Discovering Personality Tendencies and Strengths in Communication

Episode 203: In this episode Vonda and Lori hit the road in Illinois and are joined by  Ellie LaFever. They share their experiences at a private meeting of  BDC Managers and publicly at the SAF Profit Blast in Chicago, where gave presentations and insights on communication and personality tendencies.

They also discuss their team's recent undertaking of a strength-finders assessment within their Flower Clique team. By gaining a deeper understanding of their individual strengths, they hope to better serve others and improve as a team.

Join us as we delve into the importance of self-awareness and how it can enhance our communication and interpersonal relationships.

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

You could just see light bulbs going off in the room, and what that was so cool.

SPEAKER_04 0:07

Yeah, it was cool.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Fonda LaFever.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

And Lori Wilson. And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Fonda.

SPEAKER_03 0:30

Hey Lori, where are you today? Oh gosh. Where's Waldo? That's how I feel. Yes. So and you too. First of all, I know that our listeners cannot see us. But two things. Number one, we match. I we both logged in, and you and I are wearing the same colored sweater. So I think that's funny. Yes. And number two, we both have an enormous amount of background noise.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yes, so we apologize in advance because this is actually the first time, Lori, in over 200 episodes that we have done this like in an airport and in a what? Starbucks. I'm in a Starbucks.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Yes. Yes. Shout out to Starbucks. I'm in a Starbucks because we're both traveling right now. Separately.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

The past few weeks, we've just been on the move. I mean it's been crazy.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Yes. We've been on the move together, and now we're on the move separately. So you texted me and you're like, we don't have a podcast. Like, oh, okay, well, we'll fix that. So that's what we're doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

That's right. And it's interesting because what we've been on the road teaching are team building, and here we are. We're building a team right here.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

Right, right, right. And speaking of team building, I was at lunch earlier with one of our team with Cammy, Martin. And I was like, I'm team building with one of our teammates right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Exactly. You can't beat that at all. The face-to-face is what we so loved. I mean, the last couple weeks.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

Yeah, yeah. It's so funny because, you know, right now, this time of year, the our web team is swamped with work, with merchandising work. And I know she did not have time to have lunch, but one Saturday I texted her and I was like, we have got to make this happen because you know we don't live in the same town or state, and I am in your state, and let's carve out a little bit of time. And she's like, All right, we're gonna just do it. We're just gonna do it. And so we did it, and we're so glad. So glad we got to do it.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Yeah, you always are so happy when you actually complete it, even though you're like, Oh, I shouldn't have done that.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

But yeah, no, no, you should.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

You have to take time for those things.

SPEAKER_03 2:47

Exactly, exactly. We laughed and laughed and laughed. And she's like, When you know, when I'm working tonight, I will remember that we snorted this afternoon. And so anyway, it was good. So I love I love when I get to see any of our team and and our members, which that's a good segue, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah, right. We were at in Chicago, it's Society of American Profit Blast. And it was great to see people, but wow, to see our members.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

Yeah, we've been to a lot of those, and we've never had that many flower click members at a Profit Blast before. And a couple of different times I got a little vaccimped, I think is the word. Uh, I got a little emotional because it was so fun to be with them. And there was also a you know, other flower shops there that we got to meet that aren't members but have listened to the podcast. And so they came up, and I was like, oh, anyway. So it was it was fun. It was a really good one.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Like there was a really nice crowd there. There was a nice crowd, and we got to see Tim Farrell, so that was always good. When we get to see Tim and Laura and Sheila, so that was fun. Yes. Yeah, the number of people there was was a good number, but like you said, they really were into everything that was there. They were absorbing all the knowledge, whether it be Tim's or Paul Goodman's, or then, you know, when we we finish it up with the communications, they were all participating, which was so cool.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Yeah, yeah. And I I think a a testament to the crowd was two things. Number one, SAF did a great job marketing the event. But I think Bill Doran, the the Chicago branch, did a great job. I saw a lot of stuff on their social media. I think their sales team probably did a great job getting the word out to their members. I know we sent out emails too and did it on did our own version of marketing, but it was nice, and I love that they have them on Sundays. Uh it was nice to see how many shop owners brought their staff, or at least some staff members. Anyway, I loved it. Loved it.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

So a little side note, all of that that Bill Doran was doing, pushing that profit blast, they were actually moving locations and setting up a new wholesale house and doing all that as this was all going on. So I thought that was kind of impressive. I don't know how they did that.

