Learning Objectives

• Describe the strengths, weaknesses and reaction to stress for the four basic personality styles.
• Explain how to identify the four basic personality styles.
• Describe how to flex each style to effectively communicate with other people.

Knowledge of project management technical skills such as scheduling or budgeting is not sufficient to avoid project failure. Project managers need well developed soft skills including leadership, conflict resolution and communications. However, project managers will not have good soft skills unless they possess emotional intelligence, which is the ability to recognize and manage your feelings, and effectively deal with the feelings of other people. Emotional intelligence also includes recognizing how you deal with other people and how you react when under stress. This is your personality style. The successful project manager also recognizes the styles of other project stakeholders.

This talk will explore how to better understand yourself and others and give you ideas on how to adapt your personality style to improve interactions with project stakeholders. It will focus on two of the more common personality models in use, which are the DISC (dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness) model and the four-color model, both which define four personality types. Other behavior models including the Myers-Briggs indicator model and Enneagrams, both of which will be briefly reviewed. The presentation will also explain the key strengths and weaknesses of the four styles as defined by the DISC and color models. More importantly, the talk will discuss how each style responds when faced with a stressful situation. We will also provide tips on how to identify the styles of project stakeholders and explain how to flex your style and effectively communicate with other people based on their personality styles. This talk will help you improve communications with your project stakeholders and lead to improved project team performance.