Naomi Gora
Have you ever taken a personality test? Whether you’re a Myers-Briggs INFJ or an Enneagram Type 4 or a CliftonStrengths Achiever (or something else entirely!), understanding your own personality is a surprisingly powerful foundation to effectively interacting and collaborating with others. Get ready to learn from the ‘Brand Whisperer’ herself, Naomi Gora, why self-awareness has such an enormous impact on business dynamics — especially during challenging times.
Our expert guest Naomi Gora is a longtime business strategist who now offers a personality-driven methodology for business leaders of all kinds. Throughout this episode, she helps illustrate how understanding different personality types can lead to better communication, collaboration, and resolution of conflicts. By the end, you’ll understand how improved self-awareness among owners and managers becomes a catalyst for not only personal growth, but also organizational success.
Don’t miss Naomi’s amazing stories of transformation — including her experience with a store owner client who pivoted to become a yoga teacher, once he understood his real aspirations. This episode is a thoughtful exploration of self-awareness, personality dynamics, and their profound impact on business success and individual fulfillment.
Be sure to take Naomi’s free personality test before queuing up this episode! As you listen, be on the lookout for:
- How personality tests can actually help leverage your strengths and circumvent your stressors
- Why better interpersonal understanding leads to a more harmonious work environment
- How self-aware leaders can inspire positive action & create a ripple effect of constructive influence within their organizations
- Why effective communication should be backed by personality insights
- What sorts of structured discussions using personality frameworks can help humanize interactions
Episode 46: Naomi Gora Brand Whisperer
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Danielle Wiley: Welcome to The Art of Sway, the podcast that uncovers the power of influence and its impact on all areas of our lives. I’m your host, Danielle Wiley. Each week we’ll explore the many facets of influence through candid conversations with industry insiders, from brand marketers to social workers, educators, leaders, and more. Let’s dive in.
Identifying as a torch-bearer business personality type, Naomi spent years trying to find her place in the world of media and advertising agencies. Often feeling like an outsider in the more extroverted world of sales and marketing, it was only when she discovered her personality type and allowed herself to run her business her own way based on her strengths and core values that her career really started to thrive.
Described by some as Eat, Pray, Love meets Mad Men, Naomi now uses her marketing, branding, and personality profiling skillset to run Brand Whisperers, a personality-driven brand agency and strategy consultancy that helps business founders cut through generic advice, leverage their strengths and circumvent their stressors so they can run their business in a way that works for them as well as their customers.
As anyone who works with me can attest, I am a massive fan of personality testing in the workplace. I thought I had taken every personality test out there, so I was thrilled to discover a new one. Naomi has created a version of Myers-Briggs that is tailored specifically to business founders. I have known that I am an ENFP for over 20 years, but this was truly the first time I got information about that type that can truly help me in my day-to-day business life.
If you don’t own a business, please, please still listen. While she created her task with business founders in mind, our team has found that it’s helpful for anyone who interacts with other humans and has a to-do list to tackle in their daily life. Naomi was a pure delight to chat with.
For maximum enjoyment of this episode, you should definitely head over to our blog post first. You can find that at swaygroup.com/podcast where there’s a link to take Naomi’s leadership style personality test. This will help you to better appreciate the tips that she shares throughout the episode. You’ll get lots of great insights into your leadership and work style throughout. Enjoy.
Well, hi, and welcome to the podcast joining us all the way from Australia. I think you’re the farthest away guest we’ve had so far, so you win that award.
Naomi Gora: That’s very exciting. I’m very close to Antarctica. Probably the closest you’ll get to Antarctica.
Danielle Wiley: Oh, wow. Wow. So, where are you in Australia?
Naomi Gora: So, there’s a little island right at the bottom of Australia that always gets left off the maps, it’s like we don’t exist. It’s a little island called Tasmania, and I’m at the bottom of that.
Danielle Wiley: Welcome, welcome. I was so excited to read your profile and learn about you, because you are an expert in one of my favorite topics, which is personality tests, so I’m super excited to dive in.
So I’m a huge proponent of using personality tests in the workplace and for my own life, and would just love to hear a little bit about your journey and how you came to be interested in them and become an expert in this space and just get to where you are now.
