time, and that's when result, burnout is the result.
And one of the things that I love to do is permit people to take care of themselves because you're worth it, your primary relationships are worth it, your hopes and dreams are worth it, and you've got to be so careful because if you don't take care of yourself, burnout is the result. I've done it, sounds like you have, and that's a pretty scary place to be.
I think that a lot of times what we can do is we can always find a way to lead with yes, while also setting parameters and boundaries of when that yes is.
We're going to start to get resentful of people and that's not going to be in service to anybody. I agree. And I want to say, I bet your children are happier because what they hear is that they're a priority. And I bet every primary relationship. is happier because what they know is that they're getting the best of you and that you love them and care about them enough to protect your time and energy.
And that's the gift I want all high flyers to have because otherwise high flyers just get way too much work, then they do get resentful, and they get burned out. Maybe they go somewhere else. And if it doesn't get resolved, and they stay to become hackers, and that means they're unhappy, and they're causing problems.
Role of Steady Gliders in Team Dynamics
The second type is a steady glider. They are first cousins to the high flyer. They are reliable, hardworking, and conscientious. They are a little bit different in that they chunk stuff out. They don't want to be the leader. They want to be on a team.
They'll turn down promotions. Because they're happy in their job and they love what they're doing and they want to show up at work at nine o'clock and leave at five o'clock and not have to worry about it until eight fifty-nine the next morning.
And so the savvy leader understands that not everyone is driven to the top of the heat and that because somebody says no doesn't mean that they're not ambitious.
That's not their dream. That's not their goal. It's not their life space. Maybe in five years, it could be their life space.
And so with steady gliders, we want to acknowledge that they are values-based and they are values-based primarily with their family, their community, and their passions. And so we need to value them and then they need mentoring high flyers.
They know they'll figure out a way to get it done.
Steady gliders have a bit of a freak out with new jobs new assignments and new tasks.
So it takes a little bit more work as a leader, but you get so much more if you treat them with the dignity that says your values are important and you mentor them into the person that they are becoming and can become. So these people are often made to feel as though they are again unambitious, unimportant, and not enough.
I want to give voice to them and say no, you are enough and you are the social glue of workplaces.
You're the one who slows down long enough to care about people. You are needed and you are valued. So that's my heart for every leader is to understand their study gliders.
We all have a place in this world.
We all add value and we get to remind ourselves of that every single day.
Dealing with Lacker Mentality
All of us are lackers at some point.
Lacker is somebody who continues to run into the same brick wall. They continue to have the same problem. They continue to trip up over the same thing.
Can be incredibly frustrating for leaders because what most leaders do is they assume that it is a skill set problem. And so they send them for more training.
And what I want to say to you is if it works they were simply lacking in knowledge. It truly was a skill-set problem. But most of where we get tied up in life is a mindset problem.
And so a mindset problem is something else is going on. And it doesn't matter how much training you give it until they resolve the underlying problem, they're going to continue to have problems.
I learned who I was, and what I want to learn to tell myself the truth.
And so what we need to do is It's a leader mindset problem, skill set problem, skill set, training works, mindset. We have to dig deeper, not your job to self-diagnose.
There's just something that's going on in their life that may be affecting how they're showing up at work, and we must address that mindset.
We support them.
One of the things we have in our society is what's called a flu model for grief, which means if you lose somebody, the world wants you back in a week to be back who you were, and the research on grief and loss just says that's not possible. It just isn't how it works.
So we need to know what's going on. And the other thing that can cause people to show up as lackers is trauma. And what I want your listeners to recognize is if a traumatic event occurs, they need a trauma-trained counselor. Otherwise, a counselor who's not trained will retraumatize them. And one of the cool things that I just learned within the last year, keeping up with the research is.
When something traumatizing happens, the research says, get out your phone and start to play games. And what happens is, the memory doesn't get lodged in our brain in a traumatized way. It almost is like it vaporizes. And I've used it and it works. It's amazing. And so trauma is, again, something that we are encountering.
Heinous things happen in our world, and God forbid they ever happen in your listeners' personal lives or their workplaces, but we need to be skilled and know at least a little bit about trauma so that we can be the best leaders that we can be.
Integrating Rockets into Your Team
What the rest of the world who doesn't understand them calls them. You're such a slacker.
Why don't you get your work done? Fine. Give it back. I knew I couldn't trust you. This is the person who the leader says, why don't people just do their job?
And these people baffle high flyers in particular. And so here's what I want you to know. Yes, there are lazy people in this world. There truly are slackers who do not feel bad about you doing more so that they can do less.
And so like for me, I am a rocket, and I call myself a high-performance rocket so my preferred mode is rocket. I love it as time ticks down and I have to get an adrenaline rush it gets everything thinking faster, and then it forces me to work hard and fast.
Because I don't like the steady glider approach of chunk it out. That's the kiss of death for me.
Now, some of you are going, Oh, I still don't know if I want a rocket on my team. The answer is yes, you want a high-performance rocket. And so they need to do their job. They need to get things done. Well, they need to get them done on time. They can do all of those things with really good leadership and without driving you to drink.
And then the gift that they bring to the workplace is they respond so well in crisis.
You want them on your team. You just don't want them to drive you to drink.
So I would assume that many people may see them as procrastinators. However, it's that just they do better. in a shorter amount of time during that rocket launch, and that's when they're the most effective. So I agree with you that when it comes to setting a timeline if it's due Friday, tell them Wednesday.
Always build in your buffer, otherwise you are living under anxiety. And you just have to learn to trust them, and they have to show you that they are trustworthy.
