I was talking with someone from a small (two-person) team recently. Working for a small charity, their responsibility was for fundraising a challenging amount of money for the year. Dividing the work and opportunities evenly between them didn’t seem to be working and both were feeling stress levels rising.
And then they were offered some psychometric profiling. It clearly identified one person as being relatively introverted, focussed and with good attention to detail. Her colleague could hardly have been more different. Outgoing, bubby and extroverted, she drew her energy from meeting with people and found paperwork draining.
What a revelation this understanding of each other brought! Instead of dividing the work evenly, they split it by temperament. Our introvert spends more time researching, applying to trusts, completing the paperwork (yes, even her colleague’s paperwork!) She feels a new freedom and no longer has to network/socialise with and pitch to complete strangers, something that is well outside of her comfort zone.
Meanwhile, her colleague gets to do what she loves – conveying her catching enthusiasm for the work of the charity, and raising personal and corporate donations by presenting the needs in front of large groups of strangers.
All too often, we expect other people to function as we do: to love what we love and dislike what we dislike. But within a team and across a business, they are wide variations. How can you identify these?
Here at Performance – Workplace Development we offer two different top-ranked tools* for profiling individuals and teams. Our clients’ experience is that the understanding they bring and the application of the lessons learnt dynamically changes their understanding of one another. They also give colleagues a common language and changes the way responsibilities are distributed. The result? A significant reduction in friction between team members and greater productivity. It forms the bedrock for further business, team and individual development, and we love to journey with our clients in this process.
*Insights Discovery® and Clifton Strengths® (formerly StrengthsFinder)