Naomi Gora: Thank you. It’s very exciting, isn’t it? They can get a bit addictive all the different variations.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah.
Naomi Gora: So I’ve always been a fan of any sort of self-awareness tool that can give us some insights into ourselves and how we work best, so I’m familiar with the one you use as well, the StrengthsFinder. But the way I got to my personality testing, it was based on Myers-Briggs, and it was because I was suffering in my business, and I was starting to think that maybe I wasn’t cut out for business after all.
My business started out as a branding agency. Well, it was just me freelancing as a branding freelancer, and as it grew into an agency, I was like, “Well, that’s what you do, isn’t it? You’re a freelancer and then you grow something into an agency.” But the bigger I grew, the more unhappy I was, and I was like, “What the heck is going on?” Then one day I came across my Myers-Briggs personality type, and I saw there was a graph that showed each personality type and their estimated income level, and mine was right down at the bottom.
Danielle Wiley: Oh, no.
Naomi Gora: I thought, “Well, that’s it.” I could have just gone, “Oh, well, that’s it, there’s no hope for me.” But I was like, “What, but why? What’s going on with that?” So, that started my journey into Myers-Briggs. Going deeper into that, ’cause we all know Myers-Briggs has the four letter codes of the personality types, but what I’ve done is take it a level deeper using a model that we call the Car Model to understand your personality type even further.
So with this Car Model, there’s four seats in the car. There’s a Flow State, a Grow State, an Uh-Oh State and a No State for every personality type. What I found was that I was running my business from my Uh-Oh and No states in the back of my little car, so all of a sudden my mind was blown. I was like, “Oh my goodness, now it all makes sense and I can shape my business to fit me better.”
Danielle Wiley: So, which personality type are you?
Naomi Gora: So I am the INFP, which I call the torch-bearer.
Danielle Wiley: Okay, okay. So I’m ENFP, and I’m right in the middle of INE. I’m kind of an ambivert, so when I-
Naomi Gora: Yes, we’re all ambiverts to some extent, I guess, yes. But yeah, so the ENFP I call the BFF, best friends forever. They’re such amazing people to be in business with.
Danielle Wiley: Phew.
Naomi Gora: Yeah, it’s all okay.
Danielle Wiley: So the Uh-Oh and the No, is that kind of naysaying things or how did those manifest? Yeah.
Naomi Gora: Yes, if you get deeper into personality theory, you may come across the idea of cognitive functions, and each personality type has a cognitive stack. So in that four person car, there’s parts of your personality that sit in each part of that car. So depending on your personality, you’ll have different things in the back of the car.
So for me, in the back of my car is resource management and systems and processes. So as soon as I learned that, I was like … so in the back of the car it’s called essentially effectiveness and memory. Memory isn’t actually about remembering things, it’s about setting up systems and processes that you can follow and create routines, which creates efficiency in your business.
So for me, finding out that the back of my car, my Uh-Oh was setting up systems and processes and my No was resource management, like how to manage time, energy, and money, and I was running a project management business, all of a sudden I was like, “Oh my goodness, no wonder. I got into this to be creative, not to worry about scope creep and timelines and deadlines and managing 50 deadlines.” All of a sudden I was like, “I’ve got my answer, I can fix this now.”
Danielle Wiley: So in your model, you kind of find out what’s holding you back and you work to improve it, which … so we do StrengthsFinder, so what I kind of liked about the StrengthsFinder is it made me feel better about the things I’m not good at, and almost like-
Naomi Gora: Yeah.
Danielle Wiley: Right? So most people only get their top five, but there’s 34 and you can get all of them, right?
Naomi Gora: Yes.
Danielle Wiley: So my number one is Activator, which is I always know what has to be done, but my number-
Naomi Gora: It’s such a good strength.
Danielle Wiley: Right. But my number 34 is Achiever, which is actually doing anything.
Naomi Gora: That fits with your ENFP personality type.
Danielle Wiley: Okay, so but one of my business partners, thankfully, is an Achiever is her I think number one or number two. So we’re a very good team, because we can have a brainstorming meeting and I can just throw out ideas and come up with a bunch of strategic solutions, and then she implements them for me.
