Features
PERSONALITY ANALYSIS: Lessons, Inspirations and Kaizen!
CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY
By Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil
President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada
Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum
chandij@sympatico.ca
Anti-climax to an Adventure?
Twelve brave Ceylon Hotel School (CHS) students who went on a five-day cycle trip during the Vesak holidays in 1973, were spending their one-month suspension mainly at home. I was the exception, who arranged to spend the suspension period in hiding, at the Barberyn Reef Hotel in Beruwala, as an unpaid worker. I quickly settled in my fourth part-time-job. As hotel occupancy was low, I stayed at a guest room and had my meals at the hotel restaurant, in between my manual labour. My favourite part of my stay at this hotel was jumping into the sea after a long day of work. Due to the reef, there were not many waves right outside the hotel. It was calm as a lagoon. The reflection of the moonlight on the gentle waves and the reef, were most beautiful. I simply loved my time at the Barberyn Reef Hotel.
Learning the Hotel Culture
I reported to hotel Owner/Manager, Mr Sudana Rodrigo, and did any odd job as required based on the occupancy of the day. Mr. Rodrigo had a laid-back and relaxed style of management. I noticed how the leader of an 
Every morning, Mr. Rodrigo assigned me a different job. He was impressed with the service and guest relations skills I had mastered by working at two of the best hotels in Sri Lanka – Pegasus Reef Hotel and Mount Lavinia Hyatt Hotel. During the busy days I worked as a room boy. In addition, I covered the shifts for the head receptionist on her days off. I also worked as a bellboy. I was happy to carry luggage of arriving guests because they usually gave generous tips. Since I remembered their names from the check in, I soon became an employee popular with long-staying guests.
Analysing the Bosses
I learnt something new from all my immediate supervisors in my three previous part-time jobs. Each of them had different personalities. My first boss, the catering manager of Hotel Samudra who fired me, was a ‘no nonsense’ type, whom I call, “Toughie.” My second boss, the head waiter of Pegasus Reef had a bubbly personality and loved dealing with all types of people. I termed his personality type was “Softie”. My third boss, the butler at Mount Lavinia Hyatt Hotel, had another personality type in between “Toughie” and “Softie.” Owing to his attention to details and ‘prim and proper’ attitude, I identified him in another category – “Perfectie.”
Mr. Rodrigo, my fourth boss’s personality was exactly the opposite. He was good man, but was a bit clumsy and often wore crushed clothing. He frequently got distracted, and communicated with many messages at a time. Yet, he was practical, creative, funny and energetic. He was involved in many projects at a time and was not that punctual. In my mind I commenced identifying this personality type as “Confuzie.” None of these four personality categories were good or bad. My concept helped me to be flexible in the manner in which I communicated with different personalities, particularly people who were important to me, bosses, VIP guests and girlfriends.
A Conversation with a Movie Legend
One day, I was in charge of the front office when a short but a majestic looking and extremely handsome man arrived at the hotel. As I greeted him, he said, “Good Morning, could you please inform Mr. Sud
ana Rodrigo that Gamini Fonseka is here to meet him.” I was pleasantly surprised and excited to meet the greatest movie actor of Sri Lanka, again. I first saw him in August 1962,
when the first-ever colour motion picture in Ceylon, ‘Ran Muthu Duwa’ directed by a Canadian, Mike Wilson, broke all box office records. This movie propelled Gamini as the most popular movie star of the country. Most youngsters of my generation became devoted fans of Gamini. He was a hard-working actor and a productive movie maker. Eleven years later his 41st movie had been just released and there were no stars of his calibre, talent and popularity on the horizon.
As soon as I called Mr. Rodrigo, he rushed to the lobby and greeted Gamini with a friendly hug. I realised that they were good friends and had something in common, hotel ownership. Gamini had built his own hotel, Sanasuma in Weeravila, where he often went to relax inbetween his busy schedule making movies. After lunch I had the opportunity to talk with my idol. I quickly reminded Gamini that we both acted in arguably, the greatest movie ever made in Sri Lanka, Lester James Peries’s ‘Gamperaliya’ in 1962. The character I played was Gamini’s (Jinadasa) brother-in-law (Tissa). He remembered me.
Gamini was somewhat impressed with my knowledge about Sinhala, Hindi and English movies. We spoke at length about movies and how he learnt the ropes of movie directing under the greatest movie director in the world at that time, Sir David Lean. This had been on location filming ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’. He also spoke about two of my favourite Hollywood movie actors, Marlon Brando and Yul Brynner. I then learnt that Gamini tried ‘Method Acting’, like Brando and used his technical knowledge of production to enhance his acting, like Brynner. Gamini was also a chain smoker like Yul Brynner.
