By Laura R. Vandiver, Director of Research and MBTI^® Certified Practitioner

Extraversion (E) and Introversion (I)

In my previous post, I talked about how The Vandiver Group uses the MBTI^® tool in our training and group facilitation. Today I’ll discuss Extraversion and Introversion, and how these designations affect communication style preferences.

Extraversion and Introversion in MBTI^® refer to where people get their energy. Extraverts are generally energized by the outside world and often report that they love to communicate verbally and enjoy being surrounded by people and the social environment. Introverts are more energized by their own internal environment and ideas. They prefer to think things through on their own or through writing them down, so they can reflect before acting.

Practical Tips for Team Leaders: Give your team multiple avenues for communication with you. Introverts may prefer e-mail to face-to-face meetings.  Extraverts may prefer to bounce ideas off of coworkers to hash out their thoughts before a meeting. Also, don’t be surprised if an introvert doesn’t speak up much during a brainstorming session or group meeting. It doesn’t mean they aren’t engaged; it may mean they need some time to process the ideas discussed in the meeting. Allow extra time for discussion and questions during meetings for the extraverts, as they tend to appreciate working through their thoughts out loud.

Next week, I’ll talk about the differences between the Sensing and Intuition preferences.

Email tvg@vandivergroup.com if you’d like more information about the use of MBTI^® in helping teams function more effectively and efficiently.

As November wraps up, airlines face some tough PR challenges. See where they went wrong and how you can learn from their mistakes:

Qantas Airlines demonstrated the disastrous effects of not coordinating social media with other communication efforts. The airline suffered a massive PR crisis when it had to ground its entire fleet during a highly publicized argument with pilots, ground staff and engineers regarding pay and work conditions. In the midst of this crisis, Qantas’ social media team started touting the luxury angle of the airline, asking followers to describe their dream luxury in-flight experience. The posts resulted in a harsh negative backlash. Check out the #QantasLuxury hashtag to see some creative answers, and remember to think before you tweet!

American Airlines came under scrutiny this week after failing to communicate effectively with their shareholders about the company’s bankruptcy filing. Several investors complained that information about the situation was difficult to find, even on the Investor Relations site. When dealing with a crisis, it is essential to communicate quickly and transparently with all stakeholders.

Here at TVG, we are pros at crisis communications. We help our clients plan for a crisis and communicate effectively if one occurs. To learn more about our crisis communication services, click here.

By Laura R. Vandiver, Director of Research and MBTI^® Certified Practitioner

In this time of frequent company mergers and acquisitions, colleagues and long-standing teams are continually being shuffled around. This is a common problem we hear from our clients: a team that used to function well together is now separated, and new people are thrown together and expected to become a cohesive unit. As you can imagine, many times this tactic fails. Conflicting personalities and different ways of problem-solving and decision-making can cause communication breakdowns and decreased productivity. So what can employers do to get their teams back on track?

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^® (MBTI) is a helpful tool to learn about your own personality preferences and unique gifts, and then take that information and apply it to your interpersonal relationships. For those not familiar with MBTI, it’s a questionnaire based on Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types. The questions are displayed as dichotomous pairs of words or ideas. When your results are analyzed, you will have a four-letter psychological type preference to help you better understand how you prefer to relate to other people and the outside world, how you take in information, and how you make decisions. There are 16 possible psychological types. Every type has valuable assets to bring to a team environment. By learning about types and preferences with your coworkers and a certified MBTI practitioner, you’ll be armed with better insights on how to work together more effectively.

In a four-part blog series over the next several weeks, I’ll explore the MBTI tool and how teams can use it to improve communications. Next week, learn about Extraversion and Introversion preferences, and how they affect team communication.

To learn more about how TVG uses MBTI^®, or to schedule a working seminar with your team, call us at 314-991-4641.

It’s Thanksgiving! As we prepare for delicious food and lots of family time, the TVG team thought we’d share some of our favorite foods and memories from Thanksgiving pasts. Let us know some of your favorite traditions!