SPEAKER_03 5:16

Crazy. Plus, they were coming off of a sales manager meeting just a few days prior.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

So yeah, Mark was there for the whole managers meeting while his staff was doing Profit Blast and moving and whew. We think we're busy. Sometimes we're just not the busiest ones, Lori. No, they are sometimes we're just the second busiest. There you go. There we go. Yeah, so speaking of the Bill Doran group, we were asked to attend that meeting of the managers and many of their support staff. And really it was our very first, and we didn't know what to expect.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

I had no idea what you had gotten me into on this. I was not sure what it was going to be.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Lori, I didn't know what I got myself into either. You know, that's what we usually, you know. That's why we're in it together.

SPEAKER_03 6:09

Yes, yes. And then poor Ellie, I think 48 hours before we left, is when she got her plane ticket. Because she wasn't even really gonna go. And then we're like, you know what, we may need you there.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Yes, and we did, you know.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

We did. I think back and I'm like, oh my gosh, had she not been there, oh my goodness. So yeah, it was it was awesome though.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

It was so great. It really was, Lori. You know, when I was writing this little recap, I said it was just great that they were there to learn and grow and better themselves in everything that they do from building their team to help serve their customers, and they want to provide better quality flowers and service and at a fair price to all their customers. So I think that was kind of cool for me because you guys were like chatting about what you were gonna do the next day. Right. You and Ellie had the big presentation, but I was hearing conversations about challenges that they're facing in the industry.

unknown 7:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

The different branches and how another branch then could come in and give solutions, you know, hey, why don't you try this? Why don't you try that? So I I think that was such a benefit for managers throughout the United States to be able to gather and and to problem solve or help one another with those challenges. So I thought that was really great.

SPEAKER_03 7:31

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. It was really great getting to sit with them at the lunches and the dinners and just get to know them and hear. I loved just listening to them talk about their branch and their sales team and some of their customers. They all had such pride, and I mean that in a good way, not a prideful way. Um they all took such pride in their in ownership in their branch and what wanted to just be better, you know, and and you could tell they truly cared about their team and their customers, especially when they were asking about Flower Click and exactly what we are and how it could benefit their customers. You could tell they were very protective of their customers, you know, and really wanted the best for them.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

And I'm like, that's exactly what we want too. No, that's so true. And I had even heard some were sharing stories on certain flower shops who are in situations that they maybe had lost a really good employee or somebody had been down sick for months, and they're like, oh my gosh, maybe this is a solution that could help them, and I would really love to be able to help them because just like you said, it was personal to them.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Yeah, no, it was it was fun, and then we got to help host the game night. That was fun. And you know, I think that was fun for them too, because I'm sure a lot of them know one another, but you know, they got put in groups of four, and so they got to maybe get to know another manager better than maybe they hadn't known before, um, and then they walked around from station to station, and we got to put on a station, and that was hilarious because at our station, not only did they have to attempt to create a flower design out of pickup sticks, they had to sell us the design that they created. And some of them were good at designing and some of them were good at selling.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

I know it was so interesting. I mean, who would have thought pickup sticks and candy could make a nice flower arrangement? And then, of course, Lori, you had to throw it in there like, hey, this is the occasion, and you would make up these crazy occasions. And then they would sell them, and it was pretty impressive. It was and I think their selling skills are really good because that's what they do on the phone all the time, right? Really good.

SPEAKER_03 10:05

Yes, yes. I a very few of them had good design skills, but every one of them could sell the crap out of it. So they were really good. I will say by the end of the night, my brain was so tired from making from making up stuff stories.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, but after that, the next day, you and Ellie did kind of that assessment that what type of assessment?

SPEAKER_03 10:32

So we did it's based on a book called The Four Leadership Tendencies. I think we actually did a podcast about it one time. It's a book by Gretchen Rubens. She actually wrote a book called The Happiness Project, which was her bestseller, and it's a quiz you can take online for free. It's a quick little quiz, and it's just which categorizes your I'm gonna use the word personality, but I hate using that word. It categorizes your personality into four different tendencies, and it's the way we lean into what's expected of us from an outsider from uh outwardly and inwardly, and the whole point of it is once we know how we give into expectations, we understand ourselves better, and we also start to understand those around us better. So we we had taught this class a couple of times before, and we thought from any manager is gonna benefit from learning this about themselves and learning it about their team.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

