The Personalities You Need to Grow Your Business 

Some years ago, in an attempt to figure out how to deal with the challenges being faced by our fast-growing company, I developed a theory that has been helpful to me ever since. The theory: Two types of leadership skills are essential for success.

It began with the observation that growing a business requires a commitment to constant change and innovation and a willingness to test new ideas. So, the sort of person a business needs in order to stimulate growth must have a high level of interest in growth and a low level of sensitivity to the confusion and chaos it creates. I called that type of person a “grower.”

Successful entrepreneurs are growers. That’s why they have a reputation for being aggressive and pushy. They believe their job is the most important one in the company. They don’t want to be hampered by people telling them all the reasons their ideas will upset the status quo, creating messes that will have to be cleaned up. “Someone else can do that,” they think.

And they are right.

The kind of people that are perfect for the clean-up job are very different from growers. I call them “tenders.” They don’t like change. They are painfully aware of the problems it causes. But despite their aversion to disruption, they are very good at dealing with it. In response to change, tenders calm the troops and figure out ways to make the transitions as smooth as possible. As a result, the business is able to achieve growth without falling apart.

My recipe for a functioning business that wants to grow is to surround each grower with several tenders. The stronger the grower, the more tenders the business needs.

I came across an interview with research psychologist Gary Klein recently that ties in with my ideas. He takes a different approach than I took because he seems to believe that creating growth in business is a matter of training managers to see new ideas as worthy things, rather than finding managers that instinctively believe that.

“To be a good manager,” he says, “you want things to run smoothly. And insights are not ways of running smoothly. Insights are disorganizing and disruptive. And so, that’s a major reason that organizations, without even intending to, block the insights that come their way.”

He’s wrong in believing you can train tenders to promote growth. But his analysis of what is wrong with the way most businesses manage growth is exactly right.

You can watch the interview here. (Warning: His manner of expression is dry and academic. But his analysis is good.)