Discovering Personality Tendencies and Strengths in Communication
For the first time in over 200 episodes, Vonda and Lori are recording from an airport and a Starbucks — accidentally wearing matching sweaters, no less. They've spent two nonstop weeks on the road teaching team building, and this episode is the debrief: a private Bill Doran Company managers meeting, the SAF Profit Blast in Chicago, and a pair of assessments — the Four Tendencies and StrengthsFinder — that every shop owner should consider running with their team.
On the road with SAF and Bill Doran
The Society of American Florists Profit Blast in Chicago drew a great crowd — including more Flower Clique members than the hosts had ever seen at one, which left Lori admittedly a little emotional. Shop owners brought staff members along (helped by the Sunday scheduling), soaked up sessions from Tim Farrell and Paul Goodman, and jumped into the communication program Vonda and Lori closed with. Impressively, the Bill Doran Chicago branch promoted the event hard while simultaneously moving into a new wholesale house and coming off a sales managers meeting.
That managers meeting was a first for the hosts — with daughter Ellie LaFever booking a flight just 48 hours out because "we may need you there" (they did). Beyond their own presentations, what struck them was watching branch managers from across the country trade challenges and solutions, and the genuine pride and protectiveness those managers showed toward their teams and their flower shop customers. Game night was a highlight: teams had to build a "flower design" out of pickup sticks and candy, then sell it to Lori based on an invented occasion. Verdict: very few could design, but every one of them could sell the crap out of it.
The Four Tendencies: how your team responds to expectations
The session managers called their favorite was built on Gretchen Rubin's Four Tendencies framework (Rubin also wrote the bestseller The Happiness Project). It starts with a free online quiz that sorts you into one of four tendencies — upholder, obliger, questioner, or rebel — based on how you respond to outer and inner expectations. The point isn't the label; it's that once you know how you meet expectations, you understand yourself better and start decoding the people around you.
The proof it landed: managers went home, gave the quiz to their whole teams, and emailed back things like "I have three obligers, a rebel, and two upholders — what do I do now?" Lori's only regret was time — she'd have loved an hour to split the room by tendency and build into each group (starting with a support-group hug session for her fellow obligers).
StrengthsFinder: chart the team, not just the person
Back home, Lori and Ellie ran StrengthsFinder with the Flower Clique team — and the powerful move was charting everyone's results side by side. Seeing the whole team's strengths on one page shows you where you're covered, where the gaps are, and what your next hire should look like. It also does something subtle for morale: when designers can see that someone else's gift is selling what they make, "we're the only ones who do anything" thinking dissolves. Everyone has a gift, a reason, and a purpose on the team.
The other lesson: stop pouring energy into fixing weaknesses. Lori is open about hers — math — and at 55 she's not going to spend 80% of her time learning trigonometry when she can delegate it (in her household, to her husband Mark, who loves it) and lean into her actual strength, which StrengthsFinder names "woo." The caveat the hosts add: a character flaw is not a weakness. If you're critical and closed-minded, that one you do have to work on.
People are kind — and hungry to know themselves
Vonda's takeaways from the two weeks: people are kind, and being with them in person reinvigorates you. And most people are genuinely interested in knowing more about themselves — they just seldom carve out time for self-discovery until something like a quiz triggers it. "You could just see light bulbs going off in the room," she says. Lori's already eyeing the next topic: a book about how to lead when you're not the boss — because plenty of shop managers lead every day without owning the business.
Key takeaways
- Run the free Four Tendencies quiz with your team — knowing how each person responds to expectations changes how you assign, remind, and motivate.
- Chart your team's StrengthsFinder results together: it reveals gaps, guides your next hire, and shows everyone why every role matters.
- Delegate your weaknesses instead of fixing them — reserve self-improvement energy for your strengths (character flaws excepted).
- Face-to-face connection with your team and industry peers is worth the scheduling pain; don't take it for granted post-pandemic.
- You don't have to be the boss to lead — build leadership into your managers.