Hello and welcome to another episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, where we explore how authenticity, transparency, passion and purpose lead to creating workplaces where people and teams thrive. I'm your host, Erin Pachell, and today we're peeling back the layers of what makes us tick. As entrepreneurs, we all have different strengths and areas where we need more support.
So how do we understand our entrepreneurial personas? How do we leverage them to create high performing and visionary businesses? And how do we make sure our strengths don't become self sabotaging? Let's think about it's. Good day, everyone, and I hope it's a beautiful one wherever you are. So today we're talking about entrepreneurial personas. What is an entrepreneurial persona? Well, it's the unique blend of traits, tendencies and skills that define you as a business owner or business leader. It's how you approach challenges, seize opportunities, and interact with your team.
But here's the kicker. No two personas are exactly alike. There are literally hundreds of tools like the big Five model, Disk, myers, Briggs and Enneagram. You've probably recognized the names of some of these things that can help us gain insight into our personality preferences and natural tendencies. And I'm probably going to offend people who love these personality tests. And I love them too. So don't get me wrong, I do love them. I think they're really interesting.
I think it's interesting that we can kind of analyze ourselves and based on what someone decrees as our personality, it can make us feel a myriad of different emotions. And like I said, I'm going to piss some people off by saying this, but I do think you could almost do the same thing with a Horoscope. I'm a Sagittarian when I grew up, and I don't know if it's a self fulfilling prophecy or not, but I think as a person who read Horoscopes when they were younger, I do feel like I've sort of molded myself into that typical SAGITTARIUS persona. And I'm curious to know if that rings true for you as well. When people tell us we are something, we kind of start to believe it anyway. So the same thing can kind of happen with these personality tests and it doesn't mean that they don't have value. That's the other thing, right? Even the Horoscope has value because as even a young Sagittarian, I would look at it and I would think, oh, that's me. Like I identify with that.
Or oh, that doesn't sound like me at all. But either way, it was helping me think about myself and become more introspective about asking the question, am I that way? So these tools all have different algorithms. In the case of the Horoscope, it's your birthday, right? They have different algorithms that help us compartmentalize and simplify our preferences into a profile that we can use to develop personally and professionally. And frankly, it doesn't matter how accurate they are. It really doesn't. Anything where you're confronting your true self and asking those questions is going to be helpful for you. So I think it's important to remember this is a tool, all that to say. But the real question is, how does better understanding a persona translate into business success? That's what we're here to uncover.
And as I've worked with entrepreneurs, I've created four personas in my mind that I think encapsulate a lot of the different qualities we see in entrepreneurs. And they are the visionary, the strategist, the implementer, and the shepherd. Every person has each of these personas within them at different strengths. Some louder and more of a natural fit and others quieter and perhaps worn only when necessary. You might identify yourself as a visionary or a strategist or an implementer or a shepherd, but no two people within any of these categories are exactly the same. We are all a complex combination of many variables and this combination, all blended together, is your key to success. But embracing your entrepreneurial persona isn't about fitting into a prescribed mold. It's about recognizing your inherent strengths and learning how to amplify them while simultaneously creating environment and culture where your strengths don't become self sabotaging.
Because as different as we all are, and we are different, we also have a lot of similarities. And it's those similarities that we're looking at when we compartmentalize and create mental models like this and personas like this. For example, if your primary influence is a visionary and if you're an entrepreneur, I don't know what the statistic would be, but high probability is what I'm going to say. You're likely brimming with big ideas, always looking ten steps ahead and your challenge. Sometimes the details can slip through the cracks and you tend to continue to layer plans on top of the other without ever finishing any of them. If you're a strategist, your natural tendency is to gather information broadly enough to figure out what not to do and then focus your energy on creating plans of action. Many visionaries believe they're strategists, when in fact, they are completely two different personas. Although sometimes these personas can live comfortably in the same person, one of the personas does tend to be dominant.