• “My favorite dish is mashed potatoes and stuffing mixed. My favorite tradition is a white chili cook off my mom has with everyone’s leftover turkey the weekend after Thanksgiving. “ – Claire Ecklekamp

• “Oh, tough to pick just one! Hmmm, I will have to say sweet potato casserole with pecans.” – Amy Crump

• “It is hard to pick a favorite when I get to have Southern cooking. For me, it’s the whole meal! Homemade mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing with gravy, turkey with gravy and small slices of each type of pie, pumpkin, pecan and key lime pie (no gravy). Oh, and leftovers on Friday make great turkey sandwiches for watching some of the best college football of the year.” – Andy Likes

• “Well, as one of the resident vegetarians I’ve got to give some love to the Tofurky! I also love anything with sweet potatoes. My favorite tradition is just getting together with the family and enjoying a relaxing day!” – Laura Vandiver

• “My favorite turkey day food was the coconut cream pie my grandma used to make. My favorite tradition was taking a walk after we ate, no matter how cold it was.” – Cathy Femmer

• “Unfortunately, for my sister (the one who doesn’t cook), we always have to bring up the Thanksgiving she made pumpkin pie. The recipe calls for eggs – she put in the whole egg (shell and all) and she forgot to add the sugar! We had a crunchy and not so sweet pumpkin pie that year and haven’t let her live it down” – Patty Olsen

• “I stir my mashed potatoes and peas together for a mushy delight. Gravy not optional. After our dinner, we enjoy a game night. We play games like Trivial Pursuit, Cranium or Pictionary.” – Rich McEwen

• “I always like to mix mashed potatoes and corn together, but what makes my tummy happy is usually all the appetizers I eat before the turkey. As for happy memories, I just like having everyone around the table talking endlessly, TV on in the background with a sporting event and usually playing football in the front yard.” – Monica Stefek

• “My favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal is my mom’s sweet potato casserole! It’s always wonderful curling up on the couch and catching up with family after the big meal.” – Shelley Lester

• “My favorite part of the meal is the 5-cheese mac’n’cheese that my mom makes. My favorite tradition is offering to help my mom cook but only when she gets to the desserts so that I can lick remnants of icing out of the bowls.” – Briana Bobo

• “My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is spending time with family, eating great food and enjoying that 4-day weekend.” – Donna Vandiver

From all of us at The Vandiver Group, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Google Music
Google just launched its own music-sharing platform intended to directly compete with iTunes. The Google site is free for users and includes a trial period to test the features. It lets you store 5GB of music, which translates to 20,000 songs. Another feature of Google music sharing is the social component. You can use your Google+ account to share your favorite songs of the moment or give feedback on new releases. See how Google compares to its competition here.

Heinz plays catch up
Heinz recently introduced an online store for buying their products via Facebook. The launch got off to a rocky start, however, because of glitches on Facebook. The glitch made it impossible to enter a form of payment for the products. Heinz is reaching out to customers by apologizing and offering free ketchup as a mea culpa. Heinz promises the glitch is now under control and that there should no longer be problems. Read more about the Facebook catch up here.

Wendy’s is Winning in Social Media
The fast food chain, Wendy’s, is really connecting with its followers. Wendy’s averaged about 33,000 new followers in one month due to outreach campaigns and giveaways on social media. Unique prizes such as bobbleheads and mopeds are helping Wendy’s win over fans, while increasing followers.

It’s 11/11/11. And, Happy Veteran’s Day and our thanks to all who have served, and continue to serve, our country.

Target Black Friday
The shopping craze of the holidays is officially upon us, and that also means a flood of memorable commercials and marketing efforts. You may recall the Target lady from their Black Friday commercials last year. She is back in action this holiday season and the commercials are set to start running today. You can see the Target lady commercials here.

Smartphone Multitaskers
What do you do while you watch TV? A new study suggests that nearly 80 percent of us are also on our smartphones, laptops, iPads and other portable devices. Gone are the days when you would simply sit in front of your television set and give a show your undivided attention. We use our phones and laptops to stay connected even while watching TV. Check out additional interesting statistics on what else we do during our favorite TV shows.

Google+ New Business Pages
Google launched the newest addition to their social network platform this week. Google+ Business Pages now allow companies and brands to stay connected with their customers and colleagues on the site. You can add content about the brand and let others provide comments. You can also add businesses to your Google+ circles. For a more in-depth explanation of the features from Google+ Business, read here.

What’s important to you and your company when it comes to ROI? Do you track employee or customer engagement with your company? Do you know what’s being said in social media about you? Do you know how your employees view your culture or workplace?

Having good, solid information is a cornerstone to developing a great culture internally, and a company that has that perception externally.

There are tools available that help you monitor what’s really going on and one of those is our Pulse® Feedback Software. If you want to make good solid decisions, you need good solid information. To find out more call us at 314-991-4641.

As we start off November, here are some things that caught our attention this week.

