Nikita Mikhailov: 0:00

Well, I'm absolutely for some cheeky shenanigans, Andrew, especially on a Friday afternoon.

Andrew: 0:04

Okay, I'm excited

Mark: 0:07

that might go in my intro. I'm glad I recorded that. Welcome to TeamCraft. Today, we're joined by Nikita Mikhailov, who is an expert in psychometrics, member of the British Psychological Society, and co author of the book, Personality, a User's Guide. In practice, Nikita's clients include Fortune 500 companies, startups, individuals, and couples. His particular interest lies in how a better understanding of personality and individual difference can inform not only talent selection and development decisions, but our relationships and even office design. It's a great pleasure to welcome Nikita today.

Andrew: 0:50

Nikita, In your book you talk about embracing my unemployability and moving into comedy and so forth. And reading that passage made me wonder, well, what is the personality of this person? So I thought we could start by you talking us through your personality. Yeah,

Nikita Mikhailov: 1:14

Uh, I'm more than happy to answer that question, and my more narcissistic side appreciates it. You know, the narcissist jokes enough about my narcissism. What do you think about my narcissism? So the key thing for me from personality perspective, it's, we all have a self narrative, so we all have the story. We tell ourselves of who we are, which is really interesting. Can each one of us have this different story? So I could describe myself as highly extroverted, neurotic, a Leo, because Leo's clearly the best, or, you know, whichever sort of model you're using of personality and what sort of. Language you're also using. And what's really interesting about this narrative is how often do you update it? Because you have confirmation bias, so you're more likely to seek out information which supports your opinion. So whenever my partner, uh, tells me, Nick, you're being argumentative. My response is, No, I'm not. uh, it's not congruent with my self narrative, so we're discounted. Instead of actually being curious about the other person's experience of you. Because let's say in a team of 10 or 12 people, there's 12 versions of you. There's one yourself narrative and there's 11 how other people interpret your behavior and each one of those narratives is different. So isn't actually interesting to explore within a group or a team setting in this case of actually how different people perceive each other and you in particular.

Andrew: 2:38

I'm gonna, I'm going to just move on from the fact that you, I don't think you fully answered my question, but I appreciated the answer.

Nikita Mikhailov: 2:47

I can describe myself as many things, Andrew, basically, depending on the circumstances.

Andrew: 2:51

I mean, for me. Kind of coming from a sociological perspective in my work, I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I'm not massively literate in a lot of stuff in psychology. And I think the thing that stuck out to me the most from a team perspective was it's It feels instinctive to describe a personality as something that belongs to you, but it's almost the opposite, isn't it?

Nikita Mikhailov: 3:19

Yeah, to an extent, right? The key thing is that, uh, how do we even define personality? That's what's really fun because, let's say, how to tell an article about popular psychology is likely to be a bit questionable. It starts with the following lines. Psychologists agree. I haven't, you know, rarely agree on anything. And personality is one of those absolutely fantastic topics. This is one of the key reasons why I'm so fascinated by it. Because personality, if you take out your earphones, and you walk down the street, Or you sit on the bus, or you sit in the cafe. Statistically likely, you will hear that word being mentioned by somebody. And it will be mentioned in different contexts, like, uh, My boss has a strong personality. Or, I really love their personality. Or my cat has personality. Or I bought this chair because it has character. Or, in our society constructs, we even have, uh, you know, Sports personality of the year. So apparently it could be awarded. You know, it's being used all the time, but people have different ideas what it is. You know, uh, so from my perspective in my practice, I say there's basically five levels to personality. So first level we discussed, it's self view versus how other people see you. Second level, it's more, uh, we go down to your self narrative. So self narrative, um, exists between your behavior and how you see yourself. So I say there's what you like, What you do, what you do too much, and who you aspire to be. So, there's stuff we like to do, such as I might like to be creative and have a creative hobby, and, you know, I'm in my element. Uh, but however, there's some stuff you might do which you don't particularly like. So, I find listening a little bit of a struggle. It's easier when they pay me. In a coaching scenario, so I can't dial it up when required, but I know that I cannot have more than three to four one to one sessions a day before my quality of listening goes down. Same as some people might really struggle with speaking up in groups, so they need to make sure they have some time before to, uh, Not spend their energy and some time after to recharge same as for example So that's what you like what you do and then you also have the maladaptive response what we do too much so I can become a little bit more extroverted and really kind of talk over people and interrupt and stuff like that and Also, then we have what we aspire to be which is I think the more interesting But what we think how we want to develop how we want to grow last year There was a study done in us and in this particular study It's In the book, we'll mention shortly so you can get your so you can get yourself. Sorry. That was a Freudian slip Uh, I mean so as the research shows, uh People were asked do you want to change your personality 80 said yes. So first off the bat What do we have this whole thing? People don't want to change. Well, that's actually is not supported by the study. 80 percent of people do. They want it to be less neurotic and more extroverted, like the world needs more extroverts, right? But, uh, the key thing here, what's really important here is that we all have this idea of who we should be, who we should be at work, who should we be with family, who should we be across all these different social interactions. There's kind of like who you are, how you behave around others, and how you think you should be behaving around others and how you act on the stress. And then we have how you see yourself and how other people see you. So yes, there's definitely lots of different lenses that you can take on personality, but the social aspect is very much like that. Because how would you know you're extroverted if you don't interact with an introvert? Like how we also assess ourselves, because quite often when people complete this assessment, it's like, I'm, I like to socialize and get energized. Well, you know, I seek out novel experiences. Uh, this questionnaires you answer in your personality metrics is you're comparing it to somebody Like when you ask a client and you go into depth you go. Well, i'm not extroverted Well compared to whom well, my great uncle just can't be alone and throws all these loud parties, you know Okay, so compared to your great uncle you're actually introverted but compared to the you know population you're quite extroverted So actually what sort of points of reference do we actually use when we're answering questions like i'm more this i'm more that i'm i'm less this compared to whom? Of

