Are you a warrior, a lover, a magician, or a sovereign?

I was listening to a podcast today called The Team’s Archetypes (Businessweek's executive editor John Byrne talks with leadership guru Nikos Mourkogiannis about how knowing the four basic types of people in any organization allows you to harness their strengths).

Are you a warrior, a lover, a magician, or a sovereign?

It also brings into perspective the difference between sales and marketing. I can picture sales as warriors, sometimes lovers. Perhaps marketing is part lover, and part magician.

Some amount of conflict is a good thing as mentioned in a previous post about marketing and sales alignment. More importantly, I can see why you would want to have all of these types in a business environment. A good example was made in regards to a product roll-out. Your first impulse is to jump to the warrior, get it done and out the door! But you need the magician to develop the ideas and concepts, the lover to build relationships, and the sovereign to perhaps put it all together, make people believe in what they are doing, and keep everyone inspired.

 This is by no means an attempt to stereotype or simplify people, because I think most people have some of each trait, though there may be a dominant trait. The podcast also mentions, how we change as time passes. The point is to recognize strengths in yourself and others, and use that knowledge to build a better company, a product, or team.

Comments

[John Gillett]

Thanks for these distinctions...the types are reminiscent of the Value and Lifestyle program rolled out by SRI in the 1970s, which was used to target consumers and other stakeholders based on behavior.

I've never seen these "types" applied to the marketing side of the fence.

[Chris Lockwood]

This sounds quite a bit like the Myers Briggs personality tests that many organizations use.