Naomi Gora: That’s perfect for an ENFP.
Danielle Wiley: Wonderful. So I’m just curious, because it sounds to me like in your model rather than finding a partner, or maybe that is the solution. So for me, the solution to my issue was finding someone who was a complimentary fit to, we work well together to help take up each other’s slack, but in your model, would I actually somehow get the tools to be more of Achiever myself?
Naomi Gora: That’s such a good question. Yeah, so when I work with people you understand each of the seats in your Car Model. So the ideal place for you to be, or the place where you feel at your best and achieving things is when you’re working from the front seat of your car, so you understand what those front seats are. When you’re working with those two together, I call that your genius state. So, the idea is to be in your genius state as much as possible.
Then when you notice that you’re getting into that backseat of your car and you’re taking on tasks that are in that backseat of your car, that either you’re aware of it. Instead of thinking, “Oh my goodness, I’m so terrible at this,” you’re like, “I just need to do this anyway, and I can push through.” Or you find support in those areas, or you change your business model or your service offering so those things just don’t exist in your business anymore.
Danielle Wiley: I love it, ’cause I have this, I mean, it’s not unique to me, but I feel very strongly in this philosophy that it’s very hard to fix any kind of issue unless you define it and see it and measure it, and put in writing what you want to change and where you want to get to and track your path.
If it’s just this amorphous thing that you’re not aware of in any way, it’s very, very difficult to make any change. Sometimes you don’t even realize that you’re making an adjustment, but just because you defined the issue and are aware of it, change happens. I think there’s something in our brain I feel like that tackles it, right?
Naomi Gora: That just knows. Yeah, and this is something that’s so close to my heart, because I feel like when we come into business … as new business owners, so often we’re taught to focus on our customers first and our customers are so important, but I’ve not seen anywhere that says understand yourself first in a business context, what you might be good at, what your stress points are, and be really aware of it and create a plan around how you’re going to manage that. Then once you know how strong you are and what you’re great at, then meet your customers, rather than chasing after them and creating a business that you may actually wake up one day and hate.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, well, I remember in college doing that what color is your parachute book, do you know that?
Naomi Gora: Yes.
Danielle Wiley: It was so funny, ’cause I went through the whole process and it told me I should be a clergy person, which I’m like-
Naomi Gora: You didn’t want to do that?
Danielle Wiley: Well, I’m agnostic, and I have never studied … I mean, I guess I’m Jewish, so I had a bat mitzvah, but it had been a good 10 years since I looked at any. It didn’t match who I was, and it just gave me this one answer, like you should be a clergy person.
Naomi Gora: You’re like, “What?”
Danielle Wiley: But there are books like that for helping you figure out your career and what kind of job you should apply for, whether they are helpful or not. But what’s fascinating I think about what you do is it’s geared more towards business leaders and owners, which I haven’t seen before.
Naomi Gora: Neither have I. I’m on the lookout, actually. I’m like, is anybody doing this? I feel like it’s a massive missing piece of the puzzle, so it excites me so much to be doing this work.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah. Okay, so I don’t know all the seats of my car, but I went through your task, confirmed I’m still an ENFP, nothing has changed.
Naomi Gora: Excellent. Nothing has changed, you are still you.
Danielle Wiley: It’s interesting, ’cause StrengthsFinder changed when I went from working for others to owning my own business.
Naomi Gora: That’s very interesting.
Danielle Wiley: My strengths, I mean, some of them, Strategic was still up there, and Activator was still up there, but Command suddenly made its way-
Naomi Gora: You knew-
Danielle Wiley: To the top skills I needed.
Naomi Gora: Maybe you needed it.
Danielle Wiley: I needed it, yeah, yeah. But ENFP, that has not faltered. But it was interesting the first time I took Myers-Briggs, I took it while working at a large communications agency and they had us all take the test, and then we had to all go into the corner of the room that represented what our personality type was. The ENFP corner, we didn’t have room for all of us. It was by far the most common personality type of that group. So, why do you think that is that ENFPs are so common in the communications and marketing space?