Mark: 7:39

if I can jump in for a second, actually, I'd like to mention the book. the book I I've mentioned to you before, Nikita, there's certainly the philosophy section of the book brought back horrible memories of things I didn't understand about my degree, but I think To talk about the book a little bit, um, it's"Personality, a user's guide". I think the, the, the name is very smart and that's certainly the way that it's represented, uh, through the book, that it does a brilliant job of really explaining a lot of the basics and the history of thought around personality. And you describe personality in, in the book as the self-developing itself, which I think is a really lovely way of framing it because it, it gives that element of dynamism to it. It's not something that is set, but it is something that is, that moves One of the reasons that I enjoyed the book, I have had I've had some frustrations with, um, some personality tests. Some are regularly used on and aren't necessarily very useful, but I thought you did a really nice job and it put me in my place when I was reading it, um, because you're actually much more open with both, um, the Myers Briggs MBTI and, um, and even astrology where you're saying, these things are Just ways that people can use classifications and descriptions of themselves. But obviously what you do is you move from that. So you're more open and supportive of those things than I have been when I was being skeptical about it. But you do a really nice job of walking through the history and the philosophy and actually the technicality of personality. So. I read it and I thought this is a really fantastic book that explains to people a lot of things that would be useful for more people to understand about personality. But what was, what was really driving you when you were thinking about co authoring the book with Gyorgi? What was, what was the aim that you had? What did you want to accomplish with the book?

Nikita Mikhailov: 9:33

course, I can post rationalise and wax lyrically, but in reality, but how did this come about? So, me and Georgi had an argument on LinkedIn, and I have a policy that whoever I argue with on LinkedIn about a professional topic, I have a call with, because you both feel strongly about the same issue, but you're coming from different directions. And therefore, isn't it interesting to find out? So you already have something in common. You feel strongly about the same issue. So let's explore it. So we had a call and we realized we have very different perspectives on personality and psychometrics. He comes from a more kind of his background is philosophy and now big data analytics, all of this. Mine is very practical. I run group workshops. I do one to one work. I use assessments. I dabbled in their development, but never into the data analytics side. So we have different perspectives on. What psychometrics is and what personality is and how it should be used and how it can be used or how it will be used with the AI, et cetera. So we started talking, we got on, run a few events, then like, why not write a book? So then we contacted one of our wonderful colleagues, who's quite often published. It's like, who's your agent? And so like, this is the guy. So we wrote to him. It's like first chapter and one page summary, because I didn't know you didn't need to write a whole book. You just need the first chapter. And then we got the book deal and it's like, okay, we better write it. And then we wrote it, but the key thing is that he brings a philosophy, big data analytics. So here's behind chapter three is the philosophy of self that she described. Mark, I've read this three times. I still can't understand half of it. But people who understand philosophy told me it's really good. So, and, um, how Georgi defined personality, this, uh, self developing itself. It's much more humanistic than I would expect, but it's wonderful. So I think it's really good to actually work. And write and discuss stuff with people you disagree with on a lot of issues It doesn't mean you cannot actually work together

Andrew: 11:28

And it doesn't mean you have to write a book to resolve the argument. That's, that's just an option that's open to you.

Nikita Mikhailov: 11:33

exactly, but we we basically kind of when we talked there was Uh, quite a bit of, you know, disagreement, friction and all of that. So you can see the writing styles are slightly different, but we still edited each other's chapters to make them a little bit more kind of readable for others. And to us, one of the key summaries from this book is, I think, as, especially as professionals, we have lost the ability to argue. We take stuff so personally, it's all theories at the end of the day. As you mentioned, Mark, about personality and models and assessments. People take this so personally, like, Oh my God, how dare you compare psychometrics to the Zodiac? Why not? Like, I mean, seriously, people criticize this psychometrics are not valid, but the question is, are they popular? So for example, with the Zodiac, I think this sells more than anything else because it's in every newspaper.

Andrew: 12:23

Mm.

Nikita Mikhailov: 12:23

know, you open up a news channel and quite often top five news, what do Capricorns have in stores this week? But the key thing is that What? Why are people interested in this? So first step is who you are. Like, what's in store for you this week? What's the second step? Well, I'm a Capricorn. I'm going on a date with a Leo. How's that gonna go? So, we have this innate thing for us to have some sort of a model for our own self narrative and how we relate to others. And this kind of the default setting on which then later you'll have like MPTI, Big Five, DISC. There's lots of different models. But ultimately, as you mentioned, Mark, it's, it's usefulness. How useful is it? Because to me, when we talk about psychometrics, just for a little too geeky, two minute geeky moment, we talk about different reliability. So how like you measure personality now in six months, is it going to be the same? So how reliable is the tool? What if a person has personal growth? In the middle of that time, does it mean they have grown? Is it measurement error?

Andrew: 13:21

Mm.

Nikita Mikhailov: 13:22

for example, we have validity. Like, one of the validity measures is criterion validity. If I measure you now, is it correlated with your performance as a lecturer or, you know, port worker in Aberdeen? Or, you know, it's, uh, uh, so we obsess with this. But when it comes to actually people completing the assessments. The only thing we care about is what's called face validity. Does it basically look legit enough for people to answer those questions? We actually don't care how useful it is to those people, what they get out of it. No. Did you, did you answer those questions? Good. Move on.

Andrew: 13:57

what's quite fascinating to me when you think about all of that context is the usefulness of it to people is it gives you a sort of scaffolding structure, you know, to me, it gives, it gives them a language to navigate themselves. And in a way, what, what is so interesting is that some of the foundational work, if I'm remembering correctly from the book, but the foundational work is the, this psycholexical approach where those who were involved in creating some of these assessments or creating the foundations for them, they went through the dictionary. And they were like, that word's good. Let's, let's, let's use that one to describe this bit. And, and, so it's all about language in a way, isn't it?

Nikita Mikhailov: 14:45

yes, there was also, yeah, and it's how useful it is. So I a proposed term called utilitarian validity. It's how useful it is to the person. Completing the assessment, having feedback, having coaching, going through selection, you name it, different circumstances. So going back to the psycholexical approach, Andrew. Yep. So Allport and Allbert in 1930s America were quite inspired by what the gang was doing in France was intelligence assessments. So Binet, et cetera. It wasn't yet called IQ because IQ was a U. S. rebrand of intelligence assessments. And then basically what happened is that we're like, let's, let's do a personality assessment, but where should we start? So they decided to go psycho lexical. The theory was if there's some difference between myself and Mark, or myself and Andrew, or Andrew and Mark, we should have some words for it by now in the English language. So we should have kind of developed some words to explain those differences. So they picked out the dictionary and they identified every word. As you mentioned, which they thought had to do with personality, temperament, behavior, et cetera. You can actually find the paper is Allport and Odbert. You can find it on Google Scholar. It's open access by now. 1930s, I think something. Eight. I think it is. And basically, any guesses, Andrew Mark, how many words they felt had to do with individual differences in personality and temperament behavior?

Mark: 16:00

I dread to think. A thousand?

Nikita Mikhailov: 16:02

Thousand. Andrew?

Andrew: 16:03

I don't, I don't even know because I'm trying to remember, because I've read it recently, but, um, four thousand.

Nikita Mikhailov: 16:09

Close. 17, 908. And over this time, what started is the analysis to actually identify, it took about 40, 50 years that basically the 17,908 words gravitate around five factors of personality, sometimes referred to as a big five or bf or the, the big few, as some people call it as well. But the key thing is, is just a model. So one the key things about a more scientific approach, though my dad's a professor, applied mathematics and physics. Whenever I tell him psychology is a science, well, he disagrees. Uh, and, um, yeah, but that's for therapy, not for this podcast. And, uh, but the key thing is here is that, uh, in five years, it might be big three. In 10 years, it might be big six. Some people already argues to big six. So what big five we're going to describe now is just a model to be updated as our understanding evolves. So, um, basically the big five says there's basically five factors to personality. One is neuroticism. And by the way, we all are neurotic. Some of us are really high in neuroticism. Some of us are very low. Most of us are in the middle. So it's a standard distribution. So people who are high in neuroticism tend to experience negative emotions more often. They tend to have a higher propensity for risk, like see risk around them. And they also have a negative self construct. So remember that self narrative, they're quite hard on themselves. So, you know, what people talk about in the critic imposter syndrome, it's highly correlated with that. So neurotic people tend to be harder on themselves, but by the way, if anybody here, Andrew, Mark, do you suffer from imposter syndrome or inner critic?

Andrew: 17:40

Yes.

Nikita Mikhailov: 17:41

Yeah.

Andrew: 17:41

I'm definitely not high on neuroticism, but I definitely suffer from those issues.

Nikita Mikhailov: 17:45

So you're being so critical, you're critical that you're not high enough on neuroticism, is that what you're saying? But, uh, basically, I should be higher! But you know what's really good, Andrew and Mark, from being, having an inner critic and imposter syndrome? I have some good news for you.

Mark: 17:59

Go on, tell us.

Nikita Mikhailov: 18:00

You're unlikely to be psychopaths. Psychopaths don't have that. So next time, good listeners, you're very hard on yourself. You can always go, well, at least I'm not a psychopath. So, you know, bright side to it.

Andrew: 18:11

Yeah.

Nikita Mikhailov: 18:12

people learn.

Andrew: 18:13

good to remember.

Nikita Mikhailov: 18:14

Exactly. Well, people low on neuroticism, it doesn't mean they don't experience negative emotions. As one of our colleagues, Gordon Kerfie says, it's the length, your levels of neuroticism, the length of your fuse. So basically, you can put up with more negative emotional stimuli before you experience a negative emotional reaction. So low neurotics tend to experience negative emotions. So how can you tell, in a relationship, you're likely to be low on neuroticism? You keep telling your partner they're overreacting. Does it ever work? No. Because they're not overreacting, they're just reacting. You're perceiving them as overreacting, because you just score lower on it. So, also, people say, oh, neuroticism is really bad, all of this. But, actually, there's bright sides to it. Because we feel negative emotions more often. So when we feel anger, depression, anxiety, all of this, it's like, hello, darkness, my old friend, because we know them by name. We have our coping mechanisms, some healthier than others, but the first word is coping and people with low neuroticism, when negative emotions happen. They don't necessarily have those coping mechanisms. They don't recognize those emotions because it happens. And there's a kind of a, another factor is that their friends and colleagues will think, they'll be fine, they're a resilient one. So please check in on your low and high neurotic colleagues, and other key things that often people say, Are you a glass half full and half or half empty person? Which I think is complete nonsense because the glass is half full and half empty at both times. So when you work with people with different levels of neuroticism, when they're trying to talk about what can go wrong. Don't say like, Oh, you, you were so negative. You were half empty. Um, have a session at the planning stage. What can go wrong and what we can do about it. Use the risk department, uh, and actually channel that proactively maybe because it's Bernard Shaw wrote and I read it on social media. So I know it's true. Uh, that society needs both an optimist and a pessimist. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute. So it's how we work together that's key in the team setting. Rather than necessarily say, oh, neuroticism is bad, stop being so neurotic. Well, stop being so low on neuroticism.

