The value of better understanding your team

There is a lot of uncertainty for businesses at the moment as we await the outcome and digest the implications of both the UK budget and events that impact globally such as the US election.

It’s a good time for business leaders to stand back and look in depth at their team to ensure that they are the right team in the right place and that they are all working effectively together. Collectively, you need to be ready to react to change.

We recently looked at the different personalities within our team and how best to work and communicate with each other. We used a management training tool that categorised personality traits into four different types – Driver, Expressive, Amiable and Analytical. This tool used a simple questionnaire to help identify where you sit in terms of these traits. These are also often identified by colours, with Driver being red, Expressive being yellow, Amiable being green and Analytical being blue.

If you were to think of this in terms of animals think of a red bear, an expressive monkey, an amiable dolphin or an analytical owl.

I think you can immediately see that each trait has both strengths and weaknesses:

• Red is direct and a leader but can sometimes be strong willed and domineering and may not always think about other perspectives. They are high achievers who are prepared to take risks.
• Yellow is expressive and spirited and a people person. They are always ready for new challenges but can sometimes come on too strong if they become too enthusiastic. They can be disorganised and come over as a dreamer.
• Green is supportive and dependable, but they can get stuck in a task and they do not like to assert themselves or take risks. They listen and are team players who can bring stability to a team.
• Blue is analytical and a thinker but can be too rigid in their thinking and may come over as indecisive as they take more time to assess data. They are perfectionists and definitely not a risk taker.

Each personality also communicates in different ways and its useful `to understand this in order that you can get the best out of your team.

• Red wants you to focus on the task, look at facts including options rather than feelings. Be business like, concise and clear in your communication. Don’t waste their time!
• Yellow wants you to focus on the relationship, and the story and less on the detail. Be willing to talk around the issue and always be enthusiastic!
• Green wants you to be logical with a clear plan with the emphasis of this being a team decision. They don’t want to be rushed and like to listen.
• Blue wants you to be logical and provide facts and evidence to support your tasks. Be prepared to discuss this at length and allow them time to evaluate the data.

To have an effective team, you do of course need a mixture of all of these personality types and traits. If you were all drivers then there would be constant conflict as everyone would want to push their own ideas, and if you were all analytical then no one would ever take any risk, and no decisions would ever be made!

There is a lot of training available to help you identify your personality colour and tool kits to show you and your team how you should flex your own style to get the best out of each other.

As a firm of accountants, we spend a lot of time analysing our client’s data and so you would have expected that the majority of us would have been blue. However, I was really surprised at how the team were scattered across all these colours with a few of us sitting on the fence between two traits.

It was also interesting to see how the team moved away from being mostly blue when they first join us. As they progress through their career and their roles both within the team and with our clients’ changes, they move towards the other colours. Only a small handful are just red, where they are career driven and looking for promotion. Interestingly, the two leaders of the team sit on the fence with one being a mixture of blue and red and the other yellow and red, demonstrating that these combinations can complement each other, as we are equally driven to lead the team together.

And if you haven’t already guessed where I sit yet, I am mostly a yellow with lots of red. Having a mixture of these traits equips me to deal with most of the situations I am faced with.

So, take the time to get to know your team better, and understand your strengths and weaknesses. Having a mixed team ensures that together everyone does achieve more, and you will be better prepared to face the changing world.

If you would like to learn more, please get in touch.