If project managers want to get the best of their teams, perhaps they need to dip into the theories of Carl Jung, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Which is what Val Grey, behavioral coach and expert, drew on during her interactive session, "Why can’t you see it my way?"

“We live in a world of artificial intelligence, digital transformation, machine learning. In all of this environment, we still exist as human beings. And as human beings, we are fallible. We make mistakes, we are not perfect,” Ms. Grey said.

That’s why effective project managers need to understand these fallible characteristics and realize people’s interdependencies.

It was these interconnectivities that led Carl Jung to come up with his Type Theory, according to which people can be grouped into types, based on four parameters — energy, information, decisions, and structure.

Taking the first parameter, energy, Ms. Grey said that participants needed to ask themselves where their energy comes from. Extroverts are people who get their energy from the outside world — noise, music, talking to people. Introverts, on the other hand, draw theirs from within and tend to block out the outside world.

She asked participants to group themselves according to their type and asked the ones who were unsure, or who felt they had both characteristics, to stand on the blue carpet, or ground zero.

By getting participants to respond, she listed out characteristics of introverts and extroverts. While the former were peaceful, quiet, good listeners, empathetic, diligent, disciplined, thoughtful, and focused, the latter were enthusiastic, confident, fun, energetic, and good communicators.

These characteristics, Ms. Grey said, are evident during meetings. While extroverts do all the talking and brainstorming, introverts think. But extroverts think they are doing nothing. After some thinking, the introvert forms an idea, but when he expresses it, the extrovert is taken aback and shuts him up. The introvert backs off and does not share his idea the next time.

This is what happens in teams, Ms. Grey said. “To be effective in a project management team, you need to figure out if you are an extrovert or an introvert; and if you are an introvert, how you can connect with extroverts without feeling uncomfortable, and if you’re an extrovert, how you can stop talking long enough to listen to what introverts have got to say.”