When relating to your employees, do you lump them all into the same personality basket?

Do you expect each of them to respond to your leadership the same way?

If yes, you might want to rethink that strategy.

Consider a company we’ll call Fizz Beverages, Inc. Based in New York, four of its employees are Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice.

Bob is fifty-eight years old. He works as the logistics manager at Fizz Beverages. He’s married with two grown children. He doesn’t own an iPhone, just an old flip phone. He lives in Clifton, New Jersey and is a big New York Giants fan. According to social demographics, he’s a quintessential Baby Boomer.

Carol is twenty-four years old. She just graduated from New York University, and she’s a new hire in the marketing department. She tends to dress in black, and her favorite singer is Lady Gaga. She lives in a funky apartment in Brooklyn and has a boyfriend and a cat. According to social demographics, she’s a quintessential Millennial.

Ted is your head of sales. He’s fifty-two years old and lives in Astoria, Queens. He’s working on wife number three, and other than making money, his favorite pastime is losing his money in Atlantic City or Las Vegas. Like Bob, you’d call him a Baby Boomer.

Alice is an assistant controller at Fizz Beverages. Twenty-six years old, she lives with her partner, Dorothy, in Bedford-Stuyvesant. She’s a big Wizard of Oz fan, and collects everything related to the classic movie. She wants to go back to college and get her MBA. Like Carol, you’d call her a Millennial.

Two Millennials and two Baby Boomers. Bob and Ted are boomers, while Carol and Alice are Millennials. Pretty easy to categorize them, right?

Wrong!

In reality, in terms of their personas Bob and Carol are much more alike than Ted and Alice.

Despite their age differences, once you dig a little deeper you discover that Bob and Carol are both cautious, pragmatic, and avoid creating disruption. They’re homebodies who hate to travel unless it’s to a specific destination. They each want to carefully weigh a situation before making a commitment. They value continuity and they want to see the “big picture.” They are not inclined to pursue innovation.

Meanwhile, Ted and Alice share many common values. They each see themselves as A-type warriors who want to get things done now. They don’t mind uncertainty, and their partners say they love to argue. Chitchat with other people is nice, but during a conversation each is thinking, “What’s the end game here? What am I getting out of this?” They each enjoy taking chances because risk gives them an emotional lift. They are both attracted to innovation.

In fact, if you put Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice in a room together and left them there for a while, you’d find that Bob and Carol would get along well, while Ted and Alice would either become allies or find a way to start viciously arguing with each other.

So Much for Demographics!

The CEO of Fizz Beverages, Susan Smith, happens to be an innovation leader. She knows how to look beyond facile categorizations and see the true personalities of her employees. By doing so, she’s able to be the kind of leader each one wants. To Bob and Carol, Susan is a steady, reassuring hand on the wheel. She shows them she values continuity, thorough training, and respect for tradition. Knowing that Ted and Alice are more disruption-friendly, she keeps them on their toes with new initiatives that aren’t yet fully proven.

There are probably other differences between the four that would make them align in other patterns. That’s fine—remember, no two people are exactly alike!

From your own boss to your employees, you need to know everyone within your stakeholder community based on their personas—what they hate and what they love. Once you know these things, you can create thoughtful engagement in incentive programs to ensure that you’re both delivering the best human experience and ensuring the highest level of leadership impact.