team building Archives - Richard Lannon

Be Teaming With Success: Using Assessments And Profiling To Understand Yourself And Others

On September 24, 2016 / analysis, human resources, people, team building

I have received a number of emails regarding a statement I made in one of my previous blogs. In that particular post, I mentioned the importance of understanding yourself and others through profiling. The exact quote, “you should profile yourself and the people around you”. So let me explain the importance of profiling and give you some options.

See Original Article: Master These 7 Skills to Become an Excellent Interviewer

A business leader and professional is a leader who must engage people in order to get stuff done. This reality exists whether through identifying business problems or opportunities, evaluating solution alternatives, or planning and implementing projects. Nothing happens unless you can engage people appropriately. Profiling helps. I learned this years ago when I was a Senior Manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers. It was a valuable professional and life lesson.

Three Profiling Rules And Profile Types To Endure

There are a few rules about profiling that you need to internalize. First, it is not about you so leave your ego at the door. Second, it is all about the other person’s communication needs. Third, you need to adapt to the communication needs of the other person.

Generally, there are three kinds of profiles to consider; intelligence quotient (IQ), emotional quotient (EQ) and culture quotient (CQ). EQ has to do with emotional intelligence and is now considered more important than IQ in achieving success in our lives (business, career, and life). Success is dependent on our ability to read people and act appropriately.

Four Attributes Of Emotional Quotients (EQ)

Self-Awareness: You are aware of your thoughts and emotions and the impact they have on your behavior. What you think is what you feel, what you feel is how you act and how you act is the results you get (think, feel, act, results).

Self-Management: Can be defined as your ability to manage your feelings and behaviors. It includes your ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Social Awareness: This is where you engage in understanding other people. In essence your ability to read the situation around you, pick up on social cues and adjust accordingly. It is all about people and group dynamics.

Relationship Management: Emphasis is placed on your ability to develop and maintain good relationships. This could be short-term (for projects), to influence and motivate others, to interact for the purpose of understanding a problem, to manage conflicts, etc. I like to think of this as your ability to get on and get along in life.

Six Tools Of The Assessment Trade (There Are More)

There are many tools that can be used to develop your understanding of yourself and others. I believe that throughout your career it is important to use several tools in order to develop a self-profile that goes beyond just the standard EQ assessment. It’s important to look at your career and work fit, your career anchors, and of course the standard emotional intelligence profiling options. Here is a list of options to help you build your ability to understand yourself and others so you can improve your professional effectiveness.

DISC Profile: This is a behavioral model that examines individual behaviors in their environment, their styles, and behavioral preferences. Four areas looked at include; Dominance (control, power, and assertiveness), Influence (social situations and communication), Steadiness (patience, persistence, and thoughtfulness), and Conscientiousness (structure and organization). This is a powerful tool for profiling, building teams and relationships. Click for Further Information: DISC Profile

Self-Management Pro: This one is used to predict management and leadership potential so that organizations can develop their professionals. The tool has been proven effective in predicting performance and retention. I like the way it looks at your profile and style in terms of process and structure, learning, orientation, self-direction and lifestyle management. Click for Further Information: Self-Management Pro

Related Service: IMPACT Teaming with Success

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): A personality inventory that measures people in four key areas; how you relate to others (either by extraversion or introversion), how a person takes in information (sensing or intuition), how a person makes decisions (thinking or feeling) and how a person orders their life (judging or perceiving). Click for Further Information: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Career Anchors: We are all anchored in something. This tool will help you understand your career anchors and other people’s career anchors. Everyone is not anchored in the same things. You and the person you are working with will fall into one of eight categories (autonomy/independence, security/stability, technical/functional, general management, entrepreneurial creativity, service, pure challenge, and lifestyle). Knowing a person’s career anchors tells you a lot about their natural motivation. Click for Further Information: Career Anchors

Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit. Conrad Hilton Share on X

Career Fitters: My new favorite profile as I filled this one a few weeks ago and I was surprised how accurate it was. This profile looks at your personality in the workplace and then provides you insight into career options based on your work personality style. It is great for working with teams and individuals to understand fit or even working with other people and their fit to what they are doing. Click for Further Information:Career Fitters

Coaching Skills Inventory: The coaching skills inventory generates an overall coaching-effectiveness profile. It teaches you how you do in meetings from the opening, communicating, gaining agreement and closing. Don’t let the title fool you as it is not just about coaching. It can be used to improve your meeting performance. Something I found incredibly valuable in identifying my weaknesses and then developing my meeting skills. This is a huge bonus. Click for Further Information: Coaching Skills Inventory

Final Thoughts:

The importance of understanding yourself and others continues to grow. I think it has become imperative that the professional step up and take the time to learn how to profile and adapt in order to increase their success. A combination of emotional quotients and career profiling provides valuable insight into the world around you. These profiles are becoming increasingly relevant to organizations and people development, and the ability to solve business problems because they provide a way to understand and assess behaviors, styles, beliefs, values, attitudes and interpersonal skills. All of which impact your ability to do your job.

