Effective teams are good at communicating with each other. A common cause of this kind of breakdown is that we don't properly understand where and how we differ, and then difference becomes a stumbling block. Things improve significantly when we understand and value difference. There are well-tried and tested ways to help us do this, and teams benefit enormously from development work which explains difference and shows how we can use it for better conversations and better outcomes. This article offers a basic guide to understanding some aspects of personality differences in a constructive way.
People have different and recognised ways they prefer to take in information and make decisions.
We all use all of these ways, but some feel more natural to us than others, in the same way that we have a preference to use our right or left hand. To do this, use the questions which follow to show you where you fall on the crossed lines in Figure 1 . Look first at the vertical line in Figure 1 . However, if the latter feels more like you, put a cross on the Intuitive half of the line. Now look at the horizontal line.