So that's what we taught. And it was fantastic. I mean, so many of them came away and said that was their absolute favorite part of the meeting, as you had them share with you as well. Went back and gave it to their whole team, which I thought was great.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was it was really fun. We got some fun emails just this week from people going, Oh my gosh, I have three obligers, a rebel, and two upholders. What do I do now? Now uh so it's fun to see that number one, they liked it, you know, and now number two, they actually passed it on because even us, I again having lunch with Cammy today, we talked through it too. We were talking about a friend she has based on the tendencies, how she would react differently to somebody based on this tendency. And I was like, it it truly use it everywhere across the board, even your child's friend.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

I know it really was so eye-opening. And so if anybody hasn't taken that, they really should, because you really do learn a lot about yourself. It's just it was just great. And then our other, because it's kind of like we did that with Bill Doran, we did the communications thing, so with Society of American Florists, and then we did it internally. You and Ellie did that. Oh, we did.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

We did Strength Finders, you didn't think strength finders, yes. Golly, my whole brain is jumbled to it.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

It's because you had too many.

SPEAKER_03 13:24

We did well, what's funny is so we got back on Monday, and then Tuesday, Ellie and I met because we were preparing for our Wednesday presentation for our internal webinar on for our team on strength finders. And granted, we were both tired from all of the weeks travel, but we were both getting so confused over what was for tendencies information and what was strength finders information. We kept going back and forth. And she's like, wait, what? Wait, wait, which one is this? I was like, I don't know. They all blur in together, but yeah, strength finders is another good one. That's a lot longer one. Um what is interesting if you take these qu these surveys or these quizzes and you really do a deep dive into them um and you kind of chart them about yourself, you do start to see patterns on your own behavior. And if you know me, I love that kind of stuff, and it's fascinating. And I do believe the more you know about yourself, the more you have a better understanding of others and what makes other people tick. Um and that's kind of then you can make a choice whether you want to give grace to people or you want to just go, hmm, you know what? Maybe the boundary needs to be higher with that person and they just need to be removed from my life. Yeah. And that's okay too.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Yeah. Well, what I loved on the strength finders one, you gave us all of our information individually, but then you put it up as a team. And I think that's good for anybody who has a team is to be able to see, oh, we have really a lot of strengths here and here, but maybe we have a little weakness here, yes, whether we need to work on those or we need it our next hire needs to be somebody who's in this column. Right. So that was so eye-opening to me, Lori.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

I think it's important to show your team those kind of results for a couple of reasons. Number one, for the whole team to see that usually if your team was well picked, right? The gaps are filled in for the most part, where you might have your own personal weakness. Somebody else is there to fill it in. So you don't need to worry about the weakness. Right. And the other part of that is sometimes on teams, depending on how large your team is, there are groups on teams that think the other side of the team isn't doing anything, or maybe like let's pretend you're in a flower shop, and maybe the designers think, oh, well, we're the only ones at work, or we're the only ones that do anything. It's important for them to see, oh, wait, well, maybe we do all the designs, but if no one was selling the designs, we would have nothing to make, right? Right. So everyone has to see, everyone has a gift, everyone has a reason, everyone has a purpose. The other interesting thing that I like about strength finders is it doesn't really focus on what your weaknesses are, it just focuses on your strengths because at some point, and and I I agree with this to a point, I think we can get bogged down sometimes with oh, I have to fix my weaknesses, I have to fix my weaknesses. Like I've joked with you, my weaknesses math, right? Like I'm never going to be a mathematician. If I focused 80% of my time on trying to learn calculus or trigonometry, that's probably gonna be a waste of my time right now at age 55. Right. So why would I do that? That is my weakness. I can delegate that, right? Exactly. Delegate that to Mr. Mark Allen Wilson, who I've lived with for 32 years.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

And he is the best.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

He loves it. No one's better in my household than him to do that kind of stuff. He loves it. So I will do what I'm gifted at, which is wooing. You are a wooer. You are the wooer. That is my I'm the wooer. So, whatever that is, that was my strength finder. But that is the point, you know. At some point, you gotta negotiate with yourself. Do I really want to, do I need that? Is that a weakness I really need? Not probably not. I can delegate that out.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah, for sure. And I think that's why, like you're mentioning, strength finders is best, because of that, you know, it's showing what we're best at. And as a business owner, I have to look at that and say, do we we have a gap as a team? But you know what? We didn't. We were amazing. Um have to say. That's pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 18:22

