Understanding Team Dynamics and the Personality Profile Card tool
Summary: Have your team each do their Unique Ability from Strategic Coach. Then, create a Personality Profile Card for everyone (free tool we created) so you don’t forget. Use the Personality Profile Cards to ensure you’re tasking the right person, rewarding them in a way they receive it, and keep all the important information in one place.
Onto the post…
Radical Self Understanding is the notion that by understanding who you are, your motivations, your natural behavior and your talents, you can maximize your impact on the world.
Similarly, by your team understanding who they are, their natural behaviors and their talents, they can better deliver value to your company and your customers.
Mike here at Tech Guys likes to say “First get the right person, then put them in the right seat on the bus.”
At any company, it’s the hiring person’s job to find the right person and figure out where they’d be best positioned in the company. Finding the right person means not only involves finding the person who has the required skillset, but also finding a culture fit, someone who is intrinsically motivated and hungry to do work. More than a title, bringing a new person on board should be about the work that the new hire will do, the environment they’ll do it in (team vs. solo), and the urgency of the problems it will be their responsibility to solve. It’s a lot to consider when building out your team, but there are tools available to help you do it. I have a few favorites that I’m excited to share with you.
About 12 months ago, I joined Strategic Coach, an entrepreneur coaching program started by Dan Sullivan and his partner Babs Smith. I had been a fanboy of Strategic Coach for years, having read most of the books available on Dan’s store. However, in the short year I’ve been part of the program, I’ve learned more about myself and others and more importantly, how to pull together a great team.
Expanding on the principle of Unique Ability that Dan created years ago, three ladies on his team created the Unique Ability 2.0 book and workbook. Catherine, Julia and Shannon did an incredible job at making the self-identification process fun and insightful. About 8 months ago, the Tech Guys team did a retreat at Mike’s house in Utah, each person beginning their work on sussing out their own Unique Ability.
First, the process had us take the Kolbe A-Index. If you’re not familiar, the Kolbe A-Index is a 36-question assessment that helps identify some of your natural behaviors, specifically can tell you your natural you go about completing a task.
Next, we took the Gallup’s StrengthsFinder which identifies your top five strengths and talents based on a detailed questionnaire. Finally, we, asked our friends, colleagues and families questions to gauge outside perception of our strengths and behaviors . At the end of the workbook, each person wrote their own Unique Ability based on their findings, refined their strengths, identified their natural behavior and summed up in a concise statement what they’ve done their entire life thus far. It was truly an amazing process of self discovery and understanding.
If you haven’t done your Unique Ability before, I encourage you to buy the book and get to work. Have your entire team do it.
As an entrepreneur, you want to be sure you’re investing your time and resources into employees and contractors that are going to stick around with you. The assessments aren’t meant to pigeon hole or limit an individual’s role in the company. Unique Ability instead gives us insight into what someone is great at and how to make sure they’re in a position to succeed personally and professionally doing work that is naturally rewarding and fun for them.
Okay, so now your whole team has completed the Unique Ability program. What now? Are you going to remember each and every person’s Kolbe Score? Everyone’s key strengths from Strengths Finder? Having that information is great; having an easy way to refer to that information is even better.
Working at Tech Guys and Engaged Officers, it’s so important to me to forge meaningful relationships with each and every client. I want to have a deep and authentic connection, but keeping a client’s personal and behavioral information in my head was impossible. When I jumped on calls with our team, or with a client, I didn’t want to have to pull up emails or a spreadsheet and review everyone’s numbers… what a hassle!
I had all the information I needed, I just needed an easy-to-use tool to make the information accessible at the click of a button. Thus was born the Engaged Officers’ Personality Profile Card. The idea is simple: a “baseball card” that each person creates for themselves that includes all the important assessment results along with some quick facts. All in a glance-able, easy to read format. At Engaged Officers we had our internal team take the assessments and create their own cards, and now we have all of our clients, create a card as part of the onboarding process .
This card has incredible value and really allows for better communication and connection between people. I use the cards before I jump on a team call, or a client call. I pull up the PDF’s of everyone’s Personality Profile, I do a quick review and dive into the call. If a client has a lower Fact Finder score, I keep it big-picture. If the client has a short Follow Through but they have someone on their team with a longer Follow Through, I can ask the team member to tackle process-oriented tasks.
The cards also help me understand how to give feedback that will really land with an individual. When a client or team member rocks a task, I know how to praise them. Do I send them an email saying how great the success was or drop a gift in the mail? Because I know intimately the motivations and behaviors of my clients and team, I can make sure they feel supported and encouraged.
In the last 3 months, we’ve been rolling out these Personality Profile Cards. I’d love for you and your team to give creating a card a shot. You’ll get an email link once you create yours, with the ability to edit it in the future. You’ll also have the ability to share a web-friendly version as well as a PDF.
>> Click here to create your card. It’s free, we’ll never charge for this tool.
Send the link to your team. Have your spouse create a card. Get to know your colleagues motivations, their desires, then help them get what they want.
Zig Ziglar said “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” Figure out what your team wants, help them get there, and you’ll find your team starts driving the ship themselves.
Comment below with any insights, or to report any bugs!
Casey
PS – You can create your own Personality Profile card here, for free. We don’t charge for this tool and never will. Eagle Scout’s honor. Send your team the link, too, and get everyone to create one!