Is your practice overly task-oriented, lacking warmth? Is your practice overly people-oriented making it difficult to get tasks done? Do certain team members seem to have the wrong personality for their positions? If so, this management pearl may be of value to you.
Personality dictates how we all emotionally and rationally react and has a significant effect on the overall success of your practice. Rational genetic personality is composed of four styles, two people-oriented styles and two task-oriented styles, each with a purpose:
Our Relator, people-oriented style helps us maintain relationships with others.
Our Socializer, people-oriented style helps us socially interact with others.
Our Director, task-oriented style helps us get results.
Our Analyzer, task-oriented style helps us unerringly proceed.
Every human is strong in one or two of these four styles and moderate to weak in the others.
The practice personality is set by the personality of the doctor, which is the doctor’s strongest style. Analyzer and director doctors consider the treatment more important than the service and may find it difficult to interact with others. Relator and socializer doctors consider the people more important than the tasks involved to provide that treatment and may get behind to interact with or console others. When distressed, we are even more inclined to act that way.
Patients and others perceive the practice as a culmination of all the personalities in the practice. Thus, for the doctor to be optimally successful, he or she must try to balance his or her personality with the other team members’ personalities. And if a doctor is wise, he or she will make sure that his or her practice appeals to both people-oriented and task-oriented patients and referrers.
See the attached PDF below for more details.
