Art van Bodegraven is, among other roles, chief design
officer for the DES Leadership Academy; he can be reached
at (614) 893-9414 or avan@columbus.rr.com. His website is
www.artvanbodegraven.com.
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You will also want to know how enthusiastic and committed team candidates are,
and how they see their roles, how strongly
they are motivated to lead—or to follow.
You can’t afford to have talented people
on board who really don’t care about the
outcome. Nor can you afford to have two
or three who are determined to drive the
team bus, no matter who the preferred leader might be. Further, strong contributors
might need a lower-key, calm leader, but
more passive followers might do much better with a strong, even fiery, de facto floor
leader. The right tool for these decisions
is FIRO-B (Fundamental Interpersonal
Relations Orientation - Behaviors). Btw,
there is no such thing as FIRO-A.
Of course, there is no assurance whatever
that a person with an identified style or
preference is any good at using what might
be inferred from the assigned nomenclature. Further, an individual might be highly
skilled in the use of a style opposite his or
her primary preference. All the more reason to get to know people beyond superficial levels.
READY TO THROW IN THE TOWEL YET?
This team stuff is not easy. But if your
future depends on how well your teams
do—and it does—you’ve got to invest in
conscious team construction, using every
tool and insight you can get your hands
on. There’s plenty of information online
about each of these tools, and there is a
multitude of skilled practitioners who can
help you through the process. Tip: If you
pursue any of these options, do not send
one or two people to learn them and report
back. Train your entire cohort in them at
the same time for optimal internalization
and adoption.
Maybe you can even use how well your
teams, with you as ultimate leader, do
to leverage your way up from logistics
and supply chain management execution
into a valued role at the highest levels of
the enterprise. No promises, but going
unarmed into the combat of corporate politics is not likely to be a winning strategy.
is the venerable Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI). Dating back to
WWII, this indicator classifies individuals into one of 16 boxes in
a matrix, with a four-letter code
to provide a shorthand description.
Despite its age, it remains a useful (if imperfect) device to assess
personality.
Over the years, a number of similar personality assessment tools and
temperament sorters have emerged.
Usually simplified versions of the
MBTI, they employ comparable categorizations. David Keirsey’s work
in this variant is probably the best
known, along with Otto Kroeger’s.
Other well-known assessment
methods include the DiSC tool
(now proprietary to Wiley), which
focuses more on communication
and styles. (DiSC, which stands
for Dominance, Inducement,
Submission, and Compliance, slots
individuals into the usual num-
ber of boxes.) Perhaps the most
sophisticated of this family of tools
is the Herrmann Brain Dominance
Instrument, which presents a
nuanced profile of the balance (or
imbalance) of styles, preferences,
and characteristics.
Whatever the system used, it is
imperative that the leader deliberately seek out differing personality
types, with the four principal team
roles in mind. It’s not simply a
matter of balance; it takes all styles
to make a complete team and to
achieve an optimal result.
Also important in team construction and assessment is the employment of a tool to determine conflict resolution preferences—you’ve
got to know how team members
handle contention and differing
opinions, interpretations, and perspectives. For this, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument
is invaluable.
