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John Marsh (Marsh Collective, Redemptification Podcast) is a guy who cares deeply about people. It’s behind his obsession with restoring irreplaceable real estate in small towns across the Southeast, helping couples rebuild marriages and lives, and connecting individuals with each other and with work that fulfills them and fits their talents and ambitions. In a recent episode of Permanent Podcast, John talked with Brent Beshore about how his deep care for and commitment to people (and the long journey it took to get there) has affected how he thinks about hiring people, planning projects, and building teams:

We don't pick projects, we pick people. Our number one thing is you can't make a good deal with a bad guy and you can't make a bad deal with a good guy.

Finding the good guy or gal means putting a lot of thought, time, and effort into building relationships and understanding the motivations, skills, fears, and challenges that drive somebody – and how those fit with the other people involved in a company, a marriage, or a friendship.

One of the tools in John’s toolbox is the personality test. We’ve talked about personality assessments in the context of hiring and have used them in our team and for candidates for portfolio company positions. But if you’re new to the idea of using personality assessments in your company and don’t know how to start (or, and you’d be forgiven for this, you think they’re a little woo-woo), John provides a road map for how to get started – and what they can and can’t tell you. 

You’re the Guinea Pig

The easiest way to run the personality test experiment is to start with yourself. Not only is it a low-stakes way to see if a particular test will give you the type of information and feedback that’s useful to you, it also lets you, as a leader, model what the analysis means while showing humility and self awareness.

It’s a leadership test in and of itself: 

1. Test validity and bring people with you: “People are down on what they're not up on, so take the test yourself… It’s gonna be approximately wrong and partially right… It's not who you are. It's a pair of shoes. You ordered them online and you hope the size is right. Try 'em on.” 

2. Invite feedback: “But you can tell your people, ‘So I got this test, and it says that these are my qualities… Can y'all gimme feedback? How right is this on a scale of one to ten?’”

3. Demonstrate leadership: “That’s the way leaders have got to do it. They've gotta live it before they give it. And so it ain't something everybody needs to do. It's something you need to do.”

4. Model vulnerability: “Most companies, all they wanna know is, does he know he's this way? They know how messed up we are. They just wanna know that we know. And that we're willing to admit it. [And to ask for help.] Everybody wants to help if you're ready to change.”

What It Means

There are any number of different types of personality assessments you could use, from Myers-Briggs to Enneagram to DISC Assessments and beyond. And, again, John’s not advocating these tests as the be-all end-all of understanding an individual or as a way to judge them. Instead, he and his team “use it as a way to meet them and be for them.”

What does that look like? 

An example from Five Voices, which is based around Myers-Briggs and specifically highlights communication styles: 

If they're a present voice, you're going to know it cuz they're talking about the details and they're talking about right now. And if they're a future voice, they're going to start from the future vision. And if something's compelling enough in the future, they'll work back to the details. But the present voices are trying to get the details now on how it impacts us. What's hard is to build the bridge. The bridge takes those present voices and brings 'em to the future and the future voices back to the detail of the present and allows them to see one another enough to do this.

The act of simply recognizing where those bridges need to be built between different types of worldviews is a powerful insight for teams:

[That disconnect] is hard on teams, right? A lot of times you'll have a leader come in and he's visionary, “Boom, boom, boom, boom.” And some of the things he's saying are dreams, which we call provisional. Some of 'em are real plans. And some of 'em are promises he's made. Well, present voices hear all of these as promises.

So when you're talking and dreaming and they don't know it, they're thinking, “Oh my God, we've gotta do it.” It brings a lot of stress in the team when you don't see where someone's coming from or have a common language to say, “Have we committed to this? Are we going to do this? Or are we just brainstorming?”

From this type of data point, you might rethink how you run meetings, present ideas, construct teams, or think about deadlines. 

Leading with Personality

Knowing that your people are predisposed to approach situations, interactions, and tasks in particular ways (the future voice or the present voice, open decision-making or closed decision-making, judging or perceiving…) gives you and your team insights into why their co-workers work the way they do and how to structure work and expectations to line people up in such a way that their gifts and their wiring make their success almost inevitable. 

Fundamentally, it’s about recognizing strengths: “It isn't that we can't do the other side, it's just there's more stress. Like, imagine if you're right-handed, using your left hand a lot. That's what using your non-dominant gift is like now you can build your left hand up, but it's still got stress to it.”

And about getting a common language to communicate with and show up for the people around you more effectively. Ultimately, you’re trying to pick the right people – and to put them in a position to succeed. Personality tests provide a shorthand for understanding how the people around you are more likely to think about things, make decisions, process information, and respond to stress. 

But they’re not the only way to get there. Eat a meal together. Meet spouses and significant others and kids. Ask questions and really listen to answers. Approach conversations with an ear towards whether someone is against what you’re against, for what you’re for, or for you. Remember that people conceptualize problems, challenges, solutions, and strategy in vastly different ways. Pull on threads of thought processes and motivations. Arrange meetings and conversations with different collections of people and unique perspectives in different settings. Keep your asshole radar up. And don’t be an asshole yourself.

Hear more conversations like this one – subscribe to Permanent Podcast on your favorite platform.