If you understand the psychological forces that affect the performance of your team, your team will not only be more successful, but you’ll actually solve problems faster and there will be less conflict. Diversity makes us stronger; we are a more powerful alloy when we welcome and leverage differences. However, it starts with self-awareness, and others-awareness.
What does it mean to truly understand what connects us…what drives us?
Teams are living organisms made up of highly unique individuals. These individuals are then expected to work closely together to achieve results—often with little insight into who they are, much less any meaningful understanding of their colleagues. It is why we so often encounter friction and stalled progress within organizations of all kinds. So, how do we get better at this? How do you improve as a team member or team leader?
It begins with “shared understanding.” Self-awareness and others-awareness are key components in creating highly motivated and thriving teams. Our understanding of “Self” shapes how we behave and interact with the world. It is one reason why personality tests and diagnostic tools have become so popular over the past century, and for good reason. We need a framework—a rubric—for understanding who we are in relation to those around us.
What am I motivated by? What characteristics do I detest in others? What truly defines my personality?
When one begins to earnestly self-reflect and truly take inventory of their distinctive personality makeup, the team in which this individual operates instantly begins to improve. The power and benefit of self-awareness is well studied and well documented. However, it is the next step in the sequence that has exponential and compounding impact, and that’s when the individual commits to really understanding their colleagues. “Who am I?” meets “Who are they?” and suddenly “How do we better interact?” becomes an answerable question.
The marketplace is packed with personality diagnostics of all shapes and sizes that can offer a person some sense of their personality. However, what hasn’t been available is a tool that empirically calculates the “sameness” or “differentness” of an individual among their entire team, using dozens of human performance factors. TeamChem® was developed with this need in mind, utilizing a proprietary mixed-method psychometric model that places authentic personality and 14 specific human performance factors at the core. This way, you not only learn who you are in new and exciting ways, but you learn where and how you best fit within the broader context of the team.
These insights, when activated, allow your team to take the reality of others’ personality and working styles into account as you work as a team. This allows for more successful collaboration, better team morale, and an overall better quality of life in the workplace.
Understand yourself; understand your teammates; recognize the differences and synergies; grow together. You are a unique and necessary element in the chemistry of your team.
Take a look at a partial TeamChem solution below. There are deeper complexities that you can learn—from convergent/divergent personalities to seven schemas and more. Here’s a peek at what’s to come with TeamChem.
Revealing your team’s personality profiles allows you to be a more effective leader
You can not only take the information from TeamChem and learn more about what drives your team members individually, but you can better pair team members up for projects based on their personality profiles. TeamChem® (Beta) launches February 2020 with remote and on-site delivery options. Connect with me directly at tborders@carnegiedartlet.com to learn more about this exciting new offering from Carnegie Dartlet.