Naomi Gora: Yeah, so that’s so interesting, and I can see why that is. So in the Car Model, the front two seats of the Car Model for an ENFP are what we call exploration. So this is finding new ideas, novelty patterns in things, anything new. What this function of your personality does is it can see connections that other people can’t see. So, you’ll grab two seemingly disparate ideas and go, “Oh, there’s something common there,” and pull it together into a new thing.
So there’s this idea of novelty, but it’s tied with the function that we call authenticity, which is all about identity and humans and how humans work and who humans are. So when you combine the two of those, you’d get this person that’s just really interested in people and how people work and how people communicate, and wants to be around people a lot of the time, so I think that’s why they sort of tend to that world.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah.
Naomi Gora: ENFPs also see great potential in everything, great potential in people and great potential in ideas, and they want to bring these new ideas and growth to the world, which I think just lends itself really well to the communication industry.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, it’s so interesting how all these personality tests kind of overlap, ’cause one of mine is Maximizer, which is exactly that, right? It’s like-
Naomi Gora: Potential.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, figuring out the potential of people and getting them in the right spot and making the most of who they are. I could do these tests all day.
Naomi Gora: Absolutely. Oh, I know. I’d love to get all the tests, and I’ve had ideas about this, I’ll just get all the tests and overlay them and make one big test, but that’s probably 10 lifetimes of work.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah. No, but I don’t know, it’s fun, I can’t get enough. So, what’s the number one trap that each personality type falls into when trying to grow their business? You can start with mine, we’ll be selfish.
Naomi Gora: That’s cool, we can start with that. So for ENFPs, who I call the BFF, what I find happens is that they can fall in the trap of, like you said previously, it’s sort of not following through or procrastinating over execution, but then what also happens is they feel really guilty about this. They can feel really guilty about passing that on to other team members or delegating. So, they’re like, “Oh, that’s not really fair. I’m doing all the fun idea work and the strategy and coming up with the plans, and then leaving it to my team to execute.” So they can sometimes hold off on not delegating, because they feel guilty about it.
So this Car Model works in a scale or a dichotomy, that when you’re in the backseat of your car, you can’t be in the front seat of your car. So if as an ENFP you’re always executing and following through and doing the paperwork, it actually stops you from being in that idea-generating relationship-forming space. So yeah, that’s what I find is that ENFPs can not put in the support for execution or feel guilty about it when they do. But actually what I’ve found is when they do, they thrive and their team thrives.
Danielle Wiley: That makes so much sense. Okay, so tell me, what’s another one, personality type [inaudible]
Naomi Gora: What have we got next? So I’ve separated the types into five business groups, so I’ll go through the groups I guess, that will probably make it easier.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, so BFF is one of them. [inaudible 00:18:06]
Naomi Gora: Yep, so the BFF.
Danielle Wiley: Okay.
Naomi Gora: So, you’re what I call one of the life seeker types. So these are the types that just want to get the most out of life, they want to feel alive with everything in the moment, bouncing ideas off other people. So, ENFP is one of those.
Then there’s the ESFP, which I call the entertainer, and they just will walk into a party and be everybody’s friend in a moment. You can’t have a bad time when you’re around the entertainer type, but the trap that I find they can fall into business is sort of going with the flow a bit too much and not having a clear vision or direction for their business.
So they can end up having a great time, but really not building anything or not building an asset. If that’s what you’re looking for in your business, that’s fine, but what I can find is they’re feeling like they’re floating along, having fun, but not really getting anywhere.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, yeah. What about the I’s?
Naomi Gora: Yeah, the I’s. So, the I’s of those … well, yeah, we can go into the I’s. So, there’s different types of I’s, I guess. So there’s a group that I call the individualists, which are the INTP I call the truth seeker, the INFP, which is me that I call the torch-bearer, the ISTP, which I call the lone wolf and the ISFP, which I call the producer.
So if you’re any of those types, I call them the individualists, because these types often have a really clear idea of what they want in their business and how they want it to happen. So the lone wolf, ISTP and the INTP truth seekers usually have a really technical proficient way that they want their business to be done, and the INFP torch-bearers and the ISFP producers have a really clear way of how they want something to be done in terms of values and ethics. If it’s done the wrong way, it doesn’t meet the criteria.