Ultimately, the strategist's ultimate goal is to simplify and make decisions that can be delegated to action. The visionary, left to their own devices, tends to delay decision making in favor of keeping their options open until another persona, either one of their own or someone else's, forces their hand, or perhaps the situation itself forces their hand. So you can see how there's a very distinct difference between the visionary and the strategist. If you're a strong implementer, you want clarity and a plan of action that is very black and white. You don't want all the details, you don't need all the details. You just want to know what the exact path to implementation looks like. Now, the risk for an implementer is to not care as deeply about the big picture sometimes lacking the scope of understanding to know when to pivot. So you can see implementers are very focused.
On the other hand, if you're a strong shepherd, you'll see almost everything in nuance and shades of gray and struggle with wanting your environment to be friction free. You're very idealistic a lot of the time and sometimes carry a little bit of that visionary within you. You do care more about the external experience or your team's experience than your own experience internally and you will sacrifice yourself for what's best for your team. So typically the Visionary is idealistic with a long time frame, the Strategist is more realistic with a long time frame, the Nurturer is idealistic with a shorter time frame, and the implementer is realistic with a shorter time frame. So you can see there's a little bit of overlap in between each of these personas as well. How many people are living rent free inside your head? More than you think. And I'd encourage you to get in touch with each of those personas. In which scenarios do they all bubble up to the surface? Are there any that are very loud or very quiet? Regardless of which of these personas is the strongest within you, the danger is if you create an environment that idolizes any one of these personas without recognizing they can just as soon become vulnerabilities, you run the risk of creating an echo chamber full of yes people.
And if that's the case, your team will find it very politically challenging at best to give you the hard feedback you need to focus, prioritize and adapt your personas to make sure you are doing the right things at the right time. In most of us, our dominant persona feels easy, like it's our natural selves. I talk about building a strengths based organization in a lot of these podcasts, and that means making it easy as possible for us to live in that dominant persona so we can take advantage of being in a flow state for as much of the time as possible. The only way to do that effectively is to build a balance of these personas. Let's pretend that you had all four of these different personas and they were all in balance. You can see how the way that their personalities are structured, they can create a check and balance within the person. And so if you have the Visionary, you have the Strategist, you have the implementer and you have the shepherd, kind of your bases are taken care of, you have the vision, you can narrow it down, you can implement it, and you can take care of the people around you, right? If we are focusing solely on one persona, let's say the Visionary, because it's easy, because probably it's the predominant persona in a lot of the folks who are listening to this podcast. If you're completely engrossed in the visionary state and you're able to stay in that flow state you're not going to get a lot accomplished like, let's be honest.
And so the theory behind strength space teams is that rather than having to develop the four personas inside yourself, which can take a lot of energy from us, if we have to build strengths from our weaknesses, essentially from our weaker personas, then we build the structure outside of ourselves instead. So instead of having those four personas inside myself that I'm trying to strengthen, and maybe one or two of them are very weak, and I'm trying to build them up and put a lot of energy into building those strengths in those very weak areas, I recruit people who have those natural abilities, those natural personas, and I partner with them. So to summarize, instead of having to build a balance of those personas within ourselves in order to create those checks and balances and momentum, we build the structure externally outside ourselves, vis a vis our team members and our belief systems. So that's a completely different modus operandi. In order to do this, we need to believe on a deep, personal and authentic level that our strongest persona, the one that we've probably fallen a little bit in love with, is on the same psychological and hierarchical playing field as all of the others. Because we need to find that balance in order to be successful and because we have a specific tendency or strength in one specific persona. It's very normal to put that persona on a pedestal, but that makes it no better in quotation marks than any of the others. Without the visionary, our dreams wouldn't be as expansive.
That's true. Without the strategist, we wouldn't be able to tune out the noise and prioritize. Without the implementer, we wouldn't be able to turn the plan into action. And without the shepherd, we wouldn't live our values and nurture the cultural ecosystem that actually grows that vision. It's no surprise that in many organizations, the visionary plays at the highest levels. Often it starts with the vision it does. But since we believe that every person has a visionary inside themselves and anyone can choose to grow this muscle if they choose to do so, this isn't a God given talent. We realize that the persona we wear has at least as much to do with the environment outside influences like our upbringing, our opportunities, mentors and friends as much as it has to do with natural, inborn strengths.
