Often you have people on the team that have the most important traits necessary for success, but they are missing one or two ingredients that seem to rear their head at the worst time and truly cause poor performance.  Your role, as this employee's leader, is to help them deal with this behavioral rub by helping them practice adaptive behavior. If you do, you'll earn your keep as a manager.

Here's an example for you.  People that sell complex intangible products often have extroversion and dominance as their higher traits, with patience and conformity as low traits.  This is a fine behavioral profile for many of the aspects of the position, as we want to see people that are competitive and good relationship builders. We also need them to be able to create a sense of urgency, and be flexible in the sales process. 

Ah - process - that's the behavioral rub!  Question - is process important in the sales cycle?  In many cases, the answer is yes.  Why?  Because it is the only way the painful parts of the sales cycle get completed.  Here's what I mean.  Take our traditional salesperson, eager to get the business closed as quickly as possible.  What steps, if left to their own devices, get skipped?  Lots - Understanding the genuine requirements of the prospect.  Establishing the financial rationale for making a buying decision.  And separating your organization from the pack, not as a result of feature functionality, but because of their understanding of "what it takes" to solve the prospect's key concern.  Remember, people buy from the person they feel best understands their business problem.  It has NOTHING to do with product.

Absent a strong leader, the salesperson will often rush the sales process, and, lo and behold, end up losing the business to inertia more often than not.  That's what happens when the prospect really didn't see the need for change - or a competitor took the time to understand the buyer's needs.

Simple, right?  Just tell your salesperson to implement a solid sales process, making sure all the steps are followed, and you're done.  Not so fast, because following a process is exactly opposite of the nature of the person you have in the job.  You will really need to work this hard, and provide guidance and leadership to this person in a way that may appear to be counterintuitive.  After all, they want to be left alone to either succeed or fail on their own, but in order to succeed you need to coach them through an adaptive behavior.

Can it be done?  Absolutely!  But you need the facts in order to accomplish the task.  First and foremost, you need to know that the behavioral rub does exist, and you will only know this by having the profile data of the employee.  Once you have that, then OPUS will work with you to understand the behavioral requirements of the position, and assist you in providing the advice and guidance necessary to accomplish your objective.

People can adapt their behavior.  We do it all the time.  It's just a matter of knowing what needs to be done, why it will make a difference, and taking the conscious steps to do it.  Just as a rubber band has some elasticity, so does our personality.  Guide your employees to adapt their style when necessary, and you'll help them succeed, improve performance, and make everyone more effective.