Culture Trumps Personality

Culture Trumps Personality

Dr. Gustavo Grodnitzky

“Anyone who has heard me speak to an audience knows that I define culture as the environment in which we live and work, including beliefs, behavioral rules, traditions and rituals. Personality is a set of behaviors that hang together to create a tendency within our full behavioral repertoire. In short, personality is a tendency to behave in a certain way.

We know this intuitively because if you take someone who is LOUD and BOISTEROUS and ALWAYS TALKING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS, and you walk them into a church, a museum, or a bank, what are they likely to do? Most people will get quiet. Have you changed their personality? No, you’ve changed their environment. When you change people’s environment, behavior follows.

Why?

Human behavior does not occur in a vacuum, it occurs in a context, which means in relationship to circumstances, environment and culture. When you change the context, behavior follows. Why is this important in business? The context in which we, live and work is called corporate culture. This means if we have employees and/or coworkers who are goal-oriented, motivated by teams, and driven by performance, it’s because their corporate culture demands it. Conversely, it also means if they don’t care about goals, don’t care about teams, don’t care about performance, it’s because their culture allows them not to care.

Don’t allow unacceptable behaviors to exist in your place of work because of personality.

When you change the context, behavior follows. Culture trumps personality.

Does this work for everyone? According to clinical data, about 10% of people in the United States have a diagnosable personality disorder. People with personality disorders have many issues, one of which is that they are too busy trying to negotiate internal stimuli to understand or attend to external stimuli. This means they are much less likely to attend or be aware of changes in the environment that other people would notice, and then change their behavior. So, using the same example from above, if you take someone with a personality disorder who is loud, boisterous, and always talking at the top of their lungs, and you walk them into a church, a museum or a bank, they will be the person who continues to speak loudly. They will be unaware or indifferent to the change in context, draw unnecessary attention to themselves and/or their group, and quite possibly be thrown out.

In business, rather than speak in terms of personality disorders, I prefer to speak about personality styles. Some people are very aware of context and are responsive to changes in environment or context. Other people are far more rigid, less adaptive and less aware of changes. I would suggest these are the types of people you don’t want in your organization. They tend to create a culture that is toxic and difficult to alter. When I speak about culture trumping personality, I’m really speaking of the majority of people in our population who function within healthy and normal limits. When you create a strong culture in your organization, these are the people who come to your organization, and more importantly, they stay….”

Dr. Gustavo Grodnitzky (Dr. Gustavo) is a speaker, author, consultant, and psychologist whose diverse background brings a unique and multidimensional perspective to his global clients. For the past 15 years, he has focused on engagements with corporate clients, and has worked with Global 1000 companies around the world, as well as with smaller, often family-run, businesses addressing a variety of topics, including corporate culture, emotional intelligence, anger management, and integrating multigenerational workforces.

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