You’re either a creative that has 10 projects waiting in the __ or you can’t stop switching from project to project without finishing them.
A (blank business owner) I helped work with her on breaking down her short-term and long-term goals to work backward of finding how to prioritize her time and creative projects that would get her to her goals.

Sometimes we build perceptions of our team members that are not the reality of their true potential/strengths. We are judging them based on how they live their personal lives, the tone of their voice, or something they did years before. We are evolving people of strengths and motivations at different crossroads in our lives. This is where personality tests (honestly astrology) can help rebuild our perceptions of our team.

I had a client who wanted one of her team members to take more ownership of her position, the business’s mission, and projects to potentially own the business. After doing the Big 5 Aspects on this team member it showed that she was high in openness to experience, agreeableness, and low in Intellect and Industriousness. She is also high in Aesthetics. They require an outlet for their creative ability, or they have difficulty thriving.

When I talk to the team member in private, she expresses that she “just wants to be creative.” Which is exactly what her personality test is expressing. The owner essentially wants to get orange juice from a pineapple and is projecting her personality on this team member instead of setting up ways to utilize this “player” more efficiently. She is the leader of her ship and has to know everyone’s inherit strengths. Not just strengths in skills.

There’s a reason we should do personality audits on our team and we won’t be able to grow sustainably if we only attract people like us.

One thing I have learned to dive deep into is realizing that we are different people in our personal and professional worlds. Or maybe a better way of saying that is certain aspects of our personality are revealed in that space of executing a skill in our professional life and the personal life exposes different skills.

This is a big deal when we can’t get through personal life hurdles and are battling the modern-day struggles of those worlds like relationships, parenthood, or being organized.

This is something that has been a constant theme in my coaching. I have worked with clients by breaking down their perceptions of the different categories in their lives so they don’t carry the same patterns or pains into their work when serving a team or clients. This is so impactful because when they stop identifying with their ‘shortcomings’ in every area of their lives they are more quickly able to scale their business and inevitably have more time to work on those personal struggles.

I was on a call with an older man who wanted to talk about wanting to make more money. He went on to say, “All of my friends are VPs of companies and are making a lot of money.” (comparison)

“My parents were just satisfied with having “just enough.” Never really strived for a lot of money. “

An amazing method I’ve intertwined into my coaching is breaking down the trauma of different generations to help reveal perceptions of their kids and their kids. On a big scale, it’s like conversations are happening between the generations that reveal the contrast. Contrast is important for us to understand where we are coming from and moving toward.

I asked him if he’d ever really understood the strengths and weaknesses of his parent’s generations to understand his parents and what they were going through. This could be a great exercise to essentially rebuild a story for himself about his parents to fall in love with them again, see where they prevailed, and be grateful for the life he had so he could shape his new relationship with money by relieving the perceptions of his parents.