An important factor that will help determine how you choose between the various approaches discussed in the previous chapters will be the specific nature of each individual employee. Different people need to be handled differently, and you should try to take their characters into account.

Remember that your primary task as a people manager is to bring the best work out of people that they are capable of doing, in order to meet the objectives of your group and your organization. Understanding the circumstances under which they work best will help you achieve that goal.

A successful manager has insight into people, and is able to assess their natures and their needs.

There are a lot of ways to define or categorize people and to distinguish between them. For our purposes, a relatively simple schema will do. We'll look at this question from four different perspectives: