![]() |
istockphoto# 11806154 |
This year I am focusing on helping my team do some self-discovery. I started with a simple activity at our last all team meeting in September. The activity was drawn from Bruce Wellman's book Groups at Work on page 42 - it is called Compass Points (also see this resource) and is a great way for people to quickly recognize and appreciate their diverse personal working styles. It is designed to help people understand their own preferred way of thinking and working and appreciate people (their team mates) that are different from themselves. The activity was a hit and the team members got right into it. The way it works is like this:
- put up chart paper on the wall in four corners of a large room (2 or more sheets depending on the size of your team and how they cluster into the four choices)
- provide color markers
- describe the four working and thinking styles which are
- North: Just get it done
- West: Pay attention to detail
- South: Caring about people's feelings
- East: Think about the big picture
- write the label of the working style on the top of the chart paper
- ask your team members to contemplate which style they identify with the most and ask them to go to that corner
- ask them to discuss these questions among their group members and to respond with 3 or four adjectives for each question using the chart paper
- What are the strengths of your working style?
- What are the limitations of your working style?
- What style do you find the most difficult to work with and why?
- List examples that people from the other styles need to know about you so you can work well / successfully together?
- Bonus question: What do you appreciate about the other styles?
- when they are done, ask them to nominate a spokesperson and then go around the room and ask the groups to report out on their discovery

People have talked about this off and on after the meeting. When in business meetings, often people will pipe up and say 'it's because I'm a get it done person, or I'm a detailed person', etc. It's interesting to see them using the language of the working styles activity and seemingly appreciating their differences - this is a great outcome.
I introduced my team to the next initiative along this line. I am going to have them go through the Insight and DISC profiling system. We will use the Excel Group and a principal from a local school district that is certified in the technique to facilitate the process and follow up workshops. Each individual will receive a personal report (example) after completing a confidential questionnaire online that is designed to capture personality traits sufficient to robo-produce a report about them.

We will receive an integrated Insights Wheel indicating where each individual lands on a spectrum in terms of their natural and adapted communications style. This will give my team and myself great insight into people's communication styles and together as we learn more about this through workshops, we can improve our communication skills with one another and with our clients and other colleagues.
As leaders one of our number one responsibilities is to invest in our people. By growing our people we multiply our capacity, happiness levels, quality, and productivity. If you think to yourself, 'I don't have time for this', you are wrong. We need to remove impediments for our teams so that they can flourish in your organization. That is a gift we can give them and our organizations!