So, sometimes they can be quite rigid or maybe not be as open to feedback or changing things in their business when they’re not working, because they have a really strong idea of this is the way it must be done, so they can sort of get into a place of not seeing other options.
Danielle Wiley: So I got you out of order, so did we miss any?
Naomi Gora: That’s all right. We’re a bit out of order, but we’ll just make sure we don’t miss any. So I’ll start then with the group called the corporates, and I’ve called these group the corporates, because they’re amazing at resource management and setting up systems and processes. So this is the ESTJ station master I call them, because they run a tight ship. They get up and they have their to-do list done before the rest of us have breakfast, they’ve achieved everything.
Then there’s the ENTJs, who I call the empire builders, and these people are natural at building the big empires like the Apples and Elon … not that Elon Musk is one, but the big massive corporates, all of the big corporates. So ENTJs, the empire builders and ESTJ, the station masters, they are excellent resource managers, natural leaders, natural delegators.
What I’ve found, well, this is my theory anyway, is that because these two types are so naturally drawn to the business world and natural in it, that the rest of us can sort of look up to them and go, “That’s the way a business should be run, and that’s the way I should be.” But if we don’t have those aspects of our personality and we try to run our businesses that way, then we’re going to really suffer.
So while these two types are really great at building these empires, sometimes what they can do is forget the people in their businesses. So they can forget to build the culture, they can accidentally start treating people like they’re numbers, they can not ask their team for feedback or give them autonomy, so that’s the things for them to watch out for.
You often see that. You can see that in bigger corporate companies, that sometimes people start to feel like numbers. So that’s sort of the trap I guess that those types can fall into, but generally they’re the types that just are naturally drawn to the business world, so we shouldn’t try and run our businesses that way necessarily.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, yeah. Okay, did we cover all of-
Naomi Gora: What have we got? What else have we got?
Danielle Wiley: [inaudible].
Naomi Gora: So they’re the corporates, and then we’ve covered the individualists. Then there’s two other groups. There’s the traditionalists. So these are the ISTJ who I call the rock, because they’re so steady and dependable. Then there’s the ISFJ who I call the caregiver, because they’re the ones looking after everybody else, and then there’s the ESFJ who I call the humble host. These types are called traditionalists, that sometimes you see them in family owned businesses.
The idea of tradition and family and community is often so strong in these people. They’re great at setting up systems and following systems and building big communities, but these types in business can sometimes fall into the trap of … So the ISTJ rock, they’re so brilliant at setting and executing a system and making things efficient, but sometimes the trap that they can fall into is not taking any risks, or looking out into the market to see what’s happening and then evolving their business. So if they don’t look out for that, they can become obsolete. It’s sort of like, well, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, but then they wake up one day and go, “Oh, the market’s changed, everything’s changed, and my business didn’t keep up.”
Danielle Wiley: Got it, got it.
Naomi Gora: Then there’s the ISFJ caregiver. They are so not about themselves, they are so all about everybody else and looking after everybody else, that sometimes in a business sense promoting themselves can be almost abhorrent. They don’t feel comfortable promoting themselves. They can sometimes almost be invisible in the business world and going, “But I help all these people, why can’t anyone see me?” But they’re not promoting themselves.
Then the ESFJs, the humble hosts, they’re just amazing at creating incredible experiences that people remember and creating businesses that feel like a hub or a community hub, but what these types can fall into the trap of based on their Car Model, in their genius state they have a function called harmony, which is meeting people’s needs. So what they can do is meet everybody else’s needs and then burn out, so it’s sort of trying to find win-win scenarios for those people so they’re not giving everything to others and nothing for themselves.
Danielle Wiley: Interesting.
Naomi Gora: So that’s the traditionalists, and then we have the change makers. So these are the INFJ catalyst, the ENFJ mentor and the INTJ strategist. So, these types in their Car Model have a part of their personality that’s really good at spotting patterns and throwing it forward to predict outcomes.
So, they can often be the types that go, “I just know this thing’s going to happen.” In a company or business environment, everybody goes, “Well, show me the proof.” They’re like, “I don’t. I don’t have the proof, I just sort of know.” So, they have this really good pattern recognition skill that can predict the future a little bit.
So the different traps that those types can fall into is the ENFJ mentor, they go really deep with ideas, but they can sometimes be scared of showing their true self. So they come across as the good girl or the good guy, but they blend into a mediocre place in business, because they’re not standing up and showing their true message.
Danielle Wiley: Interesting.
Naomi Gora: Then the INFJ catalysts, they want to help people, but they don’t create a robust pricing structure. So, they’ll almost be like, “I can’t charge this amount for my business, because I want to help all the people.” But then what happens is they don’t have a business, ’cause they haven’t charged enough.
Danielle Wiley: Right.
Naomi Gora: Then the INTJ strategists, these are the types that come to me. They are amazing resource managers and incredible at creating outcomes, but every INTJ strategist that I’ve come to work with me, in the backseat of their car is that authenticity piece, which is about their own identity. What I find is these types come to me going, “I’ve built this big empire and it’s efficient and it’s running really well, but I’m really unhappy.” Then they figure out that what they’re doing, they didn’t actually like.
I had one that came to me and he ran this big online store. It was for men’s products, men’s skincare products, and he came to me going, “I need to fix my marketing.” So we got into it, and then what he realized was he didn’t want to run that business at all, and he went and became a yoga teacher.
Danielle Wiley: Oh my gosh.
Naomi Gora: So for those types, it’s just create the vision and go forward, but also remember to check in with what you really want and if it’s still what you really want.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah. Yeah, that’s amazing story.
Naomi Gora: Yeah. Yeah, so I think we’ve covered all the types. We may have missed a couple in there, but-
Danielle Wiley: Well, we’re going to link to your site in our show notes, so-
Naomi Gora: Okay, so if I’ve missed you out, then they can find some research.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, yeah.
Naomi Gora: There’s a few to get through.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah. So I wanted to ask you this, ’cause I saw this is something that you talk about sometimes, and I think this is really relevant. I mean, we see so much news right now about layoffs and just everything going on in the world, there’s been so much upheaval and things are kind of topsy-turvy and it causes issues. When everything’s unstable, that can often lead to problems for businesses, not surprisingly.
Naomi Gora: Yes.
Danielle Wiley: So, what’s your advice for business owners when they feel like they’re struggling with their business? Especially if you’re leading a big team, one, you have to take your company in the right direction, but you also have to lead your team and be inspirational. You might be in a situation where the company’s having some issues and struggling, but you don’t want to freak people out and you need them moving forward positively. Having a business that’s struggling can be very tough for a business owner, so what advice do you give?
Naomi Gora: Yeah. Oh, there’s so many answers to that. What I find in business is that no matter how much you grow, there is always challenges. You think, “I’ll just get to this bit and then the challenges will go, or once I get to here …” I’ve done it in my own business is look back and gone, “When I get to here, everything will be easy.” What I’ve found is that is not the case, we just find better ways of dealing with things. If there’s anything I’ve found, it’s that business is the most amazing personal growth tool you will ever have in your life.
Danielle Wiley: I agree.
Naomi Gora: So, that idea of being self-aware is so important. So whether you find Myers-Briggs is your tool, that was the tool that helped me, or like you, the StrengthsFinder. I think that there’s even statistics out there that show that the level of self-awareness a leader has reflects on the performance of the company.
So, it’s really digging into that self-awareness and understanding where you’re at and how you can be a better leader and how you can lead your team, I think. Then knowledge and self-awareness is power, and the more you understand yourself and the more you understand your people as well, the better you can lead that team.
Danielle Wiley: We do quarterly anti-oppression training, and we often bring StrengthsFinder into that and talk about it, but then we also do interdepartmental meetings where we’ll take two departments that can often clash in day-to-day work, right? This is not what we do, but I often give the example of a restaurant, right? A waitress and a chef can often clash, because the chef’s trying to make the best dish possible and the waitress just wants to keep the customer happy, and sometimes what you end up with, it’s impossible to make both entities happy at the same-
Naomi Gora: Different priorities, yeah.
Danielle Wiley: Time. Yeah, and so we have departments like that, right? A sales team is trying to sell something in, and that might be difficult for our implementation team, so we’ll bring together two departments that can sometimes struggle and we’ll share everyone’s personality test results, in our case, it’s StrengthsFinder, and we’ll have discussions.
