To achieve outlier results you need to have an outlier personality.
Some people think this means you need to be intense and aggressive.
It doesn’t. It means you need to be off the charts in at least one vector of your personality.
This trait can be outlier intensity and aggression but it can also be other traits like outlier energy and optimism (think Dolly Parton), outlier analytical vision (think Tobias Lutke of Shopify), or outlier charisma (think Barack Obama).
What is an outlier personality?
If you’ve taken a personality assessment like the Enneagram or Meyers Briggs you know that personalities are grouped into archetypes. This is because our psychology and our resulting strengths, weaknesses, triggers, and more are organized around specific common human motivations and fears.
However, within a given personality archetype individuals vary significantly due to differences in their unique neurochemistry, life experiences, and more.
As a coach, I get to see this in action, and one interesting form of variance is people who are outlier versions of their personality type.
I call this the “Spectrum of Personality Intensity” and visualize this below.
Examples of Outlier Personas
Here are three examples of people who are all outlier’s (on the far end of the “Spectrum of Personality Intensity” but have very different personality types.
Personality Spectrum of the Helper type:
Personality Spectrum of the Investigator type:
Personality Spectrum of the Challenger type:
The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Having an Outlier Personality:
Since our strengths and weaknesses are connected being an outlier personality is a gift and a curse.
At outlier’s strengths, weaknesses, blindspots, and triggers are all amplified.
For example, a founder who is an outlier motivated by success and fearful of founder will:
-Work tirelessly to be the best in their field
-Have a tendency to lie and self-destruct in the face failure.
Two obvious examples of this exact outlier persona are Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong. Both were so singularly focused on winning that they pushed their sport to new heights and inspired millions; and both self-destructed when failure broke upon their shores.
Founders Must Have Intense Personalities:
The above individuals are world-famous, but they are far from the only outlier personas you will meet in the world.
Every day I coach founders who are not as famous as Anna Wintour or Tobias Lutke but who are outliers and extreme in manifold ways, again, leading to interesting results.
Here are some examples of the unique qualities in the every day founders I coach:
I worked with a series-B CEO who is an outlier in his analytical nature.
During a period of exec team conflict, this founder stayed calm.
He analyzed the situation with little to no emotion.
He described how his mind as “a tree diagram where I evaluate each word I say knowing each choice will lead this conversation and our future down a different path.”
He was able to guide the team through this intense conflict by acknowledging his own failures, directly naming other peoples’ flaws, and finding a solution that addressed these dynamics which including forgetting the past despite the trust ruptures that occurred.
I worked with the CEO of a $400m+ in annual profit company that is an outlier in optimism.
She told me she is energized by a day jam-packed with meetings and context-switching.
She loves moving from exec team interviews to multi-million dollar customer calls to board meetings all within the first few hours of her work day.
This CEO single-handedly created the momentum and sales growth that grew the company to over 1,000 employees and a leader in their field
And this same CEO’s firehose of thoughts and missives later created an existential threat to the company’s progress as she created whiplash throughout the org after it scaled to its current size.
I worked with the CEO of a 2,000-person company that is an outlier in empathy.
This person’s ability to connect deeply with EACH team member from execs to new hires to business partners is unprecedented.
This outlier skill and outlier founder empathy created a culture of trust, loyalty, and performance that is unmatched at the 100+ companies I’ve coached.
This person’s extreme empathy also nearly caused them to leave their job at the height of their success as they experienced burnout and exhaustion from an outlier empathy that meant every employee conflict and issue was felt at a deep, heart-based level.
Living in a world Built by Outliers:
Steve Jobs concluded his famous Stanford graduation speech with:
“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. […] They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Jobs’ speech captures a powerful truth – the crazy ones, outlier founders, are the ones who shape our world.
It’s these outlier founders who have the capacity to see the world differently and the tenacity and skills to bring their vision to life.
This insight made me pause and reflect.
Is it a good thing that our world is built by outliers?
Given that I respect innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity, am I personally capable and well-developed enough to celebrate the gifts of these outlier leaders, while tolerating or setting personal boundaries to not be bothered by their outlier flaws?
How does one rationalize the fact that the same person who brought us the Mac computer also famously fired someone he just met at this company during a 30-second elevator ride (or so the legend goes) for answering a question wrong?
I ask these questions to you as well, not expecting an answer, but to spark your curiosity about the contradictions inherent in you, in those you live and work with, and about your own capacity to tolerate these contradictions in others.
Final Thoughts
Anyone who has led a company knows that the hardest part is the people.
People are incredibly complex and as this post highlights, our strengths are inherently connected to our weaknesses, which means we can’t have the good without the bad and the ugly.
For me, grappling with this question sparks joy and wonder. I like that people are complex and the world is complex because it forces us to dig deep, to forgive our own inner contradictions, and to embrace the world with a beginner’s mind because the right recipe to make change and take us toward a better future is never simple, it’s a complex cocktail of people, personalities, vision, and tenacity.
Onwards and wishing you humility and resolve as you look to bring your unique vision and gifts into the world.
If you have additional questions about outlier founders or coaching, feel free to reach me at nathan@sharpend.co.