Face reading is incredibly valuable at work! It's a skill I've taught to professionals in many fields — to understand clients’ personalities, or help teams work together smoothly; to hire the right person for the job or to make their job a better fit.

Even knowing the message that one single feature reveals can really help you work with that person more successfully. For example, here is a question I recently received from a reader:

“I have an employee with a sharp jaw that’s so big it almost extends past the sides of her face, similar to California's Former First Lady Maria Shriver's jaw. I'm having problems with this staff member and wonder if that kind of jaw has a meaning that might be helpful to know?

Of course, it’s important to understand you can’t know everything about someone from reading just one feature on their face. To get a complete picture, you’d need to know the total message all the features convey together.

But having said that, one feature will certainly tell you so many important things about this person’s nature that will help you gain a much better understanding of — and compassion for — who is inside.

In Chinese face reading, the jaw is called the Roots of the Tree. If someone's jaw is very large and well-defined as your employee's is, it means she's like a tree with strong roots that can't be easily blown down by the wind. In other words, she has a firm belief system and isn't likely to be easily influenced by others.

This can be a positive trait, in that someone like this has strong values, and is willing to stand up for what they believe in. But the difficult side of this trait is that someone with an extremely strong jaw can have too rigid a belief system, a my way or the highway mentality. They'll be less likely to be willing to listen to others' points of views or change their minds about anything.

Such a sharp jaw has other meanings as well. It reveals someone who is usually quite driven in their career, with specific goals they want to achieve. They can be impatient and easily frustrated if they have to fuss with little details as part of their job, or work through layers of bureaucracy to get anything done.

They may be extremely competitive, and some will try to be the winner in any situation. This can even show up in daily interactions; what you think is simply a friendly conversation turns into an argument they feel they have to win!

A strong jaw also indicates a person who can size up a situation quickly and realistically. They'll tend to be decisive and want to leap into action right after they've made a decision. This can be great in certain business settings, but in interpersonal relationships, it has the potential to cause problems, because a person with this kind of jaw often immediately makes up their mind about you in the first moments of meeting you. With someone like this, you have to quickly establish your credibility with them or risk being rejected. This overly judgmental nature doesn't usually serve them well.

This kind of person is often quite confident in their abilities. And frankly, they can be wonderfully entrepreneurial, and fantastic at creating logical and practical strategies for solving problems and achieving their goals. In fact, scientific studies have found that CEO’s with strong jaws are the most successful! But if they're stressed, these people can click into the attitude that everyone else is a moron and they should be running the show!

If you recognize any of these qualities in a colleague’s personality, please know these are natural tendencies that are inherent in their temperament. This can help you from taking that behavior too personally, or misunderstanding their motivations. Often just gaining this kind of new perception eases the situation. If you’re in charge of this person’s work, you can also use this knowledge to adjust their responsibilities — or your own expectations!

Everything has a “front” and a “back” - every personal quality gives you a certain strength, but also has a shadow side that will challenge you. The more you understand your inner patterns and why you are the way you are, the more you can relax into self-acceptance. And when this happens, the shadow can integrate to allow you to become whole, and life will unfold in an entirely new way.