Tailoring the adaptive approach: experimenting for a perfect fit across the 6 personality types

Why Test Cards work with all personality types?

Why is it that people deal with experiments at work better than with fixed decisions?

From a neuroscience perspective, the brain is designed to constantly gather and process information in order to make decisions.

The decision-making process involves a complex interplay of various neural networks and pathways.

Experimentation allows for the flexibility to explore different options and gather more information before making a final decision.

This process allows for a more holistic evaluation of potential outcomes and can lead to better decision-making.

On the other hand, final decisions may be constrained by fixed neural pathways that have been established through past experiences and biases. This can limit an individual's ability to consider new options and may lead to suboptimal decision-making.

Therefore, experimentation is often considered a more adaptive and efficient approach to decision-making from a neuroscience perspective.

How is experimenting working with different types of personalities?

PCM (Process Communication Model®) is an innovative model that allows you to understand the depth of personality structure. 

Created by Taibi Kahler in the 1970s, PCM was used by NASA in the training and selection of astronauts for 20 years, and today used by many well-known Fortune 500 companies.

According to PCM, we all have 6 personality types in us, which influence how we think, feel, and behave.

Each type has its own perceptual filter, a preferred way of seeing the world.

More about how these personalities and ideation methods you can find in this post.

🎲 Thinker and Persister: experimenting takes out the pressure of talking about all details, putting all possible questions and perfection they are looking for. It is easier to agree with these personality types if we are talking about an experiment (i.e. tests card) than if we are talking about a final exact plan. Because they are fact, data people.

🎲 Harmonizer: they care about the feelings of the persons involved, how scary is the whole experiment, the general vibe, and how comfortable they are with it. Experimenting is easier for them as well, because their feelings are not strong as for a final decision.

🎲 Imaginer: Especially for them experimenting brings comfort, because they can imagine easy how success will be, and how they can measure it. They have a high skill of seeing the big picture and a little trial brings them a small-step approach which is bringing them a better emotional state than making big steps.

🎲 Rebel: It is the perfect activity for someone with playfulness in their blood - give them something to try, to experiment and they will be super happy about it. The gamification behind the idea of a test card is what brings them enthusiasm.

🎲 Promoter: They like actions and test cards and any experiments are actions, try to do something, and then iterate. So they are also in their natural environment when it comes to experimenting.

Facilitator hints:

• When you prepare a working session for a group of persons who are in conflict or you know there are very sensitive topics where they have completely different perspectives and like to argue about these then DO NOT try test cards - I tried once and for this kind of groups, it does not have the deep outcome as for other groups. You can figure this out upfront, either with one-to-one interviews with each participant or by sending them a survey.

• Set expectations expressed for each personality type - i.e. if you only say it will be fun, then only the Rebels will be excited about it. That stays behind any exercise that you facilitate for a group of people.

One-phrase summary:

I listed above traits of different personality types and how they match with the experimenting idea. From my experience, they all fit very well with the set-up of a working experiment, I tried test cards with different teams, and all personality types and it worked really well.

Resources:

• Book “Understand to be understood” by G.Collignon

• PCM trainer Magda Tabac