Last night at my company’s Leadership Development meeting we were discussing Patrick Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Since it is quite true that you learn best by doing, our leader began a role-playing exercise by first splitting us up into different groups. Our goal was to act out common team scenarios…while the audience judged us on our level of function/dysfunction. In order to mimic a more natural team environment comprising an array of personality types (or perhaps to give us the best possible chance of not making complete fools of ourselves in front of our peers), the group leader decided to first give us a quick personality test. Yet rather than having us go off to a quiet space and fill out 100 bubbles for the Myers Brigg, he simply had us look at four shapes – circle, square, triangle and squiggle. “Pick which shape you feel most at ease with…maybe which shape you’d most like for wallpaper.” For me, looking at the shapes and determining my preference was easy…like which hand to pick up a pencil with, or how I interloped my fingers – right thumb in front or left?
Since it is quite true that you bring your personality style into everything you do (unless you just won an award at the Oscars), accordingly, it probably also holds true that you bring your personality style to your tweets – hence having a tweet style? Maybe this is what the brain trust behind Twitter had in mind from the very beginning in branding this micro-blogging site with a bird theme? Maybe this is actually your melody? Luckily for the tweeter who is looking to use Twitter to grow his business or personal brand, the fact that there is a world of market research at your fingertips in your tweeps’ tweets seems like reason enough to get to know their melodies! So maybe work from the outside-in versus inside-out? Just a thought.
Anyway, regardless of your personality style, or the personality styles in your twaggle, do whatever you can to avoid any of these twitter types…styles…twstyles?…