The Best Leaders Know How to Balance Every Personality

Leaders are facing an incivility crisis, with U.S. workers experiencing or witnessing nearly nine acts of incivility each week, according to SHRM’s Q3 2025 Civility Index. This friction leads to more than $2.1 billion in lost productivity and absenteeism per day. Major drivers of this tension include differing political viewpoints, opposing social opinions, and racial or ethnic differences.

At work, differences also show up in another form: personality. Our teams think, communicate, and problem-solve in distinct ways. Too often, those disparities breed frustration instead of collaboration. For leaders, the goal isn’t simply to restore civility — it’s to harness difference as a competitive advantage through inclusion and balanced teams.

Research: Latest Civility Index Results

Why We Struggle with Difference

Walk into any workplace, and you’ll notice a pattern: people naturally gravitate toward those who share similar traits, backgrounds, or ways of thinking. It’s comfortable to be surrounded by others who reflect our own style. 

“Birds of a feather flock together, but innovation rarely thrives in uniformity,” said Stephen Shapiro, the creator of Personality Poker, during the 2025 SHRM Linkage Institute. And in an era where incivility is on the rise, learning to appreciate those differences has never been more critical.

That instinct for sameness has a name: affinity bias. It’s the unconscious pull toward people who feel familiar — those who share our background, interests, or communication style. Though it may seem harmless, this bias subtly shapes who we listen to, whose ideas we promote, and whose behavior we excuse. Over time, it narrows both our thinking and our empathy, weakening innovation and eroding the respect that underpins civility.

As SHRM Chief Data & Analytics Officer Alex Alonso, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, explains, “If you stick to sameness and do not do anything about unconscious biases — by pushing yourself to be different, to innovate, to actually think different — you contribute to an organization-wide sameness that causes cultures to become stale, stagnant, and problematic in the long run.”

That’s why inclusive leaders intentionally build teams that mix thinking styles and backgrounds — diversity of thought fuels innovation, engagement, and long-term performance.

Creating more inclusive, innovative workplaces begins with expanding our comfort zones. That means learning to appreciate the colleagues who think, act, and problem-solve differently.

Related Article: Your Leadership Pipeline Starts with Inclusion

The Card Game That Reveals Your Innate Strengths

Shapiro’s Personality Poker offers a simple lesson: We all bring different strengths to work, and those differences matter. The exercise helps people identify the traits that truly energize them, rather than the habits they’ve adopted to fit expectations.

It’s a reminder that self-awareness is more than personal insight; it’s the starting point for building strong, innovative teams.

The Four Suits of Personality

Shapiro’s framework assigns personality traits to the four suits in a deck of cards:

• Spades: Data-driven and analytical. They thrive on facts, logic, and structured reasoning.
• Clubs: Process-oriented planners. They focus on execution, results, and getting things done.
• Hearts: Relationship-builders. They bring empathy, communication, and emotional intelligence.
• Diamonds: Creative idea-generators. They value experimentation, variety, and imagination.

Most people are a blend, but we typically lean toward one style. Just as important? Understanding the styles we lack. That’s where balanced teams come in.

A $30 Million Lesson in Collaboration

The consequences of failing to lead through collaboration may seem abstract. However, Shapiro shared an expensive lesson with The Institute attendees to bring the concept to life.

Early in his career, Shapiro led a $30 million innovation initiative with a colleague named John. As “hearts and diamonds” personalities, they brimmed with creative ideas and focused on energizing the people around them. They generated a torrent of new concepts and built strong camaraderie. The problem? Nothing got done.

Without the data-driven grounding of spades or the execution-focused discipline of clubs, the project was an expensive failure that nearly cost Shapiro his career.

Redemption came with a smaller budget and a new partner: Ray, a no-nonsense process-oriented club. At first, Ray’s insistence on plans, checkpoints, and accountability clashed with Shapiro’s free-flowing style. But through open, respectful dialogue, they learned to appreciate each other’s strengths. That civility became the foundation for trust — and ultimately, for success. Together, they built a program that not only launched but lasted.

From Insight to Inclusive Leadership

Shapiro’s insight aligns with SHRM Linkage’s leadership philosophy: high-performing teams draw strength from a mix of thinking styles, not a single dominant one.

Leaders don’t need to become every suit. They need to recognize their strengths, understand their gaps, and intentionally surround themselves with complementary talent. This is a core principle of inclusive and purposeful leadership.

Put simply, when leaders create space for different styles — the analyst, the executor, the connector, the visionary — they unlock innovation, resilience, and performance.

Conference: 2026 SHRM Linkage Institute 

Finding Your “Ray”

The ultimate challenge for leaders is rethinking how we view our colleagues. Think about the people you tend to avoid or struggle to understand. Instead of resisting them, ask yourself, “What do they bring that I don’t?”

Maybe it’s the meticulous planner who slows you down or the dreamer who constantly chases shiny new ideas. Instead of viewing them as obstacles, see them as Shapiro sees Ray: the missing card in your hand that makes your deck complete.

Appreciating different working styles isn’t only about fostering innovation; it’s inclusive, intentional leadership. When leaders value perspectives that contrast with their own, they strengthen culture through empathy, building organizations better equipped to solve complex challenges together.