Reaching the Millenials

People who are between the ages of 17 and 34 are easier to reach when you use digital marketing. The internet is the best way to tap into the consumer behaviors of Millenials. On average, this demographic has at least two mobile devices, like a cell phone, laptop or tablet.  So naturally, reaching them requires companies to tailor their messages and tactics to take advantage of those devices. Additional insights on reaching young adults can be found here.

ChapStick’s Facebook Ad does not get ‘Likes’

ChapStick recently began promoting a Facebook ad campaign called “Where do lost ChapSticks go?” The ads feature a woman bent over a couch looking for her ChapStick. Facebook fans and bloggers have attacked the ads for being sexist. Instead of addressing the comments, ChapStick deleted all negative backlash posted to their Facebook page, thus causing a PR nightmare. A better way of handling the criticism would have been to address the ads and comments quickly and directly. If you want help preparing for a social media crisis like this one, contact TVG to find out more about our social media team.

Starbucks QR code

Starbucks developed a QR code for its consumers, which can now be found on Starbucks cups, products and in their stores, allowing customers to find out more about their coffee as they are drinking it. The code also promotes the new Starbucks mobile payment app that allows you to pay for your coffee directly from your smart phone. Check out the Starbucks QR code here.

It’s Halloween!   As St. Louisians head out to trick-or-treat tonight, we thought we’d give you a scare of our own. With a little help from InformationWeek, here are 10 frightening mistakes companies must avoid as they brave the labyrinth of social networking.¹

1. Too Much Information –Updating you status with too much personal information can chip away at your profession reputation, or possibly ruin it.
2. Overposting—You don’t want to be deleted because you annoy your followers with too many updates. If you automate your posts, be especially careful to space them out. Too many posts all at once can alienate even your most loyal followers.
3. Quick Trigger Finger—Think before you post. Plain and simple.
4. Untended Social Presence—The only thing worse than posting too much is posting too little or not at all. If you’re going to set up a Facebook page or Twitter account, make sure you have the time to devote to it.
5. Anything Goes—Make sure you check your organization’s social networking policy, otherwise you are just asking for trouble.
6. Rogue Account Administrators—Many organizations’ social media efforts started at a grassroots level with accounts being set up by individuals who were not necessarily sanctioned to do so. The problem gets worse when these people leave the organization. Make sure you have an official account for your organization.  Check womma.org for the latest on social media rules and regulations.
7. Weak Passwords—If someone guesses your organization’s social media passwords, they can do a lot of damage to your reputation in a very short period of time.
8. Being Anti-Social—Perhaps the scariest thing about social networking is having no social presence at all.  Having a presence on major social networking platforms has become as important—and expected—as having a website.

If your organization needs help establishing or growing your social media presence, the Vandiver Group, Inc.  (TVG) has experienced professionals who can help avoid these frightening mistakes. From social media strategy development to managing social media accounts to social media training for your staff, TVG has a variety of services to ensure your social media presence benefits your bottom line.

¹http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/social_networking_consumer/231901700/10-scariest-enterprise-social-networking-mistakes

Stories come in every shape and size, some are emotional, some are engaging and some are simply memorable.  At The Vandiver Group, we talk about stories each and every day.  They’re the conversations that happen on the way to an office, in the car, across the desk and in a conference room.  You may look at them as discussions or presentations, but without stories, they will not be nearly as memorable.

October is the time for leaves to change and fall to the ground; pumpkins appear just about everywhere and the World Series captures the fancy of even the most casual baseball fan.  This year’s Fall Classic has been emotional, engaging and memorable for several reasons, pitching, Albert Pujols 3 home run game and of course Thursday night’s Game 6 instant classic at Busch Stadium.  The Game 6 improbable ending sent many Cardinal fans to a sleepless night.  Two different times, the National League Champions were down to their final strike, and two times the Redbirds came roaring back with clutch offense that would’ve made Patton proud.  This story included the unlikely hometown hero David Freese, coming through to help tie, and then win the game for the Cardinals.  The story is so amazing; it left even seasoned broadcasters, sportswriters and PR people, well… speechless.

This story is not over.  The cardiac Cardinals have one chapter left to write on the national stage.  Who will come through tonight?  The best stories are emotional, engaging and memorable.  Cardinal Fans everywhere are rooting for the storybook ending to a somewhat Hollywood season.  Here’s the best part.. You get to watch it on TV or listen to it on the radio as it unfolds before our eyes and ears.  Friday is not just the end of the week; its Game 7.  Game on!

The Vandiver Group facilitates a series of Presentation Skills and Storytelling classes.  Give us a call or drop us an email if we can help you and your team!  314-991-4641 or tvg@vandivergroup.com

GO CARDS!