What’s your Worker Archetype*?

I recently attended the Chief X LA event at the Los Angeles Clubhouse. For those unfamiliar, Chief is a private membership network focused on supporting, connecting and further educating women leaders.   It was a beautiful day and a well attended event featuring exciting, inspiring fireside chats with Julie Smolyansky, CEO Lifeway Kefir; Alli Webb, Founder Drybar and others. Each of these women, extraordinary in their own fields and in life, were available to this intimate group to offer perspective and advice, but just hearing their stories was motivating.  Motivating to not only do better for ourselves and others, but do more for your community.  

Prior to this part of the day’s activities, all the attendees participated in a networking exercise that was inspired by the Bain and Co. Future of Work Insights Report*.  In this exercise, we were asked to determine our “worker archetype” from six offered. The six archetypes identified and defined by Bain and Co are:

Operator

For Operators, life is about more than work. They see work as a means to an end. They don't feel a burning desire to always stand out, which makes them excellent team players. 

Giver

For Givers, work is about service. They feel rewarded by seeing their actions make a positive impact in someone else's life. They bring a human touch to their organizations. 

Artisan

Artisans are motivated by the pursuit of mastery in their craft. They're always on the lookout for ways to perfect their skills—for them, learning is a lifelong journey. They raise the bar for performance at their organizations. 

Explorer

For Explorers, life is an adventure. They want excitement and variety from work. They help make their organizations more adaptable in a rapidly changing world.

Striver

Strivers are driven by a powerful desire to make something of their lives. They set high standards for themselves and can be quite competitive. They keep organizations running successfully.

Pioneer

Pioneers are on a mission to change the world. They tend to form strong views about the way things should be and seek opportunities to turn their visions into reality.

As a marketer, I am a big fan of developing target personas to help define audiences.  I found these definitions to be helpful, yet hard to choose.  Once we did choose, we were then assigned to different areas of the Chief Clubhouse to meet with our fellow archetypes and have a guided discussion with a set of questions. It was great to see how each group organized itself and how animated the members were when interacting with each other.  What a great exercise for us all to do!  It helped us bond on yet another level of identity, first as a female leader and then by archetype.  The discussion was meaningful and our group truly did not want the discussion to end.  

Put yourself in the group!  Which archetype are you?  How do you think this definition helps you define your work style and habits - does it identify those aspects of your style that you find additive or subtractive from your organization’s structure and business objectives?  After thinking through that, do you find yourself striving to be a different archetype?  These can be a helpful starting point for your personal guiding principles.  

We were provided ‘a ten minutes to wrap up’ signal that was met with a collective groan from the groups.  Everyone was truly enjoying this portion of the day’s itinerary.  To finish out, we were asked, “what does success look like for you in the coming year?” Personally, I felt it would be better to ask each of us “How do you want to use your archetype characteristics to not only better yourself in the coming year, but to better your current environment and those around you?”   The biggest takeaway was how easy it was to find common traits to unite the group and then how collectively those traits could help identify areas for improvement, where support is needed and what is unique and powerful about each of us collectively.  

Overall I found this to be a great exercise.  In the words of Tom Robbins, I do think there is more to this exercise than what it offers at face value.

“Our similarities bring us to common ground. Our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.”

https://www.bain.com/insights/what-type-of-worker-are-you-future-of-work-report-interactive/