Over the course of my career I have done a lot of interviews, small group meetings and workshops where understanding the people around me was critical to the initiative success. Sometimes we would profile on-the-fly and other times we would do formal profiling using a combination of tools, one-on-one debriefs and Group to Business Impact Sessions. Something I still do for clients today.

Question Everything about Your Business – Know the 3 levels of questions

On July 15, 2015 / business analysis, business improvement, business leadership, business problems, entrepreneurship, key performance indicator, project manager, questions to ask, strategic planning, team building

Question everything about your business The words question everything has rung out in the halls of many organizations. It is in essence what makes you better at what you do in your business. That is, to be able to ask key business questions so that you have the opportunity to find or develop solutions to business problems or opportunities. Really, isn’t questioning the hallmark of all great business leaders and champions. Sometimes we need guidance on the types of questions we ask.

In business there are only truly three levels of questions: These include:

Strategic: These are what and why questions. What are we going to be focusing on? Why is that so important? The why question is the benefit questions. Find the answer to that question and you have earned your salary. What and why questions are the accountability questions. It has to be where the bulk stops.
Tactical: These are the questions that professionals ask the most. They include who, how, when, how much. Perfect for the mid level planners and people responsible for getting work done – the doing. These questions must be linked to the strategic questions.
Operational: Always fun as they are the here and now questions. It is like the phone rings and you had to pick it up, deal with the issue and move onto the next thing. No doubt you use the ‘what and why’ question as in what do you want and why should I care. But most likely you are the who, the know how and need to get it done, when.

All these, the strategic, the tactical and the operational are levels within your organization. They are all linked by the questions we ask, the answers we get and the actions we take. Listen to the questions you ask about your business. The response is in the ask.

Question: What questions do you ask about your business to get people thinking about making it better?

17 Ideas to Develop Your Technology Team

On November 1, 2014 / business analysis, business leadership, strategic planning, team building

Surprisingly, I get this question a lot. Really it came down to a plan that the people could get into. The key is to recognize that tech people want tech or hard skills training and the business wants business or soft skill training. Over a 4 year period I (we) developed a program that included:

Annual National Conference with focus on soft and hard skills training
Annual Regional Conference that focused on specific requirements for the region including hard skills and soft skills plus effective team building events
Individual SWOTs where the techie actually had say into the four quadrants
Individual tailored learning plans with SMART goals and objectives
The identification of levels for core competency development
Mentorship and Support tagging on company initiatives
One on one coaching sessions to build skills and sometimes just talk about what was important to them
Team hiring practices. All interviews would be conducted by HR for fit, the team for technical expertise and personal fit, the team lead for future fit and then head office for approval
Befriend HR professionals and leverage their expertise. We had 3 in our region
Working with your boss to best build your team
Sharing with peers the responsibilities of the job and cross training
Weekly meetings were people would do a quick round table of what they appreciated about the other person. We would record this and encourage people to put it in their personal evaluations
Monthly reports where we would do CAR stories (challenge, action, result) in three sentences. These could be placed in annual performance reviews
Opportunity to work with different teams in different locations across Canada
Opportunity to travel to work in different areas with different teams
Developed a cross-training matrix were people could back up other people when needed

These were the things we did to develop our technology team’s hard and soft skills. In the end it worked great. Skills improved and team members advanced to higher professional levels based on core competencies.

Questions: What are you doing to develop your teams?

A RACI Against Time

On October 7, 2014 / business analysis, business decisions, business improvement, business leadership, leadership, project management, stakeholders, strategic, strategic planning, team building, team lead

You just never know what is going to happen in your business life. Recently I had to work like crazy to get a bunch of deadlines completed to free my schedule so I could take an unexpected trip, half way across this wonderful country of ours, Canada.

As events unfolded, an unexpected team came together with each member naturally assuming a specific role. From leader and manager to subject experts, advisors, information generators, documentation creators, and experienced friends and family members, there was a natural stakeholder relationship created that fit a RACI – responsible, accountable, consult and inform. This was a good thing.

A RACI is a powerful tool for stakeholder analysis used to identify and understand key roles of individual team members in an organization. The simplest definition of a RACI goes like this:

Those who are Responsible:

These are the doers – the people responsible for the nuts and bolts. If you and your team are reporting to a sponsor who is the final person accountable for the work, then you belong in this category.

Those who are Accountable:

The buck stops here. This is the person(s) who has the most at stake in events and happenings. They’re the ones who have the final decision or must present key recommendations to others in a final presentation. At the end of the day they sign the cheque. In most organizations this would be the sponsor, but it really can be anyone who has the final call.

