Broker (2024)

Personality Traits

Brokers are typically innovative, outgoing, optimistic, enthusiastic and curious. They tend to be socially skilled and communicative, and enjoy making new contacts and maintaining existing relations. Brokers are able to exert influence and make use of their networks to get results. They are pre-disposed to opportunities and forging partnerships. Image, presentation and reputation are important. They are mostly politically sharpened, and can effectively negotiate agreement and commitment because they are often pleasant to deal with. Brokers are likely to be familiar with the latest developments, and have influence and power. Brokers also tend to be convincing, have excellent presentation skills, and are competent at selling new concepts and ideas.

Workplace

The Broker is mainly concerned with maintaining external legitimacy and obtaining input from outside. They are persuasive and tend to have a strong power base, because of their focus on building and maintaining a network of external contacts. The Broker will typically have influence, and meet external people as a representative, negotiator, liaison, spokesperson and acquirer of resources.

Brokers are generally good communicators and are excellent at presenting new concepts and ideas. Although they may not necessarily come up with new ideas themselves, they are skilled at picking up ideas from others. They are convincing and influential, and are effective at negotiating agreements. They are communicative, and open to opportunities and forging partnerships. They are able to exert influence and make use of their networks to get results.

The typical Broker has a broad range of interests, a lot of knowledge and often turns this knowledge into new insights. They enjoy unexpected initiatives and by this elaboration the creative capacity of the venture has room to grow and flourish. The Broker is also a marketeer. Whilst the story of a product can be told in many different ways, the Broker believes all those things should be singing the same song. And that song should really hit all the right notes.

Brokers are typically a reality check for the genuine human experience. In essence, they give people permission to think like a human being. They inspire and recommend, but especially provide space for initiatives. When subordinates have proven themselves, they are free to go their own way.

Team Dynamic

The Broker gives a team a rush of enthusiasm at the start of the project by vigorously pursuing contacts and opportunities. They communicate effectively and negotiate on behalf of the team with external stakeholders for all types of resources.

Because of their outgoing personalities Brokers tend to have a finger firmly on the pulse of the outside world. They are highly motivated to connect with people as a networker and are given to exploring outside opportunities. Brokers are good at making new business contacts and carrying out subsequent negotiations. They are also talented at finding new ideas and opportunities, and bringing these back to the team.

The Broker inspires his colleagues to use their creativity themselves. They continuously encourage other team members to invent new way of improving customer satisfaction. They give their colleagues freedom to act more or less independently, preferably without having to supervise or exercise too much control.

Brokers are innovative and curious. They are outgoing and are often extroverted, meaning that others are often receptive to them and their ideas.

The main contribution of the Broker is to explore just what resources are available and to develop external contacts that may be useful to the project team. The Broker personality is an asset when it comes to developing campaigns and motivating teams to be creative. Brokers make the messaging and content more clear, beautiful, and useful!

Other Personas

The Broker is highly supportive to Pioneers, who naturally have a focus on overcoming barriers to entry for their new concepts and ideas. The Broker’s optimism, enthusiasm, influence, network and persuasive presentation skills all help to smooth the path to success for the Pioneers. The Broker is also a support to Mentors who often have the challenge of communicating difficult messages to fellow team members. But by making the messaging simple and concise, as well as persuasive the Broker provides the Mentor with what they need to engage, listen and support the other team members in the way only they do best.

In general, the Broker is more naturally complemented by personas such as the Pioneer, Mentor, Shaper, Achiever and Director. More specifically, Brokers often enjoy working with task-oriented Directors, who tend to be straight shooters and know exactly what they want. And they enjoy championing the ideas Pioneers have dreamed up.

One of the beautiful things about creativity is that it often works better with constraints. Pioneers develop new concepts and ideas for the Broker to sell, while the Anchor’s impressive dedication to the task keeps the Broker on track.

But that doesn’t mean Brokers don’t occasionally have clashing approaches with other personality types. Where a Pioneer creates new ideas, a Broker will quite happily steal them from other companies or indeed people.

Blind Spots

Brokers can tend to get bogged down in opportunism and high aspirations. They can also have a hard time with people who are wedded to the status quo because they instinctively prefer the change or die approach.

The main pitfall of a Broker though is that they are easily distracted by new things and do not always finish what they start. This is because they tend to have limited attention span and may be undisciplined, allowing themselves to ‘wander off’. A good Broker is a maker of possibilities and an excellent networker, but has a tendency to lose momentum towards the end of a project and to forget small details. The danger is that Brokers end up losing enthusiasm quickly.

Communication really is key when it comes to the Broker. So is patience. A lot of times when you’re working with good creatives, the first thing you get back is convoluted so encourage Brokers to go back and simplify their great ideas. That’s a major part of the process.

How to get the best out of Brokers

Brokers tend to work better when they have autonomy to express their vision. They value their personal space and value others’ personal space. They likely work better in environments that allow them to work by themselves. But autonomy should also come with constraints. You have to give Brokers deadlines because otherwise they’ll just keep creating and changing things.

Brokers can be good listeners and should be encouraged to allow junior colleagues to bounce ideas off them. And don’t forget to acknowledge their great brainstorming skills as Brokers find thrill in possibility and engagement. But they should be careful not to let people down to pursue their own interests.

Brokers should be encouraged to use their diplomacy skills to build bridges both inside, as well as outside of the team. And not to relax too much when the pressure of work eases.