Thinking about personality through the eyes of the Mr. Men Series

Recently, I was speaking to a high-level leader who was a hiring manager for a Fortune 100 company. I had just assessed a leadership applicant and provided some insight to the hiring manager. I’m also the father of three young children, and one of my friends from Singapore gave us a British children’s book series called Mr. Men. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s a series from the ’70s where each book is about a different fake cartoonish person named after his more prominent trait. The book takes you through a day in each character’s life and how this trait affects everything he does. Because I knew the hiring manager I was speaking with was from the UK, I had to ask him if he knew this series. When I did, he swiftly went to his bookshelf and brought out his favorite book. So we started talking about how the applicants resembled the different Mr. Men, and it helped him conceptualize how each would act in the company as a leader.