Design thinking shifts teams from divisive to productive fast!

People bring their personality preferences to work as well. For example, some might prefer to work slowly, carefully and steady, making sure that all aspects have been considered before making a decision. Others, on the other hand, like to experiment with bold new ideas and make adjustments as they learn more. Of course, there are many more individual differences, also in terms of how people learn, lead, and interact with people. The more you understand these differences, the less it causes frustrations and conflict.

Imagine you have only people who like to socialize, create harmony and make people feel good about themselves. Or, on the contrary, if you had people who only move boldly forward with speed without caring about the impact on others. We need both, and even other kind of diversity at work. We need people who collaborate, innovate, align and execute. Having people with different approaches ensures that people approach problems from a holistic perspective.

Being agile is when team members can alter their behaviors and approach regardless of their natural personality preferences to adapt to alternate contexts, quickly shifting between innovation, collaboration, alignment, and execution.

Team assessments bring to light the collective strengths and development areas of a team to function effectively together.

Team assessments bring to light the collective strengths and development areas of a team to function effectively together. Understanding the potential hidden strengths and blind spots of a team is important to build high performing teams.

There are different ways on how to look at team effectiveness. Some team assessment tools focus on processes (e.g., do we have a vision, do we have a clear understanding of our responsibilities, productivity of interactions etc.), others uncover the actual results a team achieves (e.g, metrics, quality of service etc.). Another way to look at team effectiveness is to conduct a 360-degree feedback on their collective personality preferences.

Strengths-based assessments provide insights into strengths that can be leveraged and potential watch-out for overused strengths that can inhibit agility and generativity.

An intervention that fuels natural growth of each team member and the team in its entity that is based on self-awareness and becoming more balanced and agile.

Since culture sets the overarching tone of how we interact, building a team culture is the most vital strategy to reduce stress. The most important lever we’ve learned has also become the core product we offer on our mission to help team leaders build a culture where people love to work. Our personality and development assessments teach everyone how to recognize and help colleagues when their stress reaction kicks in. Once the four Tilting patterns become part of a common language, everyone can quickly lend a helping hand when someone falls into stress instead of judging them, which creates divisiveness. Above all, this team-building tool helps each member of the team show up at their best more of the time.

We’ve found that the best approach to keeping our team balanced and healthy is about monitoring the team’s mood and then coaching immediately to remove blocks. It’s also essential to set up the workflow to help everyone understand how to succeed in an agile environment as this helps to reduce stress and gives people time to reflect, concentrate, and work without constant interruptions. This will lead to exponentially more productivity and creativity. Here are a few examples of tenets of agile that are immediately useful for team growth: Transparency, clear expectations, radical candor, healthy risk taking, information sharing, trust and responsibility, and social connection.

Enhancing team effectiveness and team efficiency are not endeavors exclusively important to upper management.

Generativity is the ultimate outcome produced by leaders when they reach their most evolved psycho-social development stage, and it is what some scholars refer to as “servant leadership”. Leaders first embody generativity when they begin to care about more than themselves, their team, or goals by showing concern about the impact of their decisions on the rest of the world. What they then create becomes a catalyst for exponential creativity and productivity, well beyond the original idea. However, fear-based leadership is rampant in these challenging times and extremes in behavior are often the clues that toxic leadership is afoot. The future of humanity is in the hands of those who are unwittingly leading from inner fear about loss of power, status, approval and freedom. The path to healing is best solved by character strength development which offers a stabilizing and inspiring alternative. A framework of organizing principles for human interaction that truly enables generativity and contribution that transcends focus on oneself and in favor of the purpose or mission (and even inspiring a better future for all of humankind) is the essential first step.

Low self-esteem and operating from fear as opposed to operating from inner strength can impede high levels of productive output and result in underachievement. If leaders are extrinsically motivated by performance as others see it, they will struggle to tap into their own creative intelligence.  In this case, reward and punishment systems will drive the majority of their behaviors, limiting their potential to make unique contributions. Inner beliefs and thoughts will reflect inner conflict, indecision, and self-doubt as they interact with others.  Consequently, this can spread throughout the organization and affect others who also harbor self-doubt. The general effect is an intense experience of relational triangulation that spreads ego-drama based on four specific fears, as follows:

Loss of approval, which causes them to overcompensate by blaming others.

Loss of attention, which causes them to overcompensate by fabricating untruths.

Loss of status, which causes them to overcompensate by diminishing others.

Loss of power, which causes them to overcompensate by dominating others.