In different types of organizations, you'll find that different personas are glorified. But the visionary often almost always stands on top. If you identify as the visionary, it's very wise to practice something like stoicism where you can find balance in the values of wisdom, justice, courage and moderation. You need to practice humility. All right, so you've leaned into your strengths, you've embraced your entrepreneurial persona, you're proud of those strengths, and you've acknowledged and given yourself grace for your developing areas. Now what? It's time to build your dream team and if you're a solopreneur micro business owner, you probably don't have the skill yet to create this kind of strengths based ecosystem. Your dream team really has to come from inside yourself, and you'll have to balance and try to express each of these personas within an order to maximize your progress. In this case, I'd highly recommend reading The E Myth Revisited, where Michael Gerber takes you through his three personas the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician.
Understanding these three personas and how and when to wear each of these three hats will help you navigate through the earliest days of running a business. When you're the only person on your dream team, your mantra really is, who do I need to be today to succeed? And if you're slowly growing and you're thinking about hiring that first person, by the way, if you have not watched the video on YouTube, I think it's called like the first follower. You need to go right now and watch that video, and I'll link it below as well.
But when you're thinking about hiring your first follower, it's really especially important to think about what is that persona of that person going to look like. Your first follower might be the most important hire you ever make. Once your business is large enough that you can begin recruiting contractors and operational staff, you can start to think about which personas should be brought outside of yourself. And obviously, we start with the first follower. Often that's the persona that takes the most emotional energy to maintain, but that doesn't mean that you're going to abandon that persona completely.
But it becomes more passive rather than active, being used when you need to adapt to situations, communicate effectively with others who have a strong persona in that area, those sorts of things. So it's an integrator persona. It's not an active persona per se. The idea here is to create a symbiotic relationship where your strengths feed into theirs, and vice versa. For instance, if you're a shepherd focused on building relationships and fostering a positive culture, you might benefit from having a strategist on board, someone who can analyze trends and help you make data driven decisions so your strong sense of empathy and justice doesn't override your strategic priorities. And remember that diversity is your friend. A team with a range of skills, experiences, and perspectives is a team that can tackle any challenge that comes its way. So I guess the next burning question, at least in my mind, would be how do you create an environment where every person, regardless of their persona or personas, can truly shine? Regardless of your persona, if you want to build a strengths based organization and a strengths based team, it has to extend beyond your own philosophy.
We need to build equity into the system to make it extremely difficult for this ethos to be dismantled or used for selfish purposes. And believe me, anything can be used for selfish purposes, if we're not careful.
We need to create equitable hiring, development and advancement frameworks. For example, when it comes to hiring, employ diverse recruiting channels, standardize your job descriptions and use inclusive language that focuses on competencies. Conduct blind resume reviews, perform structured interviews, and even better, host diverse interview panels to bring different perspectives into the process. Make sure your recruitment team has taken training on unconscious bias. When it comes to developing your team, make it democratic with equal access to training resources. Teach your managers coaching skills and how to help their employees.
Create personalized development plans. Create a mentor and sponsorship program to support underrepresented groups. Offer skills based training. Make sure you have a seamless performance feedback process that's broadly implemented and measured. And when it comes to promotion, establish clear promotional criteria based on performance and competencies. Allow any employee to apply for roles. Conduct regular pay audits to make sure any disparities are addressed. Or even better, practice pay transparency and develop a common understanding of how compensation is distributed based on education, experience, performance, or many other factors.
Be accountable to each of these elements. This is crucial in order to maintain the momentum and consistency in the practice. So tracking diversity metrics related to hiring, development, and promotion setting equity goals, using employee surveys to solicit constructive feedback, and reporting on the results. Report your progress with transparency as well and the different actions that have been taken.
Building a continuous improvement culture right from onboarding a new employee at the end of the day, your business is a reflection of you. By understanding your entrepreneurial persona and building a complementary team, you're setting the stage for success because of your strengths, not in spite of your strengths. And there you have it, fellow weirdos, a little dive into the world of entrepreneurial personas.
Remember Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism said, "knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment."
And Carl Jung said, "your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakens?"
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey today. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, share and leave us a review.
Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible in your world of work.
This is Erin Patchell signing off. Stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble.
