What are your working strengths? (Team Building - Part 2)
People can have a complicated relationship with personality tests and quizzes. While I don’t believe them to be prescriptive, I have found them to be helpful. Especially, when thinking about working in a team and understanding why some people don’t respond to my ideas or approaches in the way I might hope.
First a little background on me. Something I’ve always been good at is connecting seemingly disparate ideas and big picture thinking. In my mind’s eye I can always see the outcome, but I often don’t have the steps between the idea and the outcome worked out. I am much more prone to just getting started and working out the details as I go. In my experience plans always change. ALWAYS. So, I figure why waste time planning out every step when they are going to need to be rethought any way.
However, despite my conviction in the value of my ideas I am often met with confused looks when I share ideas. This used to be very frustrating (now is only mildly frustrating), as I found myself thinking, “Why don’t they get that this is going to be so good once we get it done!?” Or “Well no I don’t have all of the steps yet but trust me it will be great.”
Looking back at my career to date, my approach has been generally successful, but here’s the thing that personality measures like the 5 Voices helped me to realize. My approach has always been augmented by my team members. I am good at coming up with the big idea, but I need people who can help me get the steps between the idea and the outcome worked out and executed, people who can take care of the team members and make sure everyone feels seen and plugged in, and people who ask tough questions to make sure that I’m not being myopic. The 5 Voices gave what those team members did for me names that I never had before.
The 5 Voices was developed by Steve Cockram and Jeremie Kubieck as a tool for leaders to more effectively communicate with team members. This framework simplifies the 16 personality types of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator into the five voices. The voices are the Nurturer, the Creative, the Guardian, the Connector, and the Pioneer.
When I took this test recently my primary voice was Creative, followed by Pioneer, Guardian, Connector, and Nurturer (the time before I was a Pioneer/Guardian). Here’s a little blurb from my results (take the assessment yourself here):
The Creative Pioneer
Creatives are the conceptual architects and love to think outside the box. They function as an “early warning radar system” for teams, often seeing the opportunities and dangers long before everyone else. They are never satisfied with the status quo - they inherently believe things can always be better. If the vision is compelling the word “can’t” is not in their vocabulary. They often struggle with the fact that "people never seem to fully understand my ideas." They exhibit a strong social conscience and desire for personal and organizational integrity. Being internal perfectionists, they can often fail to celebrate the 90% that has been achieved, focusing instead on the 10% that hasn’t!
Given my current life this feels accurate. At other points in my life, I was more heavily weighted to being a Connector, but it was always something that I had to consciously think about doing and being. Appreciating the value of the Guardian perspective, it is always something that I consciously try to practice and get better at doing though it is never natural. Perhaps not surprisingly to people I work with, Nurturer characteristics are not something that comes to me easily. Transparently, I have found myself thinking on occasion that my work would be easier if people had fewer feelings (though I also understand that’s not helpful).
Now these tools only work if you are willing to be honest in answering the questions, and if you are willing to consider your areas of weakness (everyone has them, but sometimes we aren’t in a place where we can hear about them).
When building a research team, I’ve had the greatest success when I’ve had representation from across these Voices (or whatever other teamwork model works for you). Using this tool helps to put language to experiences I’ve had in the past, to be thoughtful about who I invite to join my team, and to direct where I can be better in my interactions with my team members.
What is your foundational voice? What kinds of team members do you need to find?
(Words: 771)