Yeah, no, we're pretty well rounded. Now, I do want to say, if let's say your if your weakness is you're a critical, closed-minded, horrible person, then yeah, you need to work on that. You know what I mean? That's a different type of thing. Yeah, that's a personality flaw. That's not really a weakness, but as far as your weakness, meaning where your giftedness is, most of those don't spend time on, oh, I gotta better myself at this because I'm really bad at this. No, you don't need to do that. No, you don't need to do that because you can delegate most of those things as a business owner, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Right. My takeaways from these two weeks that we've been rolling, I guess, yeah, as we would say, yeah, are one people are kind. It was so nice to be with people, and there's so much kindness in there, and sometimes we have to look for that, but kindness to me was like it's just kind of reinvigorates us in people, you know? Yes. The other was most are interested in knowing more about themselves. Yes, I agree, you know, I agree. Because honestly, I mean, I'm speaking for myself here, but we seldom have time for self-discovery and growth. And sometimes something little like this can trigger us to go, oh, oh yeah, okay. And I know that happened with me when when we were doing the strength finders, but you could see it go off in those managers when you were building into them. You and Ellie were just going into some depth on those tendencies, and you could just see light bulbs going off in the room. And what that was so cool.

SPEAKER_03 20:15

Yeah, it was cool, it was cool, and I wished we had an entire hour to do like split up the room by tendency, yeah. And like I joked, all of you obligers out there, I'm gonna have a support group session after this so we can all have hugs, you know, because that was me. We all need that affirmation. But I truly wish we could have had the time for those people that needed it, because they're trust me, what 47% of the people in that room needed it. They were and that's if time would have been a virtue, we could have done that because that's what would have really, really built into them. But you don't know what you don't know. And then for each tendency, whatever would have been great to build into them if we could have had those set up, you know, it it would have been really, really amazing.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

It would have taken in the next step, yeah. And maybe next year we'll be asked back and we can build in a little bit more, you know, which could exactly could even be better.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

Yeah. I found a new book, of course. You know, Mamma was the new book. And and I haven't ordered it yet because I'm like, do I want to go down this road? And then I'm like, yes, yes, I do, yes, I do. And it's called um something like how to lead when you're not the boss. And I was like, oh my gosh. And it even has like a study guide. And I'm like, this could be a cool concept because you think about how many employees and how many managers, like even flower clip members who the managers, like Cammy and I were talking about this, who we're closer to the managers. We may not even know the owners, the owners are those officers. site owners but they have to lead but they're not necessarily the quote unquote boss but you don't have to be a boss to lead anyone can lead anybody can lead yeah anything can and I thought that that could be a cool little that's the next one I can tell I can see it I see it coming I see it coming exactly exactly I was like I'm gonna probably have to order that book next yeah I say don't put it off no but I was like that's it that's an interesting concept it is really cool so what about you what do you have any other takeaways from the weeks I was kind of rehashing it with Cammy because I hadn't even told her about it and I said I felt exhausted but in such a good way like we did a lot of work we like we did a lot of talking a lot of meeting with people a lot of conversations but it was very fulfilling it was it was connection is just it just is such a reminder and maybe I think it's still coming out of the pandemic I don't think we take it for granted those times we get to be in person and connect with people you know maybe we will just always be grateful from here on out when we get to all be together.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

I hope so because it does make a difference in everybody's attitude it's like not like oh I have to be here. You know it's like oh my gosh it's good to see people and and all that.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

Yeah. Yeah it was it was fun and in the survey in the SAF survey under comments I told them I'm like the one thing that I love so much oh my gosh the lunch was so good.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

It was because it wasn't just a sack lunch like a pandemic.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

It's used to just a box lunch you know we're so used to those little safe box lunches I was like the lunch was amazing it was so good.

SPEAKER_03 24:00

So anyway I hope they got a kick out of that I was like Laura I thought you'd love this but it was great were you grounded for a little while now I mean you go back home we both go back home yeah a couple days and then I'm gonna have the house full for the holiday for Thanksgiving and say yep and I'm excited though you know it's all good it's all good that I'm ready to be home ready for my own bed.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

I hear ya we'll safe travels and we will talk to you next week.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

All right thank you so much for listening to our podcast we hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa. We look forward to seeing you next week.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

So please come back and join us and discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business