“What about personalities?” Melanie asked.

“Why do you think personalities are so important?” I replied with a question.

“But, isn’t my team just a collection of personalities?” she said.

“We look at an organization and instinctively think that we must pay attention to the personalities as that will be the way the team gets along. Far more important is the structure, the way we organize the work and define the working relationships,” I nodded.

“How so?” Melanie said, trying to be practical.

“Think about the simple relationship between a manager and a team member,” I continued. “That relationship will spell trust, fairness and deep satisfaction, OR, it will spell frustration, manipulation and despair. The organization gets to choose how it defines that working relationship. Further, those emotionally charged responses of trust or frustration will spill over into the way people see the rest of the world. On the shoulders of the organization is the tone for other social relationships.”