This week we’re talking about the four personality types that you’ll find in your organization. To find out more background, go back and check out episode 22.
So far, we’ve discussed the take charge Lions and the easy going Otters.
Today, we’re going to take a look at the people who take care of the details… the Beavers.
Beavers LOVE the details. They love the rules, the structure, the instructions, the procedures.
They find the fatal flaw in the proposal, they dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
They excel at the analytical.
They can scan lines of code and pick out the error.
They can crush financial statements and love numbers and order.
They can often be perfectly content holed up at a desk just chomping away on data.
It is their superpower. And without them, our organizations would fall apart.
We’d miss important safety details in a procedure, fail to protect ourselves adequately in a contract.
We’d miss a crucial step in an instruction, have no idea where were financially and forget a major event that was coming up.
Beavers are like the glue that holds our businesses together.
And like each of the four, they are essential.
But also like the others, they have their weaknesses.
They are quite obviously the opposite of the otters.
And one of their challenges is to be able to think more creatively, come up with new ideas or solutions that maybe aren’t the standard way of approaching things.
Not always, but often they aren’t general connectors of people.
They can struggle when things don’t go according to plan, as opposed to the Otters who have lived their life on that principle.
I’m sure you know some Beavers on your team. And you’d do well to make sure they have access to those details or get a chance to review the data and instructions so that they’re secret skill can be put to full use.
Beavers are like the built in spell check of your organization.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode. I’d love hear from you about today’s topic or just in general. You can shoot me an email at shawn@shawnwashburn.com or head to shawnwashburn.com/contact and you’ll find links to connect with me on social media as well.
