by Tom Rath
Your Command talents might compel you to wrestle for the reins of power because you love being in the driver’s seat. But remember that even when you are not formally in charge, your presence can be an unseen yet powerfully felt force.
Step up and break bottlenecks. Others count on your natural decisiveness to get things moving. When you remove roadblocks, you often create new momentum and success that would not have existed without you.
Consider taking the lead on a committee. You have definite ideas about what you would like to see happen, and you can naturally influence a group to follow you. You might be comfortable spearheading new initiatives.
Seek roles in which you will be asked to persuade others. Consider whether selling would be a good career for you.
Find a cause you believe in and support it. You might discover yourself at your best when defending a cause in the face of resistance.
Working With Others Who Have Command
Always ask this person for evaluations of what’s happening in your organization. He is likely to give you a straight answer. In the same vein, look to him to raise ideas that are different from your own. He isn’t likely to be a head-nodder.
When you need to jar a project loose and get things moving again, or when people need to be persuaded, look to this person to take charge.
Never threaten this person unless you are 100% ready to follow through.
COMMUNICATION
You like to explain, to describe, to host, to speak in public, and to write. This is your Communication theme at work. Ideas are a dry beginning. Events are static. You feel a need to bring them to life, to energize them, to make them exciting and vivid. And so you turn events into stories and practice telling them. You take the dry idea and enliven it with images and examples and metaphors. You believe that most people have a very short attention span. They are bombarded by information, but very little of it survives. You want your information—whether an idea, an event, a product’s features and benefits, a discovery, or a lesson—to survive. You want to divert their attention toward you and then capture it, lock it in. This is what drives your hunt for the perfect phrase. This is what draws you toward dramatic words and powerful word combinations. This is why people like to listen to you. Your word pictures pique their interest, sharpen their world, and inspire them to act.
Communication Sounds Like This:
Sheila K., general manager of a theme park: “Stories are the best way to make my point. Yesterday I wanted to show my executive committee the impact we can have on our guests, so I shared this story with them: One of our employees brought her father to the flag-raising ceremony we have for Veterans Day here at the theme park. He was disabled during World War II, and he now has a rare form of cancer and has had a lot of surgery. He’s dying. At the start of the ceremony, one of our employees said to the group, ‘This man is a World War II veteran. Can we give him a hand?’ Everybody cheered, and his daughter started crying. Her dad took off his hat. He never takes off his hat because of the scars on his head from the war and the cancer surgery, but when the national anthem started, he took off his hat and bowed his head. His daughter told me later that it was the best day he’s had in years.”
Tom P., banking executive: “My most recent client thought that the flow of capital toward Internet stocks was just a passing phase. I tried using a rational argument to change his mind, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t be convinced. In the end, as I often do when faced with a client in denial, I resorted to imagery. I told him that he was like a person sitting on a beach with his back to the sea. The Internet was like a fast-rising tide. No matter how comfortable he felt right now, the tide was rising with each crashing wave, and very soon, one of those waves would come crashing down over his head and engulf him. He got the point.”
Margret D., marketing director: “I once read a book about giving speeches that gave two suggestions: Talk only about things you’re really passionate about, and always use personal examples. I immediately started doing that, and I found lots of stories because I have kids and grandkids and a husband. I build my stories around my personal experiences because everyone can relate to them.”
Ideas for Action
You will always do well in roles that require you to capture people’s attention. Think about a career in teaching, sales, marketing, ministry, or the media. Your Communication talents are likely to flourish in these areas.
Start a collection of stories or phrases that resonate with you. For example, cut out magazine articles that move you, or write down powerful word combinations. Practice telling these stories or saying these words out loud, by yourself. Listen to yourself actually saying the words. Refine.
When you are presenting, pay close attention to your audience. Watch their reactions to each part of your presentation. You will notice that some parts are especially engaging. Afterwards, take time to identify the moments that particularly caught the audience’s attention. Draft your next presentation around these highlights.
