We’ve met the Playmakers and Taskmasters. Let’s meet the third of the four intellects: Peacekeepers.
Peacekeepers have the diplomatic talents of connecting and relating that keep us all more righteous and unified. Empathetic and spirited, they’re all about cooperation, ethics and humanity. They seem to be driven by a natural need for sincerity and truth, and they’re at their best when they’re involved in working with people and advocating ideals.
Idealists by nature, Peacekeepers are drawn to causes they deem to be of highest significance. Ever the diplomat, they use their inborn emotional intelligence and empathy to facilitate harmony and promote unity.
At the team level, Peacekeepers make some of the best mentors and coaches, as most important to them are inclusiveness and personal growth in others. Self-development is a key focus for Peacekeepers, and they forever seek the true inner self, for anything less is not honest and might not result in the self-actualization they’re looking for. If the first rule of leadership is “know thyself,” Peacekeepers are the leaders we dream of – their ethics are impeccable, and beware those that breach what they believe to be the right thing to do.
Wrecking a Peacekeeper’s day is anything that limits the ability to build enduring relationships and high ideals into the effort, including the typical big-company culture steeped in bureaucracy, arms-length transactions, and harmful competition.
Conversely, their real power is in building the heartful and harmonious kinds of organizations in which most of us would love to enroll and participate.
The Peacekeepers’ broad themes of natural talent derive from the interpersonal, intrapersonal, environmental and linguistic aptitudes, and run along the lines of:
Facilitating: Creating cooperative action to achieve goals; drawing out issues that need to be addressed
Empathizing: Sensing and sharing what others may be feeling in any given situation; showing care and concern
Mediating: Dealing with difficult people/situations; building bridges between people; resolving conflict
Interpreting Reading the individual nuances and subtle behavioral clues of others to interpret motivation
Confiding: Creating deep and meaningful relationships – work and personal – built on trust and intimacy
Coaching: Fostering growth and development of others; drawing out and building strength; guiding others
Counseling: Diagnosing weakness; healing and fixing people, ideas, situations; restoring to wholeness
Idealizing: Maintaining strong belief in ideals; honoring and living the highest ethics and principles
Unifying: Including and integrating disparate views to achieve solidarity; fostering togetherness
Advocating: Passionately supporting an issue; championing worthy causes; creating inspiration and spirit
Keeping in mind that we all have some Peacekeeper in us, are you a natural born Peacekeeper?
Try this: print the list above. Put a checkmark on each talent area that comes easily to you. Then put a checkmark on each one that you truly enjoy. Put a third checkmark on each one at which you demonstrate excellence.
If the majority of themes have all three checkmarks, consider yourself a Peacekeeper.