By Lynne Curry, Ph.D, SPHR bio
Depending on who you talk to, she’s the paralegal from either heaven or hell. According to her attorney, with whom she has a love/hate relationship, she’s indispensable. While you personally like her, you often want to wring her neck. She’s late for work more days than she arrives on time; she’s late for meetings and rolls her eyes when your more serious staff members speak, and her appearance makes you shudder when clients see her in the hallways.
You’ve tried your best—with both supportive counseling and stern discipline. She grins while you counsel her, and says “yes, mom (or dad)”. Your disciplinary write ups don’t perturb her, nor do they create behavioral change. You’d fire her in a heartbeat, except her attorney bills more than any two other attorneys, and he considers her essential to his success, particularly when he’s up against a tight deadline or a snarly case.
The free spirit
If this sounds familiar, then I suspect you have on your hands what I call a “free spirit” personality type.*
Here’s what you need to know:
Normal efforts to rein in free spirits rarely work, as they turn most events into challenges, adventures, and contests. This means that when you discipline them, they joyfully devise ways to turn the tables.
Free spirits push against boundaries. When others say, “You need to do it this way,” they think, “Oh really?” If you say, “Don’t cross this line,” they jump on it asking, “This one?” with their toes half over the line.
Arrive on time? Free spirits often aim to be on time for functions, in fact, they head out early to be first. Then, however, they think that with all that “extra” time they can squeeze in a couple of unexpected detours, and regrettably arrive late but ready to tell others about their “adventure.”
They are, however, wonderfully creative, and as paralegals can help their attorneys see around walls and corners, resulting in innovative strategies. Even better, they multi-task wonderfully well. In fact, if you give a free spirit one task, they procrastinate. Give a free spirit twenty tasks and an impossible deadline, and the challenge spurs them on to complete everything right away.
What works with a free spirit?
Try tying incentives to their successful meeting of standards and providing deliverables. Then, because they choose to win, they’ll rein themselves in. Since your free spirit disrupts group meetings, assess whether you really want her present. If you invite her, make the meetings interesting, because the moment you allow meeting dullness you invite free-spirit boundary-pushing.
Finally, don’t take anything the free spirit does personally, because it’s not.
*In 2014, I created a “Styles and Types” personality assessment tool dividing workplace types into four categories. In addition to the “free spirit” discussed above, others fit into “relators” (people-oriented), “directors” (task-oriented) and “detectives” (question-oriented) categories. The different types manage to drive each other crazy. If you’d like more information on this inventory, or to see articles on the three other types, please email me @lynne@thegrowthcompany.com.
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