Andrew: 20:20

well, I have an anecdote for you. And this is seguewaying into that kind of teen dynamic thing, but I'm talking about my domestic team here with my wife, because your book gave us probably the cheapest bit of couples therapy you could ever imagine. So my, my wife, who won't be, she won't be mad at me. for uh, saying this, but my wife is definitely very high in neuroticism. She'd be the first to tell you. Um, and I am the opposite. I was reading your book and I had a light bulb moment. I realized being neurotic requires a lot of creativity and imagination. I, I came through to my wife. I was, I was reading it in the morning. I came to my wife, she's having breakfast. And said, I've just realised that, you know, the fact that you're, between the two of us, you're the one who's high on neuroticism and I'm definitely not. I'm so, like, everything will be fine, relaxed, kind of. Take things in my stride, but I'm also really bad at planning and I'm really because I don't think anything's going wrong So I don't think then there's any need to worry about what's coming in the future As I realize she's amazing at planning because she's like what if this happens? What if this goes wrong? We need to do this We need to have this prepared because that could go wrong and I'm realizing I I get a huge bit of a subsidy from, from my wife's neuroticism when we're doing anything kind of domestic planning. Um, at the same time, she's like, it's great to live with you because you don't get, you don't get upset when things go wrong.

Nikita Mikhailov: 21:50

Well, plus, when you go on holiday, she's the one who buys insurance. Or you already have insurance through your credit card.

Andrew: 21:55

Yeah,

Nikita Mikhailov: 21:55

Exactly. It's a relief. There has been a recent study done that how much satisfaction return investment you have from spending money on different things. And for example, people who are high on neuroticism have a higher return on investment when they buy insurance. So for example, when I go to us and I used to buy insurance and used to get this email, Nikita, you're fully covered. I enjoyed that more than the trip usually. And then I was like telling my, well, my partner, I was like, Oh my God, I love those emails. Like why you buy an insurance? I'm like, what? We already get this for a credit card. I'm like, I can see the value, but I really enjoyed this little thing. Yeah. But by the way, Andrew, you know what they say about marriage.

Andrew: 22:38

What do they say about marriage?

Nikita Mikhailov: 22:40

It's psychological, one is a psycho, the other one's logical.

Andrew: 22:44

Yeah.

Nikita Mikhailov: 22:45

yeah, I'm the psycho of that, of my relationship.

Andrew: 22:48

Well, you just told me that I wasn't a psychopath. So that, that by elimination.

Nikita Mikhailov: 22:53

Psycho and psychopath are slightly different things. Uh, and, uh, yeah. But, to me, it's, what's really important is that you have different personalities, but Opposites attract, and I think that this is what's really not discussed enough within personality psychology. Whenever, like that study, do you want to change your personality? 80 percent of people said yes. We're much more likely to think how we change our personality rather than to think how we can work with diverse personalities around us.

Mark: 23:17

there's a really powerful part in the book, Nikita, something that I really loved because we, we all, Andrew and I talk about teams a lot. I think about teams a lot from a professional perspective because I'm fortunate enough often to, to be helping create them. And one of the things that I really loved in the book is you effectively went through each of the big five traits one by one and said, um, if you are. high on this trait, and you are working with people that are low on the trait or towards the opposite end of the spectrum of a trait, this is how you can work together. And I thought it did this really beautiful job of sort of explaining almost exactly what Andrew just did, how how you can benefit from, you know, if you're, if you're high on introversion, how do you deal with people high on extroversion? And you mentioned an introvert coming home at the end of the day, being met by their extrovert partner, it feels like they're being charged by a Labrador. wonder if you could just walk us through a little bit of that. You know, you've, you've got the, you've got the, the big five, you've just mentioned, uh, neuroticism. how do, how should people be responding if they're one? one thing towards somebody who is towards the other end of the spectrum.

Nikita Mikhailov: 24:23

First of all, the first step is curiosity. Because so often we make assumptions about others without actually asking them. We interpret their behaviors, we go, they're like this, and they go, oh, well, you know, they're like this. And the moment they do something that's not in line, we talk to somebody, a person who agrees with them. Oh, can you believe that did that? Oh, I know! Instead of actually asking them, why did they do that? So, going back to Allport, with Odbert, who started the psycholexical approach that led to Big Five, one of my favorite quotes is from Allport. And that is, if I want to know something about somebody I asked them. And so asking your colleagues how you want to work whenever I start a workshop, I ask people to just turn to the person next to you. Each one of you has three minutes, answer a simple question. How would you describe your personality? and then no interruption. And the other colleague plays back what they're hearing and what they're also seeing in your behavior. If they work in the same team and then the tables turn and not tables turn, the other person goes basically. But the key thing is, is just that even in those three minutes, people can find out new stuff about their colleagues as they've been working with them for years, because we don't ask. So if I'm like super extrovert and I have an introverted colleague, will I talk to them? No, I will go into Google and I will say, how can I manage an introverted colleague? Or we can say, how would they like their feedback? Oh, we'll go into Google and we'll go, how do my employees like feedback? You know, instead of actually asking them. Like, how do you want to work? When do you do your best work? How can I help you do your best work? Is there any way I can help? And being just curious and open. And so often people don't discuss this. You know, and take stuff so personally. Well, it's not personal. Like, you know, so often people will think they upset me. They do it on purpose. Statistically likely, they're not even aware you're upset.

