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Assessment: are you a dreamer, a doer, or a driver?
Have you ever met someone who is obsessed with the 5 Love Languages and knows their own, but not the love language of anyone they love?
Sure, it’s important to understand how you feel love. But if you want to SHOW love, you need to understand how others receive it more than how YOU receive it.
Leaders can suffer from the same kind of navel gazing.
You need to know how you lead, but you also need to know how people on your team need to be led.
When those don’t match up, you have some work to do.
We take assessments and courses and tests to understand our own personalities better, without bothering to apply the same lens to understanding our teams.
The eighth pillar of our Go-to-Market Operating System is Leadership and Management.
Part of leadership and management is understanding whether you and those around you are dreamers, doers, or drivers.
Dreamers
Dreamers are visionary leaders who excel at inspiring others with their big-picture thinking. They are highly creative and have the ability to envision ambitious long-term goals. Dreamers motivate their teams through their passion for a compelling future vision. However, they may struggle with practical execution and occasionally generate unrealistic ideas.
Characteristics:
Visionary: Dreamers have a strong ability to envision the future and set ambitious long-term goals.
Creative: They often think outside the box, generating innovative ideas and solutions.
Inspirational: Dreamers inspire their teams with their passion and big-picture thinking.
Strengths:
Inspires motivation: Dreamers can rally their teams around a compelling vision, motivating them to work towards a common goal.
Foster creativity: They encourage creative thinking, leading to new and unique solutions to problems.
Long-term focus: Dreamers are excellent at setting and pursuing ambitious, far-reaching goals.
Weaknesses:
May lack practicality: Their focus on long-term vision can sometimes lead to unrealistic or impractical ideas.
Poor execution: Dreamers may struggle with the day-to-day details and execution required to bring their vision to life.
Impatience: They might become frustrated if progress is slow or if their team doesn't share their level of enthusiasm for the vision.
Examples:
Malala Yousafzai, Magic Johnson, Walt Disney, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy
Doers
Doers are action-oriented leaders who prioritize getting things done. They are results-driven and highly organized, ensuring tasks and projects are completed efficiently and on schedule. Doers hold themselves and their teams accountable, but their focus on execution can sometimes limit creativity and flexibility.
Characteristics:
Action-oriented: Doers prioritize action and execution, taking a hands-on approach to problem-solving.
Results-driven: They are highly focused on achieving measurable outcomes and meeting goals.
Organized: Doers excel at planning, scheduling, and managing tasks efficiently.
Strengths:
High productivity: Doers are effective in getting things done, ensuring tasks and projects are completed on time.
Accountability: They hold themselves and their team members responsible for their actions and outcomes.
Realistic approach: Doers tend to be grounded in practicality and can bring feasibility to ambitious projects.
Weaknesses:
Lack of innovation: Their emphasis on execution may sometimes stifle creativity and innovative thinking.
Insensitivity to team morale: Doers can be task-focused to the detriment of team dynamics and motivation.
Resistance to change: They may be uncomfortable with deviation from established processes or plans.
Examples:
Oprah Winfrey, Nelson Mandela, Serena Williams, Tim Cook, Sheryl Sandburg, Ellen DeGeneres, Usain Bolt
Drivers
Drivers are decisive and competitive leaders who thrive on challenges and achieving measurable outcomes. They are relentless in their pursuit of goals and excel at problem-solving. Drivers push for rapid progress but can be impatient, potentially coming across as forceful. Managing burnout and team morale can be a challenge for them due to their intense focus on results.
Characteristics:
Decisive: Drivers are known for their quick and confident decision-making abilities.
Competitive: They thrive on challenges and are often highly competitive, seeking to excel in all they do.
Results-focused: Drivers are driven by a relentless pursuit of goals and outcomes.
Strengths:
Rapid progress: Drivers push for rapid progress and can lead their teams to achieve significant results quickly.
Accountability: They are dedicated to achieving objectives and hold themselves and others accountable.
Problem-solving: Drivers excel at finding solutions to complex problems, often overcoming obstacles with determination.
Weaknesses:
Impatience: Their relentless pursuit of results can lead to impatience with slower-paced team members or processes.
Tendency to be forceful: Drivers may come across as overly assertive or domineering, which can negatively impact team morale.
Risk of burnout: Their intense focus on achieving results can lead to burnout, both for themselves and their teams, if not managed properly.
Examples:
Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Margaret Thatcher, Michael Jordan, Winston Churchill, Kobe Bryant
Turn the lens on your team
Assess yourself, sure. It should be an illuminating exercise! The best leaders will have the self awareness to know which of the three they default to, but will have the ability to channel another type when needed.
Then, think about how your peers, direct reports, and leaders might fit into this framework, or better yet, ask them to assess themselves.
And when you’re filling a hole on your team, think about what you might be missing.
For example, if you’re hiring a Rev Ops or Demand Gen leader, look beyond hiring only for skills in their discipline.
If you’re stacked with Doers and Drivers, you might just need a Dreamer. If your exec team is packed with Dreamers and you’re hiring a new CMO, you might just need a Driver.
You can’t be all 3, and you can’t expect all 3 from one person
A real leader is someone who can double down on their superpower and mitigate their blind spots through self awareness and surrounding themselves with a team of complementary skills.
Don’t hire a dreamer and enjoy their ideas but chastise them for their lack of attention to detail.
Don’t hire a doer and compliment their sense of structure and organization but bemoan the fact that they aren’t reinventing their discipline.
Don’t delight in a driver’s ability to motivate and inspire a team to great results but complain about their unwillingness to do mundane tasks.
Do double down on your strengths and encourage people around you to the same. Leaning in to your superpower is what makes you visible within your organization and valuable to your team!
Do amplify their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses by coaching them well.
Product Spotlight of the Week: Acoustic
What B2C marketers want is multichannel marketing automation and email marketing (see table below).
But these are really just the tip of the iceberg.
Without layering in strategic personalization on top of these activities, companies risk everything from brand erosion to spiking unsubscribe rates and lost conversions.
Acoustic Connect, a B2C Customer Engagement Platform, is the subject of our latest Product Spotlight. Acoustic Connect allows marketers to personalize and automate customer interactions by leveraging previously siloed customer data, channels, intent and AI-driven insights.
Read the Acoustic Connect Product Spotlight here.
If you’d like us to do an ROI Study or a Product Spotlight for you, get in touch!
We’re back in action with our 2024 GTM Made Simple Roadshow. We’ll be in Tampa on February 22-23 and in Austin on March 22, and in Salt Lake City in April. Hope to see you there!
Love,
The GTM Partners Team