Those we need to Consult: The experts.

Every task needs people with the right information at the right time onboard, subject experts and advisors who can help the team leader gain a clear perspective. You might have that person(s) in house (internal stakeholders) or need to outsource to find them (external stakeholders), but either way, they’re vital for getting the job done efficiently and effectively.

Those we need to Inform:

These are all the stakeholders that need to be kept in the loop. They need to know what is going on from a logical and rational perspective with key information.

Though my recent RACI was unexpected, it’s really helpful to make RACI a formal part of your business’ planning process, particularly if you are going to be involved in any strategic, tactical or operational planning.

This will help clarify the different roles and responsibilities needed to complete projects, ensuring your people are able to work with focused intent and to the best of their ability.

Question: For which business initiative can you use a RACI to help putting your team together?

Three Critical Business Skills Learned from Navigating a Pump Track

On May 28, 2014 / business analysis, business improvement, business leadership, business planning, direction, engagement, human resources, momentum, skills, strategic planning, team building

Do you know you Business Guiding Principles

Recently while mountain biking we came across a pump track; a continuous circuit of small dirt hills and jumps that loops back on itself, allowing you to ride it continuously. A couple of teenagers took the time to explain how to use it and teach us a few lessons. The key they said was momentum.

As an analogy, riding a pump track teaches you three critical skills that can benefit you in tangible ways in your business.

Successfully navigating a pump track means that you:

built momentum and are moving through the ups and downs effectively. This takes a lot of self control and management to do. This is achieved through training, practice and making mistakes. Having momentum is critical to your success. It means that you are moving along in your business with a driving power or strength. Focus is key.

are looking ahead and know your line. This is critical in mountain biking as you need to know where you want to go not where you are. Looking several steps ahead in any business is important. It means that you have keeping an eye on critical business impact zones. Knowing your line is another story. That is not always as easy to determine. On a pump track as you are moving with momentum critical decisions need to be made at a wink of an eye that will spell out your success or failure. Knowing your line means you are picking a course of action and committing to it before you arrive. Success is dependent on you picking the best course of action.

created a handling form, allowing you to see interesting choices that might not be as obvious as you get fully engaged and committed to the process. There is a use of the tools and technology in the process, people have to support you and there are measurable outcomes. Individuals and teams become fully engaged when riding a pump track. Whether you are the rider or team member lending a hand, giving advice, maintaining the environment and ensuring that everything is functioning well. It takes a team to make the pump track experience a success. Just like in your business.

It is always interesting what we can learn from our day to day activities and the people we meet that lend well to creating our business and career success. In this case two teenage boys remind us that business has many ups and downs, momentum is important, you need to know where you are going and people need to be committed and engaged. Not bad for a morning of riding a mountain bike.

Three Points to Make it Happen

On May 20, 2014 / analysts, business analysis, business improvement, business leadership, business planning, business problems, planning, strategic, strategic planning, strategy, team building, team lead, training

Can you make it happen? That is a question that every one should ask and answer yes! We all can.

Three Points to Make it happen Recently when working with a client we had to do that. The teams became stalled due to a business announcement around cost cutting. Suddenly the teams did not know what they should do or work on. Everything they do have associated costs. In this situation we applied a simple rule; make a decision, make a plan, make it happen. The point was to help the teams refocus on what was important.

In business, the first part of making some thing happen is to make a decision. This is not always easy. Sometimes you just have to do the best with what you have at that point in time. This means considering all the relevant facts, removing your emotional response, and gauging the impact.

The second thing we need to do is make a plan. A decision without an actionable plan does not go anywhere. Consider all the items that need to be completed; the key elements of work that must be done in order to move forward. Capture your decision assumptions and constraints to ensure that you do not proceed blindly. Never front load your plan but balance it out with other demands in your business environment.

Third, make it happen. It is far too easy to get side tracked in business with the happenings at the time. There are many decisions made externally that will impact your abilities to move forward and there are many other things demand our time. Focus with actionable intents on items that will have impact and make a difference in your business. To do so, you and your teams must be clear on what it is they are seeking to accomplish. Clarity of focus and direction is a big part on making things happens.

When things are not moving forward the way you like it might be that you and your teams need to step back, just for a moment, and consider what is going on. This may mean to refocus and make a decision, make a plan, and make it happen.

Question: What questions to you ask to make better business decisions and move things forward?

Be Teaming With Success: Using Assessments And Profiling To Understand Yourself And Others

Three Profiling Rules And Profile Types To Endure

Four Attributes Of Emotional Quotients (EQ)

Six Tools Of The Assessment Trade (There Are More)

Final Thoughts:

Question Everything about Your Business – Know the 3 levels of questions

17 Ideas to Develop Your Technology Team

A RACI Against Time

Three Critical Business Skills Learned from Navigating a Pump Track

Three Points to Make it Happen

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