Mark: 26:15

the things you, you've mentioned before, um, one of the times I saw you at SciPub, obviously this is, um, this is an event that you run. Um, this, this, this really resonated with me. I'm very high on, on introversion. So, and, and, and I found it fascinating reading the book and recognizing things, but also almost reading the, you know, you mentioned the extroverts, Introverts, just extroverts that are very selective in the book, there was one part where you're saying, you know, you can, you can go to an event. you'll see, an introvert will be feeling the pressure of being surrounded by all those people, won't really want to get involved. Um, especially if they've gone on their own. So they're sitting in the corner on their phone. That's me. You know, I'm the person, I will immediately extract myself and go, okay, I don't want to deal with any of these people. I'll go to the back. Extrovert sees that person and goes, look at that person. They're on their own, but they must need help. I should go and talk to them immediately. Um, and it is, and, and you know, I think it's really fascinating because you, you address lots of situations like that, where there's just a fundamental misunderstanding of, um, style between people with those different personality types.

Nikita Mikhailov: 27:19

absolutely. And it's how we relate. So for example, it could be at a party or an open office. I always say you can spot an extrovert by what I call a meerkat effect, because the moment the extrovert is under stimulated, they'll stand up and they look around who they can talk to. And, you know, what if it's an introvert between meetings, having a cup of coffee, looking outside the window, by themselves. The extrovert goes, Woohoo, you must be lonely. Uh, so, and come over and chat to them. But this is what's really interesting, is this dynamic between us. It's how we seek out the opposite, how we're often married to our psychological opposites. How we work with people who are different to us. You know, we, I think there is that need for us to seek out diverse personalities around us, but at the same time, when we come to leadership development, so much of the leadership development is how you can be everything to all people, like how, you know, you read or like how to be more vulnerable, how to be more empathetic, how to be more creative, how to be more agile, how to pivot and sure you can be all of those things, but it is exhausting. So just give an introversion, extroversion example. So a few years ago, there was a study done that if you. Act more extrovertedly, you'll get more positive emotion. And they did the study, so, oh, everybody needs to be an extrovert. Uh, however, um, the issue became that an additional study was done that shows that, yeah, If you're in the middle. So if you're ambiverted, so around average on this scale and you're more extroverted, yes, you get more positive emotional effect as a result of acting more extroverted and less negative emotional effects. So you're an emotion kind of plus, so to say, positive state. But if you're super introverted, then, then you need to act more extroverted. You actually get more negative emotions and positive ones as a result of this. So same ways that you know you, there is parts of your personality when you have a strong preference. And when you need to deviate from this, you need to make a scaffolding of energy support structures. You can do it, but for a little bit of time. So if you have to act all day extroverted, you can, but then inform your partner at home that you really need time alone this evening. So when you come back home, they don't treat it as rejection. So things like that can help. But what's also important is that who can you delegate this to such as, for example, if you come to a networking event with an extrovert and they go kind of socialize and meet all the people. And when you come in 30 minutes later, they introduce you to everybody. And then you can say, actually, you know, you can even give a brief to your extrovert colleague, you know, you know, Barbara, I really want to talk to people within this kind of sphere. With those particular interests, because I have them too. So I want to explore that further. And when you come in half an hour later, you go, Oh, Barbara. Oh yeah. Great. You need to meet per mentor over there because he has the same kind of interest in like, you know, I don't know, 1960s civil aviation, uh, or, you know, firefighters in Wales, God knows, but they can spot that and then can make the introduction same as then after the meetup, you can talk with Barbara and you go, actually, you know, and to go, well, I don't think we actually got any leads. Because they spent a little bit of time talking with everybody. Because, well, actually, Parmenter is looking for this additional business that we can work with. Because the introvert kind of potentially listened to the other person a bit longer.

Andrew: 30:29

I wanted to, we're getting towards the end of our conversation, but there's something that I, there's a quote that I picked out from the book and it, and it relates to a question I really wanted to ask you, and it relates to, you know, the ingredients to an effective team. So I'll read you the quote from, Your wonderful prose, you said, The latter is gravely needed in our modern age, where the self is sinking ever deeper into the maelstrom of stress, anxieties, depression, information overload, consumerist over simulation, physical immobilization and unrealistic social media driven expectations. At the end of the day, we hopefully ask ourselves, what is left for me? And is related to another theme that Mark and I have been discussing a bit, which is about of individualism in, know, contemporary culture, contemporary Western culture, certainly, and that interacts with good teamwork, you effective work with others. Do you think, you think we're more individualist? Do you think individualism is a problem?

Nikita Mikhailov: 31:36

think everything can moderation include in moderation. So, uh, that's kind of my motto. I think there's nothing wrong with different traits, but even in a single team, people will have different ideas of how individualistic it is. Everybody in the team will have a different perspective of what this team does.

