Managing Ecommerce Teams: Personality Conflicts
This article is one of an ongoing series in managing ecommerce teams. We’re taking a break from the technology to focus on the people inside your company that drive your ecommerce operations, because let’s face it - you can buy or build the best technology in the world, but if your people aren’t performing their best you’re not going to get the results you desire.
Personality Conflicts
When you manage people, you will inevitably come across conflicts. Conflict is not a bad thing, but it needs to be managed in a healthy way. In this article, we’re going to explore the Enneagram, a powerful tool for understanding personality types, and how you can use it to manage conflict within your team.
Personalities Decoded - the Enneagram
The Enneagram is a model of personality that is based on nine different types. Each type is represented by a number as well as a name. While the numbers are consistent between scholars of the Enneagram, the names used sometimes differ.
The nine types are:
Ones - Reformer
Twos - Helper
Threes - Achiever
Fours - Individualist
Fives - Investigator
Sixes - Loyalist, or Loyal Skeptic
Seven - Enthusiast
Eight - Challenger
Nine - Peacemaker
Each type has its own unique set of strengths and weaknesses and way of seeing the world. By understanding the Enneagram, you can begin to understand why people act and react the way they do, and how to manage conflict between different people. For instance, fives, sixes and sevens are grouped into the ‘Head Triad’ - they go to thinking first when faced with a situation, but twos, threes and fours are grouped into the ‘Heart Triad’ - they go to emotions first when faced with a situation.
Applying the Enneagram To Yourself
Leadership expert John Maxwell has often said that to lead, start with yourself. The Enneagram is a powerful tool, but it is only as useful as you make it. In order to get the most out of the Enneagram, you need to first apply it to yourself. Determine your own type, and begin to understand your own motivations, strengths and weaknesses. Only then can you begin to use the Enneagram to understand and manage the people around you.
If you’re not sure what your type is, there are books you can read that describe each type such as the Road Back to You, online assessments such as the iEQ9 and even podcasts you can listen to where hosts interview people about their experience as one of the nine Enneagram types (we link to two of those at the end of the article).
As the Enneagram is becoming more popular in recent years, more and more online quizzes have appeared that claim to help you find which enneagram number you are. Experience has shown that many of those quizzes aren’t accurate, so if you are going to use a quiz or assessment, we highly recommend paying for the iEQ9 assessment as it seems to be the most accurate assessment.
Utilizing the results of your iEQ9 assessment or the knowledge gained by reading the Road Back to You or listening to podcasts about each Enneagram type will help you better understand how you show up as a manager and leader in your ecommerce operations. Each type has a type they move towards in stress and another in security and over time in exploring your own personality through the lens of the Enneagram you can learn to identify when you’re picking up the bad habits of your stress number or gaining the strengths of your security number. Once you’ve identified that, then you can further develop your ability to tap into the strengths of both your stress and security numbers when you need them.
Applying the Enneagram to Teams
Once you have a good understanding of the Enneagram and your own type, you can begin to apply it to your team. Creating a profile of your team can be a helpful exercise in understanding the dynamics at play. Once you have a good understanding of the types of people on your team and how they interact with each other, you can begin to manage conflict and help your team to thrive.
For instance, if you have a team that is mostly made up of ‘Heart Triad’ types, they may have a hard time making decisions because they want everyone to be on board and in agreement. In contrast, a team that is mostly made up of ‘Head Triad’ types may have a hard time because they want to have all the data before making a decision and can get bogged down in analysis paralysis.
If you have two teammates that often clash, it can be helpful to know their Enneagram type and look for potential sources of conflict as well as alignment between those types. For instance, a person who is an Enneagram One is driven by an inner critic that pushes them to live by a strict sense of logic and right and wrong. Contrast that to an Enneagram Four, who is driven by emotions and a desire to have their emotions and personality understood. You may not have realized it, but chances are you’ve witnessed a meeting where a one and a four are unable to reach an agreement - think about times where you’ve had meetings where someone has spent a long time laying out logical arguments and facts about why their proposed solution is the right one only to have someone else in the meeting question if their feelings are being considered. If you understand that the One is trying to be logical and the Four is trying to be emotionally intelligent, you can begin to see how to manage that conflict.
Looking for the good in each type can also be helpful. For instance, a One’s attention to detail can be helpful in creating systems and processes that help your ecommerce team to run smoothly. A Four’s ability to be emotionally intelligent can be helpful in managing customer service rules and guidelines.
Learning More about the Enneagram
If you’re interested in learning more about the Enneagram, there are many excellent resources available. We recommend
Ian Morgan Cron’s Typology Institute
Suzanne Stabile’s Books and Courses
These are just a few of the many excellent resources available on the Enneagram. We encourage you to take a deeper dive now that you’ve learned how you can apply the Enneagram to managing personality conflicts on your ecommerce team.