Our head of diversity, equity and learning will lead these discussions where people will talk about issues, and then she’ll point out which strength that is and why they’re doing it. It just humanizes everyone, and it gives you this lens to talk about struggles and conflict in a way that doesn’t feel like they’re … it’s not tacky. It just leads to more understanding and a deeper relationship between the employees, and it’s been super helpful for us.
Naomi Gora: I’ve seen miracles happen using these different tools. It’s so amazing by understanding yourself and then understanding others. Instead of going, “Gosh, that person’s just an idiot,” all of a sudden you go, “Oh, I can see why they’re doing that thing.”
I worked with a business that had an ENFP founder and an ISTJ founder, and they’re complete opposites on the personality scale, they have opposite letters. What they were finding was that the ISTJ was going, “Well, this ENFP doesn’t follow through, doesn’t follow the systems. I spent all this time setting up these systems to reduce risk and make things happen smoothly and he won’t follow it, and what’s he doing?” Then the ENFP was like, “Why is this guy always on my case? I’m just trying to …”
So they were at loggerheads, and when they sat down and look at their personality types, what they realized was … so, the ISTJ realized that the ENFP through going out and getting publicity and meeting with people and having conversations with people had actually bought $50,000 worth of business into the business. He wasn’t going to follow the systems and processes, because that wasn’t his genius state. Then the ENFP realized that, “Wow, without this ISTJ setting up the systems for the rest of our team to follow so everything runs smoothly, our business would fall apart,” and then they became friends again.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah. I mean, communication is the key to all of it, and what I love so much about personality tests is it gives you kind of a guide for that conversation and it opens up more communication, and it’s like a vehicle to get somewhere. I think it’s much easier to talk about issues that you’re having with that crutch-
Naomi Gora: With a tool.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, that tool of a personality test.
Naomi Gora: Yeah, a framework of-
Danielle Wiley: I mean, it’s so much more difficult to just have this open vulnerable conversation. “I feel frustrated when you …” That’s just difficult.
Naomi Gora: “When you do this, it’s …”
Danielle Wiley: Right, right, right.
Naomi Gora: Yeah, exactly. But when you’ve got a tool, instead of two people trying to win, it becomes a curiosity thing of, well, but why is this happening? And oh, okay, I can see that. Yeah, so it gives a tool to just understand and unpack things like you say.
Danielle Wiley: Well, this was so wonderful. I loved having you on. I think you could tell, I could talk about this for a while, but we-
Naomi Gora: Me too.
Danielle Wiley: We end every podcast with the same question, because we are an influencer marketing agency and we love all things influence. So we end every podcast with the question, what was the last thing you were influenced to either buy, read, watch, or listen to?
Naomi Gora: Is that in a business perspective?
Danielle Wiley: No, no, no, we’ve gotten super fun … no. Gosh, no, we’ve heard about TV shows and raunchy romance novels, and yeah.
Naomi Gora: Oh, the last thing that I was influenced to buy, it was probably a really expensive pair of hiking boots-
Danielle Wiley: Okay.
Naomi Gora: That I was like, “You can’t pay that much money for a pair of hiking boots, that’s ridiculous.” But the more I looked at it, they just really appealed to my hiking spirit. It’s so interesting when a business goes, “You’re going to be this sort of person if you buy this product.”
Danielle Wiley: Yep.
Naomi Gora: It’s so easy to get people on board. I’m like, “Yes, I’m that sort of hiking person, and yes, I want to hike in the snow and these boots will make me do that.” So I think that was it, my really, really expensive hiking boots.
Danielle Wiley: Are they wonderful? Do you love them?
Naomi Gora: They are wonderful and I love them, and I’m sure they make me hike more.
Danielle Wiley: Well, that was terrific. I’m so glad to have made your acquaintance, and this was just a delight, so thank you for coming on.
Naomi Gora: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me.
Danielle Wiley: Thank you for listening. Don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Please check back next Monday for a new episode featuring candid conversations that explore the power of influence. I am your host, Danielle Wiley, and this is The Art of Sway.