Andrew: 31:54

Yeah.

Nikita Mikhailov: 31:54

Everybody within this team and the company will have a different idea of what organizational culture is like. Everybody within the team will have different expectations of what's expected of this team. This is far more interesting questions. And I think that the key thing is we're social creatures. Humans are social. Look at the cities we live in. We're social creatures. Shouldn't our personalities also be seen as social? Shouldn't we talk about how we complement each other, such as you mentioned, Andrew, with your wife, who channels her neuroticism into being really organized for, for the both of you. And isn't, how often do we actually appreciate that? And, you know, rather than thinking I should be more organized, maybe you should, but maybe you pair up and how wonderfully you balance her out by putting it into perspective about, well, actually, you know, She wants to, she will think like, you know, high neurotic increase the probability of things going wrong. Low neurotic still think it can go wrong, but low chances. So for you, it's like, what are the chances of going wrong? One in a thousand. And she, from her perspective, it was like, it's 50 50, it'll either go wrong or it won't and probably will. So then she, when she's, when your attitude is like one in a thousand, she might go, yeah, maybe the chance of it going wrong is one in twenty. So, you know, you balance each other out. And over time, I actually believe you develop little avatars inside your head of your partners or your close colleagues. And you might ask, what would they say? You know, when you can't consult them, you have their avatar you can consult, you know? And, uh, I think there's wonderful ways that personality works on a social level. But when you have your psychometric report, or are you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or are you this character from this film or whatever, there's It's, it's so nice to look at this A4 page and to think this is you, but what's missing is all the social interactions, all the team interactions, all the way how you compliment each other. Like for me, whenever I work with a client, there's a few favorite questions I have. One, we've already covered, how would you describe yourself? Second, what do people sometimes get wrong about your personality? That doesn't mean there's a truth to personality, like, ooh, the truth of who you are. It just means it indicates an incongruency between how you see yourself and how other people see you. Like, people might think I'm angry, but I'm really passionate. Or, you know, people think I don't care, but I'm just quiet. You know, there's different kind of incongruencies between how other people see you and how you see yourself, which is interesting. Another thing is, what aspects of your personality do you consciously manage at work? How And why do you think it's necessary to do so? Because that gives you an indication of congruency between personality and environment. Also, why they do it. So I often had people who say, I need to be less emotional at work. I go, fair enough. Can you tell me why? What's the source of this information? Well, my first boss told me I should be less emotional. When was that? Oh, when I worked in a shop and And in front of you is a 50 year old executive at a financial institution. And you go, okay, first, back of my mind, you probably changed by then, by now, you're a different person. The environment is very different. And can you just imagine that for 30 years, this person has been managing who they are based on one sentence of feedback. Remember that aspirational side to personality? And we kind of reflect on this, yeah, and they go, yeah, right. And the second thing they usually think of is, Okay. Oh my god, what have people been doing based on my feedback? And you go, yeah, I know, right? Isn't that interesting to find out? Uh, and then also, like, what you want to develop about your personality and why. But the main question I currently ask is, going back to your point, Andrew, about relationships, is what, what do you appreciate in other people? What personality traits you appreciate the most than others. And I think teams don't spend any time on that. So whenever I do a team workshop, especially teams under 12, I would ask each person to stand on like a personality model. I use a floor mat and other kind of props and gizmos and stuff to stand where the most comfortable be. The extroversion, introversion, you know, big picture people focus. And then I'll ask all the other 11 members of the group to go stand on each one of the qualities they appreciate this person brings to the team. And then we'll go around the circle and each person shares why they're standing, where they're standing. To that individual, like, I appreciate you bring empathy, as you have shown, like, this project we've been working on, and then after they finish, I ask that person to play back what they've heard, and then nominate the next person, and so it continues. But to me, what this kind of highlights is that, look, right now, it's January when we're recording this. It's a time of year of annuals or reviews when, uh, well, you know, it's a wonderful corporate life ritual, which makes sense because you only give feedback on people's work one day a year. Uh, but, and also the feedback is always given yes, but it's usually from your manager and it's not from the rest of your team. And even to receive just positive feedback from each member of your team consecutively in one moment has been shown to be quite interesting because people don't usually get that. And quite often when you ask people what sort of things you want to develop, it comes from like, I'm not being seen for doing this. I'm going to do that. Usually our wish to develop comes from not being enough, but actually after you get this feedback that you are enough, that you are being seen for your efforts, then if you ask people what sort of things you might consider experimenting doing differently, then people go, well, actually, and they come up with much more. tangible stuff.

Andrew: 37:17

Yeah.

Nikita Mikhailov: 37:17

This is what's really interesting. We really don't appreciate each other. We, we don't appreciate how we compliment each other, how we complimented each other, how we work together. How often do we say thank you? Like, thank you for your neuroticism. Thank you for your extroversion. Thank you for your introversion. I appreciate this about you.

Andrew: 37:36

Yeah.

