Do You Want to Know Your Team Better?
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You want to work with your team to make best use of all their styles, abilities, strengths and working preferences. Could you make use of team diagnostics to get the team pulling together and ensure everyone is playing to their strengths?
Even if you know your team well, there are always new insights you can discover. And sometimes the team can be energised by a new way to discuss their strengths and personal foibles and share stories with their colleagues. Can you use team diagnostics, questionnaires and profiles to galvanise the team into considering how to improve performance?
Choose the right tools
- Always check that any tool is suitable for the purpose and reputable. If you haven’t used it before, try it out on yourself first to ensure it looks and feels right. If you didn’t like completing it, chances are your team won’t.
- Ask your HR team for ideas on tools to use and how to use them. They may be able to provide an expert to answer questions and help people explore their results; or there may be training they can give you to help you do this yourself.
- Be clear with the team about the positives you want to gain. Everyone enjoys a ‘Find out about yourself’ magazine questionnaire, but nobody likes to be ‘tested’! Be clear about your intentions – that everyone is able to use their best strengths and to raise their profile as a high-performing team. And be sure to mention that there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers, just individual preferences and personalities.
- Be clear how you’ll share the results. It’s often wise to make sure each team member gets their personal results in private before any team event. You may want an experienced practitioner to talk them through the results and answer any questions; you’ll certainly want to give them some time to mull the information over before sharing them in public.
- Be clear that you won’t share their results with anyone else. They can, you won’t. Encourage people to feel safe enough to share, but don’t force them to do so. Often once colleagues have shared, they’ll feel safe to do so.
- Include yourself in the project and use yourself as the guinea pig! If you show that you’re happy to talk about strengths and weaknesses, others will follow. Also, people will better understand how to support you, and get the best from you as a leader!
TAKE AWAY
The best teams have a range of different people who are all using their best talents every day. Can questionnaires help everyone work together more effectively? Experiment with new talent tools and become a true talent manager!