Practice. Improvisation has a certain appeal, but in general, an audience will respond best to a presenter who knows where he or she is headed. Counterintuitively, the more prepared you are, the more natural your improvisations will appear.
Identify your most beneficial sounding boards and audiences—the listeners who seem to bring out your best communication. Examine these individuals or groups to learn why you are so good when you speak with them or to them, and look for the same qualities in potential partners and audiences.
Keep getting smarter about the words you use. They are a critical currency. Spend them wisely, and monitor their impact.
Your Communication talents can be highly effective when your message has substance. Don’t rely on your talents alone; take your communication to the level of strength by developing your knowledge and expertise in specific areas.
You are gifted in fostering dialogue among peers and colleagues. Use your Communication talents to summarize the various points in a meeting and to build consensus by helping others see what they have in common.
If you enjoy writing, consider publishing your work. If you enjoy public speaking, make a presentation at a professional meeting or convention. In either case, your Communication talents will serve to assist you in finding just the right way to frame your ideas and state your purpose. You delight in sharing your thoughts with others, so find the medium that best fits your voice and message.
Volunteer for opportunities to present. You can become known as someone who helps people express their thoughts and ambitions in a captivating way.
Working With Others Who Have Communication
This person finds it easy to carry on a conversation. Ask her to come to social gatherings, dinners, or any events where you want to entertain prospects or customers.
Take the time to hear about this person’s life and experiences. She will enjoy telling you, and you will enjoy listening. And your relationship will be closer because of it.
Discuss plans for your organization’s social events with this person. She is likely to have good ideas both for entertainment and for what should be communicated at the event.
COMPETITION
Competition is rooted in comparison. When you look at the world, you are instinctively aware of other people’s performance. Their performance is the ultimate yardstick. No matter how hard you tried, no matter how worthy your intentions, if you reached your goal but did not outperform your peers, the achievement feels hollow. Like all competitors, you need other people. You need to compare. If you can compare, you can compete, and if you can compete, you can win. And when you win, there is no feeling quite like it. You like measurement because it facilitates comparisons. You like other competitors because they invigorate you. You like contests because they must produce a winner. You particularly like contests where you know you have the inside track to be the winner. Although you are gracious to your fellow competitors and even stoic in defeat, you don’t compete for the fun of competing. You compete t
o win. Over time you will come to avoid contests where winning seems unlikely.
Competition Sounds Like This:
Mark L., sales executive: “I’ve played sports my entire life, and I don’t just play to have fun—let me put it that way. I like to engage in sports I am going to win and not ones I am going to lose, because if I lose, I am outwardly gracious but inwardly infuriated.”
Harry D., general manager: “I’m not a big sailor, but I love the America’s Cup. Both boats are supposed to be exactly the same, and both crews have top-notch athletes. But you always get a winner. One of them had some secret up their sleeves that tipped the balance and enabled them to win more often than lose. And that’s what I am looking for—that secret, that tiny edge.”
Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom (now known as CBS Corporation), on his efforts to acquire that company: “I relished every minute of it because Viacom was a company worth fighting for and I enjoyed a contest. If you get involved in a major competitive struggle, and the stress that inevitably comes with it, you’d better derive some real sense of satisfaction and enjoyment from the ultimate victory. Wrestling control of a company like Viacom was warfare. I believe the real lesson it taught me was that it is not about money, it’s about the will to win.”
Ideas for Action
Select work environments in which you can measure your achievements. You might not be able to discover how good you can be without competing.
List the performance scores that help you know where you stand every day. What scores should you pay attention to?
Identify a high-achieving person against whom you can measure your own achievement. If there is more than one, list all the people with whom you currently compete. Without measurement, how will you know if you won?
Try to turn ordinary tasks into competitive games. You will get more done this way.
When you win, take the time to investigate why you won. You can learn a great deal more from a victory than from a loss.