Nikita Mikhailov: 37:36

like, this is not enough. You're doing stuff I don't expect you to be doing. How, how, how? Rather than, actually, so, how you imagine this person is, isn't congruent with how they're behaving. So, we kind of go, wow, how do you do this? Instead of actually asking, why do you do this? Like, what happened there? What did you hear? Oh, we have so little curiosity about ourselves and others. It is fantastic. I mean, just the levels of assumptions we're making based on so little information. It's amazing. Thank you for listening. Like, we right now have teams who work virtually on teams, right? And if you finish a meeting 15 minutes early, do you stay and chat? No, you say, I'll give you 15 minutes of your life back and you go, Finally, I can use the bathroom because nobody canceled Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But the thing is that we don't know who these people are. There's no chats with them over coffee, how was the weekend, what football team you support. This chat's in the elevator between meetings, this meeting's on the stairs, you know. Oh, oh, free for a coffee? Yeah, sure, actually, I have 15 minutes. There's nothing like this! We work with individuals across the world and we have no idea who they are. Honestly, after working in this field for 12 years, I'm surprised when communication happens between people. Miscommunication is the name of the game. I'm surprised most functions within companies actually function. How little different teams which form up this function actually know about each other. And how often they make those assumptions. To me, it's just, it's absolutely fascinating.

Mark: 39:05

I've got one observation and

Nikita Mikhailov: 39:06

Mm hmm.

Mark: 39:08

um, the observation, and actually, it's very related to the teams, um, to building teams and organizations. You made a lovely comment, whether it was you or Gyorgi made the comment, but in, in your book, um, around how, um, two, three hundred years ago, we used to identify ourselves by what religion we were, and then who our grandfather was, what our family name was, and then which village we came from. And we've lost some of that. You know, we've lost some of the, sort of, the elastic cultural, uh, elements of, the way society is organized. And you quite rightly said in, in the book that this is leading to a, to a crisis of identity. But I had a different thought when I was reading it. And this comes from working in larger organizations, which was, actually some of the work that Andrew and I have done on, um, on creating teams, which is this sense of, Organizations trying to create culture and how, especially in the larger monopolistic tech companies, you can see people who are adopting, instead of being which village and which religion am I, the predominant part of their characteristic is I'm a Googler or I'm an Amazonian and

Nikita Mikhailov: 40:15

It's an interesting one. So I always say, so we come to organizational culture and I always say you can't spell organizational culture without using the word cult. And there's a hint in that some organizations are more cultish than others. Oh, when do people start that? So for example, fresh out of university, you need to move cities. So you're taking outside your culture, uh, as far as identity, home, family, and you start there, all your friends are from work, et cetera. So whenever you're outside drinking or socializing and drinking non alcoholic beverages as well, um, it's, you talk about work, it's all about work, but, and this is great because we're still highly productive, but I have a few friends who are therapists. Um, and by the way, if you haven't tried therapy, I highly recommend it. It's 50 minutes to talk about yourself without interruption. But the key thing is that what's really important here is that what one of my colleagues said, that she never had such similar clients ever before. Young professionals suffering from crippling levels of anxiety. And her theory is that it's because people assign too much value to work. Their whole identity is intertwined with work. So if you identify I'm of this company, what happens next? Redundancies. You're about to lose all your identity. Now, isn't that terrifying? Instead, I always say, outside of work. Even, I was talking recently with a colleague, he, he had a fantastic professional career. Uh, like, really, you know, C suite level, corporate, global, and so we're having a curry, he's, he was just turning 70, and he goes, I know this work and life balance. We got it all wrong. And I was like, Oh, could you expand? Uh, and I was expecting maybe a little cheeky PowerPoint, at least a slide deck. Uh, but she goes, it should be life and work balance. Why is work first? Yeah, good point. You know, maybe it should, I talked to a few people, maybe it should be just life. Because we obsess about work. If we put all our eggs in a basket of self identity with our work, what happens if we made redundant? What happens if the company closed? What happens during acquisition and then your jobs go? You know, who are you going to be? Because all your friends have left. You know, all of this, it's, it's shocking. So therefore, one of the key things I do with clients is have a life outside of work. So there's been research done that for example, retirement changes your personality, especially in men, we become higher on openness and more creative and all of this and higher agreeableness, nicer to people. So in my workshops, I always say, lads, don't wait to retire to be nicer to people and get a hobby. It's life outside of work, which is important, which we need to celebrate.

Mark: 42:48

one quick question, Deliberately misleading question.

Nikita Mikhailov: 42:51

Go for it.

Mark: 42:52

deliberately incorrect question, um, and you'll, you'll immediately get where I'm going. But at what age do our personalities become fixed?

Nikita Mikhailov: 43:01

Well, uh, I like that question because, uh, a lot of people say, you know, your personality becomes fixed at 30. It's uh, the metaphor is it's fixed like plaster. And there is some reasons behind that because before 21, we actually don't like to use the word personality. We use the word temperament.

Mark: 43:16

Mm

Nikita Mikhailov: 43:16

changes so much. Between 18 and 30, personality changes quite a bit. Between 50 and 60, there's also life events, like retirement, as I mentioned, which change your personality. Things you can do, like therapy. The key thing is that there's ways to change your personality, and it's always in a state of flux. And there we go back to that quote by Gyorgi, the self developing itself. Why do we call it that? Because we don't actually say personality is fixed. So the self narrative you have of yourself is based on your past. It's a story you've been telling yourself where you find yourself in the present and it's your personality Let's say impacts what decisions you make as far as what environment you select. Let's say if you're highly extroverted, louder environment, just for simplicity, or if you're high on openness, you're more curious, you're more explorative. But then this environment and experiences in turn change our personality. So, we're currently in the process of flux, but personality is a liminal entity between now and then, and we're constantly in a period of change. And therefore, this I think one of the clues why it's been so hard to define what personality is, Because there's not really that much agreement, because it's fluid. We keep changing, we change based on the interactions we have, people we meet. You know, it is fantastic to experience that. And quite often, you know, how often have you updated your narrative? You know, uh, how often can you ask your friends who know you well, or family, or Andrew, your partner, you know, in the last few years, how do you think I changed? How often do we actually ask that? From their perspective, well, you're a bit this and a bit that. Like, you know, when my colleagues tell me I'm not as neurotic as I used to be, I go, how dare you say that? Don't take that away from me. Get out.