You need to hold them accountable. And that means having a conversation. And if you have to have a conversation twice, it's like, hey, We've talked about this, what's going on, what help do you need, and maybe they have.
Something they're lacking in and they need to go work on that.
But most of the time, it is just how they work. I love, truthfully, I love being a rocket. I love working hard, working smart, working fast. I love solving things on the fly. I love being a rocket. And then the part of me that is the high flyer, high flyers are high flyers across the spectrum.
I'm on a high flyer in my speaking and my writing. I don't want there to be a better speaker you ever hire, and I want you to read impeccably written, rich, life-changing books that I write. The rest of the world I don't care a whole lot about. Unless I'm learning a sport, in which case I want to be good at whatever sport I decide is important to me.
But the rest of the world, it's like, I don't know if I get it great, if I don't, great.
And if you are a rocket, I'm going to give you a clue. It is going to be easier for you to adjust to your boss and to somebody else who is highly anxious than for them to adjust to you. And if you will prove consistently over time that you are trustworthy, they will begin to trust you and they will have their stress level go way down.
They just can't do your ride. Don't take them on your ride.
They would go up six inches, fall over, and be out of commission. So don't ask a high flyer to do that.
The Covert and Overt Tactics
There are lacker hackers.
They are lacking conflict resolution skills. They don't know what to do. They may not be able to self-regulate their emotions very well.
They feel attacked if anybody dares to disagree with them. And they can blow up and eviscerate people. So they're in their face, they're yelling at them.
They're becoming passive-aggressive. They're giving people a silent treatment. They are lacking a critical skill set for leaders and life satisfaction. And so If you do not have conflict resolution skills, you need conflict resolution skills. If you are a leader, your people need conflict-resolution skills.
I was working with a really large company and was doing management training for all their new managers, and one of the senior vice presidents came up afterward and said, You know, this past year I got very angry at one of my coworkers, and I began to yell at him in a meeting, and I did it because I love my company.
And I said, Oh, I love that you are loyal and love your company. And you're going to need some conflict resolution skills. He's like, Oh my gosh, that's what my wife tells me. I'm like, how long can we be? And so they brought me back for employee wellness day. And he said, Do you remember me? I'm like, of course, I went and got some conflict resolution skills.
I'm so proud of you. Everything is better. But do you want to know what got him going? They told him if he ever did that again, he would no longer work with them. And that's what leadership is: saying hacking behavior is psychologically unsafe. It is not going to be tolerated here. It is destructive.
It ruins the culture, and we will not tolerate hacking behavior. So there's the lack of a hacker, an unskilled mindset, a skill set, or maybe both. Then the second one is the covert hackers. They're the people who act nice to your face and helpful to your face, and they stir the pot behind your back.
And you often don't know until, like, friction starts to happen.
But it's gossip, it's innuendo, it's misdirection, it's lying about the facts, and it's pitting people against each other. These are cancers on your team. If you know that somebody is gossiping, you need to say that we will not gossip on this team because if they're gossiping about you, they will gossip about you.
You need to listen.
When you interview them, how do they talk about their other boss, their other work, and other people? Because if they do it to anybody else, you will be next. It doesn't matter. how long it takes. It will eventually have. So those are the behind-the-scenes cancerous behaviors. And then there are the overt hackers.
They are actively causing problems and do not. So according to the Gallup poll, about 33 percent of American workers say that they are committed to their work in their workplace. About 50 percent say they're passively disengaged, and a whopping 17 percent say that they are actively disengaged and trying to cause problems.
That's the covert hacker and the overt hacker. And then, within that overt hacker, there are people in there who have some mental health issues and who actually delight in tormenting people. They pick a target, they bully them, they bully in front of other people, and they do it in front of leaders, and it's the leader's job to be brave and to say, We are going to disagree, and we will do it civilly.
The tone of this conversation is no longer professional, and you need to create psychologically safe workplaces if you want to retain your best talent and get the best out of them. And so that is why a leader's job can be terrifying. And our job is to say not on my watch. That is not acceptable.
So those are who the hackers are.
If there's one thing that I learned from leading a team for an organization, it's that if the hackers are not addressed early on and have discussions early on, they can have the ripple effect of causing cancer within the organization, and they can spread like wildfire.
So just one hacker could ignite a fire within your team and engulf the team in negativity that negatively affects the culture, and it's so important to address that.
Courage and Intentionality
This information is deceptively simple. And somebody once said to me that just because something is simple doesn't mean it's easy.
It takes courage and it takes intentionality, and it is worth every bit of your effort and every bit of your listener's efforts if they want to succeed in life if they want to be incredible leaders if they want to lead psychologically safe organizations, and if creativity, individuals, and the organization are just a burst and doing phenomenally.
It takes courage and intentionality, but it can be done. And that's why I get so patient about it. So you have heard my heart, my passion, and what it is that I desire for your listeners and us. Life is easier when we understand ourselves and other people.
When we can understand ourselves, we can better understand the people that we're working with, collaborate, create healthy teams and environments, and have a more fulfilling career.
And so I'm so grateful that you came on and shared these five different types of people.
You want to better understand yourself and the people that you're working with because we spend more time at work than we often do at home, and we want it to be an environment where we enjoy the people that we're working with and we're lifting the skill sets of other people.
You are wise beyond your years, Danielle. I love your work. I love this podcast. I loved being a guest today. And it's just delightful to glean your wisdom and life experience, especially from the corporate world. So thank you for the privilege. And I'm so grateful for every listener who's listening to this.
We believe in you.