Let people know that being competitive does not equate with putting others down. Explain that you derive satisfaction from pitting yourself against good, strong competitors and winning.
Develop a “balanced metric”—a measurement system that will monitor all aspects of your performance. Even if you are competing against your own previous numbers, this measurement will help you give proper attention to all aspects of your performance.
When competing with others, create development opportunities by choosing to compare yourself to someone who is slightly above your current level of expertise. Your competition will push you to refine your skills and knowledge to exceed those of that person. Look one or two levels above you for a role model who will push you to improve.
Take the time to celebrate your wins. In your world, there is no victory without celebration.
Design some mental strategies that can help you deal with a loss. Armed with these strategies, you will be able to move on to the next challenge much more quickly.
Working With Others Who Have Competition
Use competitive language with this person. It is a win-lose world for him, so from his perspective, achieving a goal is winning, and missing a goal is losing.
Help this person find places where he can win. If he loses repeatedly, he may stop playing. Remember, in the contests that matter to him, he doesn’t compete for the fun of it. He competes to win.
When this person loses, he may need to mourn for a while. Let him. Then help him quickly move into another opportunity to win.
CONNECTEDNESS
Things happen for a reason. You are sure of it. You are sure of it because in your soul you know that we are all connected. Yes, we are individuals, responsible for our own judgments and in possession of our own free will, but nonetheless we are part of something larger. Some may call it the collective unconscious. Others may label it spirit or life force. But whatever your word of choice, you gain confidence from knowing that we are not isolated from one another or from the earth and the life on it. This feeling of Connectedness implies certain responsibilities. If we are all part of a larger picture, then we must not harm others because we will be harming ourselves. We must not exploit because we will be exploiting ourselves. Your awareness of these responsibilities creates your value system. You are considerate, caring, and accepting. Certain of the unity of humankind, you are a bridge builder for people of different cultures. Sensitive to the invisible hand, you can give others comfort that there is a purpose beyond our humdrum lives. The exact articles of your faith will depend on your upbringing and your culture, but your faith is strong. It sustains you and your close friends in the face of life’s mysteries.
Connectedness Sounds Like This:
Mandy M., homemaker: “Humility is the essence of Connectedness. You have to know who you are and who you aren’t. I have a piece of the wisdom. I don’t have much of it, but what I do have is real. This isn’t grandiosity. This is real humility. You have confidence in your gifts, real confidence, but you know you don’t have all the answers. You start to feel connected to others because you know they have wisdom that you don’t. You can’t feel connected if you think you have everything.”
Rose T., psychologist: “Sometimes I look at my bowl of cereal in the morning and think about those hundreds of people who were involved in bringing me my bowl of cereal: the farmers in the field, the biochemists who made the pesticides, the warehouse workers at the food preparation plants, even the marketers who somehow persuaded me to buy this box of cereal and not a different one sitting next to it on the shelf. I know it sounds strange, but I give thanks to these people, and just doing that makes me feel more involved with life, more connected to things, less alone.”
Chuck M., teacher: “I tend to be very black and white about things, but when it comes to understanding the mysteries of life, for some reason, I am much more open. I have a big interest in learning about all different religions. I am reading a book right now that talks about Judaism versus Christianity versus the religion of the Canaanites. Buddhism, Greek mythology—it’s really interesting how all of these tie together in some way.”
Ideas for Action
Consider roles in which you listen and counsel. You can become adept at helping other people see connection and purpose in everyday occurrences.
Explore specific ways to expand your sense of connection, such as starting a book club, attending a retreat, or joining an organization that puts Connectedness into practice.
Within your organization, help your colleagues understand how their efforts fit in the larger picture. You can be a leader in building teams and helping people feel important.
You are aware of the boundaries and borders created within organizations and communities, but you treat these as seamless and fluid. Use your Connectedness talents to break down silos that prevent shared knowledge.