We chatted about ‘Nidhanaya’ which I had seen a few months before the cycle trip. When I identified ‘Nidhanaya’ as the movie with the best acting by Gamini, he wanted to know the reasons. He tended to agree. Gamini had utmost respect for Lester James Peries for creating a masterpiece based on a short story. Although, Gamini’s unprecedented popularity stemmed mainly from movies which followed popular Indian movie ‘formulae’, he enjoyed working on artistic movies with complex characters that challenged him as an actor. That was confirmed in my mind, when Gamini told me, “Don’t call me a star! I am an actor not a star. Stars fade away…”
Inspired by My Hero
Gamini was well-read, very intelligent, versatile and philosophical. His fluency of three languages was most impressive. Although some people thought of him as proud and arrogant, I found him to be warm, charming and charismatic. I liked his personality, but I was unable to place him in either of the four personality types I had identified before. Gamini had some traits from all four personality types. To me Gamini had a complexed personality and I termed that type of personality as, “Complexie” – the fifth personality type of my evolving model. I was impressed how Gamini adjusted his communication when interacting with his friend, Mr. Sudana Rodrigo, whose personality was very different from his.
Many years later, I had a few more interesting interactions with Gamini. These were in other different roles that he excelled in, as a corporate executive (Maharaja Group) in the 1980s and a politician (the Deputy Speaker and a Provincial Governor) in the 1990s. I have continued to be an ardent fan of Gamini, long after his untimely death in 2004. I watched his funeral live on TV, and listened to the final farewell speech by a long-standing cinema actor, Ravindra Randeniya. When he quoted Shakespeare to end his tribute to Gamini, “Goodnight, sweet prince”, Ravindra failed to hold back his tears. I couldn’t hold mine, either… To me, as well as my generation of moviegoers, Gamini was simply the greatest movie actor Sri Lanka had ever seen.
Having acted in three movie projects and a play as a child actor in the 1960s, I gave up acting, to focus on hospitality. After my 1973 meeting with Gamini, I was inspired to act again, but my busy career in hospitality prevented me from doing so for a few years. In the 1980s, I managed to find a little free time to act in nine TV commercials directed by well-known Directors such as William Blake, D. B. Nihalsinghe, D. B. Suranimala and Shehan Wijeratne of Donald’s. I also appeared on a couple of TV shows, a photo shoot and a stage show. I finally came to terms that one cannot be a jack of all trades. Inspiration is important, but one must also have the time and commitment. I gave up acting after appearing in the last video clip I directed: ‘Fitness Fever”, music video of the popular song I wrote in 1993.
Gated Prisoners
My fellow Iron Horses info
rmed me that they made an official complaint about Herr Sterner to his boss, Mr. Dharmasisri Senanayake. This charismatic lawyer/politician turned Chairman of the Ceylon Tourist Board, disliked Herr Sterner’s arrogance and that was advantageous to the Iron Horses. The Board had agreed that the decision to suspend 12 students for a full month was far too harsh for cutting school for two days. The principal was instructed by his superiors
to reduce the period of suspension, immediately. Although I was certainly not an admirer of Herr Sterner’s sternness on this occasion, I had a different opinion. I felt that it was not fair that my colleagues’ action led to the undermining of the principal’s authority by his superiors.
The principal was very angry and wanted to meet all 12 of us in his office. He reduced the suspension by two weeks. However, he ordered the Hostel Warden that when we return to CHS, we should be gated and strictly prohibited to leave the CHS and the hostel, for any purpose for two more weeks. I was happy to be back at CHS and the hostel, but felt like a prisoner or a caged animal. I also missed my time at the Barberyn Reef Hotel. My parents never knew about my suspension and the gated punishment! During this period, I planned my first solo cycling adventure which I wanted to do soon after the gated period.
Personality Analysis
During the cycling adventure, suspension, hiding at Barberyn Reef and finally spending two weeks as a gated prisoner, provided me with plenty of free time to think. I thought deeply about different people, their personalities and different ways to interact with them. Half the battle is won when an employee is able to analyse personalities quickly and adjust the way she/he communicates with each person (bosses, customers, peers, associates etc.). This is one lesson that helped me throughout my career.
Fifteen years later, I learnt more about personality analysis as a student at Le Meridien Institute for Hotel Management in France. Shortly thereafter I developed a full-day seminar on ‘Personality Analysis: The Best Tool for Hospitality Managers’. This program has been most popular among many of the teams of people I led as a hotelier, taught as a professor or coached as a consultant. I have presented seminars on this concept in 15 countries since 1988 – Aruba, Botswana, Canada, England, Ghana, Guyana, India, Iraq, Jamaica, Kenya, The Maldives, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates and Zambia.
Last month, I did yet another presentation of this concept as a webinar for 100 participants from eight countries. It was organised by The Sri Lanka Housekeepers Association (SLHA). The full video clip of this webinar is now posted on SLHA Facebook page. I was happy to present a fine-tuned version of personality types as per my categorizations done nearly 50 years ago – “Softie”, “Toughie”, “Perfectie”, “Confuzie” and “Complexie.” To me it is still relevant and useful, almost every day, when I deal with people. Influenced by my training as a Judoka, I have attempted to continuously improve my concept of Personality analysis. 改善Kaizen!