Patterns, Not Predictions: How Understanding Yourself Strengthens Work Relationships
- Alison Nissen
- Jan 29
- 5 min read
When Leadership Meets Reality
It was a reality check. I had just stepped into a new role as president of a volunteer organization: motivated, committed, and realistic enough to know leadership wouldn’t be simple. My predecessor knew it wouldn’t be easy. She warned with a laugh, “It’ll be like herding cats.”
At the time, it sounded like affectionate exaggeration. In hindsight, it was accurate.
One key board member was highly capable, but overbearing. Meetings felt dominated.
Decisions felt rushed. I became stressed, felt inadequate, and uncertain about my leadership instincts.
The problem wasn’t just conflict; it was misattunement. I didn’t understand how her personality showed up under pressure, or mine.
I realized this wasn’t about likability or agreement. It was about understanding how different people bring value and friction into the same room.
When Stress Isn’t the Problem
That realization changed how I thought about stress. Not as a flaw to fix, but as information I didn’t yet know how to read.
Around the same time, I was in conversation with Kirsten Moorefield, co-founder of Cloverleaf, on the ABOVE CENTER® Leadership Podcast. Cloverleaf is an AI coaching platform designed to help people understand how personality patterns show up in the flow of work, especially under stress. As we talked, Kirsten offered a reframe that immediately resonated with my experience:
“Any moment of stress is such a good tell. It’s just a sign that something is off…Stress, in and of itself, is [not] inherently a failure.”
That framing offers both relief and responsibility.
Stress doesn’t mean you’re failing as a leader. More often, it signals that something beneath the surface—expectations, communication styles, roles, or unspoken assumptions—is misaligned. In other words, stress often points to relational gaps, not personal shortcomings.
Patterns, Not Predictions
This is where personality tools, when used well, become useful. Not because they predict behavior, but because they reveal patterns. They don’t tell us how someone will show up; they offer clues about how someone might show up under certain conditions.
And this applies to ourselves as much as to anyone else.
Why Language Matters More Than Labels
This is also where assessment language becomes helpful, especially when it’s paired with AI coaching.
Unlike labels and categories, assessment language gives people a way to talk about how they tend to approach situations, particularly under stress. It doesn’t explain who someone is. It explains how they tend to contribute.
That distinction matters. Personalities aren’t problems to fix. They’re differences to work with.
Research from Gallup suggests that people tend to show up in consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, especially in times of stress, making these inclinations more pronounced.
And when those patterns are misunderstood, even well-intentioned behavior can start to create friction.
Seen through that lens, what feels bossy to one person may register as decisiveness to another.
This is where AI coaching, particularly through tools like Cloverleaf, plays a different role than traditional personality assessments.
Instead of producing a static report, AI coaching offers insight in the flow of work, prompting reflection at moments when interpretation matters most. It helps users pause long enough to choose how to respond.
AI coaching doesn’t resolve stressful moments on its own. What it can do is shorten the distance to understanding. It gives people a shared language for noticing patterns in themselves and others, which makes it easier to pause, recalibrate, and choose a response that protects the relationship while the work continues.
That’s the real shift.
When leaders learn to recognize patterns rather than judge personalities, dynamics don’t suddenly become easy. But they do become clearer. And clarity, more often than not, is the first step toward staying above center.
When Clarity Comes Too Late
At REVEL, we often see what happens when that clarity comes too late. When stress isn’t noticed or interpreted early, it often pulls leaders into what we call a victim loop. It rarely starts with conflict. It starts with something smaller: A moment of insecurity. A mismatch between what was meant and what was heard. A reaction we didn’t expect.
From there, the mind begins to spin. We replay the exchange, searching for meaning, trying to make sense of what just happened, often before we’ve paused long enough to understand it.
Then comes the (urgent) urge to fix it.
We overexplain.
We push harder.
We reach for clarity, but often in ways that escalate the tension instead of easing it.
Small misalignments rarely create problems on their own. They become problems when we respond to them from below center. We fill in gaps with assumptions. We read tone where none was intended. We compensate for discomfort by pushing, explaining, or retreating in ways that only add pressure.
The problem is that these reactions feel useful. Doing something feels better than doing nothing. But without a pause, each attempt to fix the moment moves the interaction further off course.
The Myth of Harmony
There’s a familiar refrain in leadership conversations: If we all just got along…
If personalities were easier.
If meetings were smoother.
If conflict disappeared.
But harmony has never been the real goal. In fact, when teams prize harmony above all else, they often sacrifice something more important: honest thinking.
Effective leadership isn’t about eliminating differences. It’s about learning how to work with diversity without turning it into division.
Diversity of thought shows up precisely where things feel uncomfortable, when someone asks a question that slows the pace, challenges an assumption, or introduces a perspective that wasn’t part of the original plan. These moments can feel disruptive, especially under stress.
Without a shared way to understand what’s happening, those moments get misread as resistance or disruption.
Understanding becomes a leadership superpower. When leaders can recognize how different personalities approach decisions, risk, and communication, they’re better able to keep disagreement from becoming personal. This doesn’t become easier—but it does become more productive.
Strong teams aren’t built on sameness. They’re built on the ability to stay connected while thinking differently. That requires more than goodwill. It requires awareness, interpretation, and a willingness to slow judgment long enough to hear what difference is trying to contribute.
In that sense, understanding isn’t the opposite of conflict. It’s what allows conflict to sharpen thinking instead of eroding trust.
Responding With Intention
In practice, this kind of understanding doesn’t come from good intentions alone. Teams are moving faster. Stress is higher. Misunderstandings cost more than they used to. In that environment, waiting until conflict arises is often too late.
This is where AI coaching becomes useful. Not as a replacement for human judgment, and not as a tool that tells leaders what to do, but as a support that helps them prepare for moments that tend to derail connection—before stress hardens into stories, before misalignment turns personal.
Used this way, AI coaching supports something leaders want: to respond with intention rather than reaction—before the situation starts to go sideways. It helps interrupt the victim loop before stress takes over the decision.
In the end, AI coaching isn’t about fixing people. It’s about working with real humans in real conditions. And that clarity, earned through awareness and interpretation, is often what keeps people above center—especially when it matters most.
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About the author: As the co-founder and Chief Storytelling Officer of Revel Coach, a career growth platform, Alison Nissen helps leaders perfect their business pitches and online presence through storytelling. Successful executives use key storytelling points to engage their audience and gain market share because they know good storytelling is the best form of marketing, recruiting, and fundraising. Write Your Book NOW! Mastermind enrolling now.
The Revel Coach™ Blog is provided for educational and informational purposes only and is not mental health, financial, business or legal advice. The information presented here is not intended to diagnose, treat, heal, cure or prevent any medical, mental or emotional condition. The information presented here is not a guarantee that you will obtain any results or earn any money using our content.