Andrew: 44:59

I'm going to have to steer us on to our quick fire ending questions if you don't mind. Um, so, Nikita, we start with a positive one. What is your best team memory?

Nikita Mikhailov: 45:11

Ah, team memory. Recently, probably writing the book with Gyorgi. Because, uh, I can like, I think we started writing the book even before we met each other, in person, so it's been all online. And the ability to meet on LinkedIn, connect through an argument, and produce this work, so I think there's like three books intertwined into our first book, which often happens. Apparently, well I think it's often, I only have sample size of one so far. But, uh, I really enjoyed this. And especially the disagreement. And how, through creative tension, something can become better.

Andrew: 45:42

What are your team red flags?

Nikita Mikhailov: 45:45

My team red flags, everything is fine. When you have a team lead say, well, we just want a little team build, just to communicate a little bit better. Sometimes that's the case, but sometimes that hides something much, much more. And, uh, but teams will say, well, you know, we're struggling with communication, all of this, so, I go, yeah, yeah, we can work with that. But when people say, Oh, it's fine. It's great. It's just fantastic. You know, is it really this way? Whenever I do a team workshop, I would usually have one to one sessions with each of the team members and part of the one to one would be to go through personality, but also to identify what they want to explore in the team session. And that's what will be quite interesting.

Andrew: 46:23

Brilliant. Finally, do you have a resource that you would pass on to others to support in their understanding of teamwork?

Nikita Mikhailov: 46:31

Um, from my perspective, just your teams are the best resource on teams. So if you take something away from today is just have open ended questions with your colleagues how they like to work How we can improve our teamwork because for me from my perspective like how rarely People come into a meeting and at the kick of the go everybody clear what's expected them go instead of actually everybody has different idea What's expected wouldn't be nice to go five minutes Each person says what exactly do between now and the next checkpoint and what they might need some help with from each other Lovely or how rarely teams have wash ups Usually, if your lead is like, you know, high open, high extrovert, novelty buys, this was not as good as I expected. Next one will be better. Instead of actually sitting down and say, look, how can we actually work on this? Like each person shares what they enjoy doing in the project, what they feel satisfied with, uh, and you know, one idea how we can work better as a team for the next project. So to me, it's how we facilitate that collective intelligence around you. And the best resource is your teams you work with, is your spouse, is your friends, like, but also just spend a little bit of time, look, um, thank you for your neuroticism, you know, thank you for your extroversion. I really appreciate that and see what they say. Make time for it. Don't look at another book. You have teams around you, of course, apart from Team Craft, Yeah. Uh, but if you're looking for a book, our book could be a good start. If you're interested more in personality and you would like an audio book, uh, why You Are Who You Are by Leery is really good. There's some great courses on Amazon. Also, uh, if you really want to get geeky in psychometrics and personality assessments, uh, personality testing and selection by Monroe is really good. It's a nice little text really gets into the geeky side. So if you're a, uh, work with psychometrics or your work with providers of psychometrics, I highly recommend reading that book at the next supplier meeting. You can have all the uncomfortable, but cool questions to ask your suppliers. Yeah. And, uh, otherwise just your teams, the people around you. Ask them how you changed, how you think they changed, what you appreciate about each other, how we can work better together. All of that is so fascinating, because nobody sees the world like you. You only have one sample size, only you. I will never have any idea how to experience this reality, unlike me. And therefore, isn't it fascinating to have like, three different versions of reality on this call. We have seven, eight billion and counting on this planet. Isn't it fascinating to find out how different people see the world? And to me, going back just to the final thought, to me, all this kind of psychometrics, personality, and all of this, whenever I run a workshop or do one to one work, I say, look, if by the end of this, we can be a couple of percent more curious. About ourselves and others and couple of percent less judgmental about ourselves and others. I think it would be a success So hopefully this little session achieved that what are your thoughts Andrew and Mark sample size of two this time?

Andrew: 49:25

Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Mark: 49:27

It has, and it all resonates. Less, uh, less judgmental and more curious, I think, uh, definitely words we can get behind. Nikita, thank you so much for taking the time. We, we obviously encourage everybody to pick up a copy of your, your book and we'll, we'll share links to the book, um, and to all the resources that you've shared in the show notes, which we will put up with this episode.

Andrew: 49:46

And where can people find you?

Nikita Mikhailov: 49:48

Oh, absolutely just on LinkedIn Nikita Mikhailov chief neuroticism officer You I'm the only one, as I'm aware, because so many cheap happiness officers running about, I thought somebody needs to fly the flag for negative emotional affect.

Andrew: 49:59

Good for you. I'm glad, I'm glad someone, we need, we need some diversity and inclusion around the big five on, on LinkedIn, don't we?

Nikita Mikhailov: 50:05

Well, absolutely. And I wish you a wonderful, well planned weekend, Mark. Yeah,

Mark: 50:12

you. Thank you very much, Nikita. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure we will both have that. Uh, thank you

Andrew: 50:17

Thank you.

Nikita Mikhailov: 50:18

perfect. Thanks so much.