Home Court Advantage: Know Your Team

Click here for a printable PDF

Any experienced coach will tell you - if you don't understand your team, every game is up for grabs. If you don't know what makes your team tick, every game will be a question mark. Players in top skill-shape will get you to the starting line. But it takes a lot more than individual skill sets to carry you through tough competition and on to a win. Much like a championship team, a successful business will benefit from relationships that go beyond the individual talent pool. Whether on the playing field or in the market place, groups that acknowledge and understand one another's individual talents and differences simply achieve better results.

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.”
— Babe Ruth

Optimizing team performance starts with the understanding and acknowledgment of each individual's natural talents. We can promote the efficient leveraging of those talents while simultaneously encouraging development in areas where it's needed the most. What do coaches need to know about their players? What do players need to know about their team mates? Here's a start:

• How individuals prefer to communicate.
• How individuals prefer to take in information and data.
• How individuals make decisions and approach problem solving.
• How individuals plan, implement and manage change.
• How they deal with conflict.
• How they react to and manage stress.

Each individual in every organization has unique contributions to bring to the table. A team that allows those gifts to rise to the surface is the team that capitalizes on the individual talents of its members and moves forward. How do we uncover those gifts? Through discovering an individual's natural strengths. And how do we do that? Through assessments. Assessments are not new. They've been around for a very long time.

Human beings have been conducting "assessments" since the beginning of time. One of the first assessments was probably a foot race to determine the fastest runner. Or it may have been a contest to see who was able to catch the most fish. The ability to run fast was important, but so was the ability to catch fish. We can imagine village elders in early civilizations noting who was the best at tracking game and who was the best at bringing it down and dragging it back. A talented rider may have been the best at training horses, but may not have been the most suited to lead a tribal council. People are different. Different talents emerged naturally. And while each individual skill was impressive, it was the collection of the combined talents of the group which resulted in better chances for survival and prosperity.

Today, there are many modern assessments that can assist us in individual and team development. Some assessments concentrate on learned skills, some lead with predicting behavior. Others measure cognitive intelligence or emotional intelligence. All are good tools for identifying the competencies and behaviors of individuals and teams.

The most widely used personality instrument today is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a self reporting questionnaire developed by Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Briggs. The MBTI is based on the theory of Psychological Type developed by Carl Jung (1875-1961), a Swiss psychoanalyst and contemporary of Sigmund Freud. The work of Myers and Briggs and their development of the MBTI allowed Carl Jung’s theory of personality type to be made accessible and practical to individuals throughout the world.

Jung's theory simply stated that we are all hard-wired for specific personality preferences which guide us toward a preferred way of behavior. (Much like the preference for right or left handedness!) The MBTI has nothing to do with predicting success, intelligence or mental health. What the MBTI does do is guide us toward identifying our own personality type preferences and how we relate to the world around us.

The MBTI has been tested and developed for over 50 years. It is now the most widely used assessment for identifying and understanding normal personality differences. More than two million Myers-Briggs Type Indicators are administered in the U.S. each year. It is an invaluable resource in building teams and identifying team strengths in individual departments as well as entire organizations.

The MBTI offers:

• Improved understanding of natural strengths.
• Identifying areas for individual development.
• Better understanding of personal motivations.
• Greater understanding and appreciation of other personality types.

Whether you choose to utilize the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or other assessments, invest in the time to better understand your team. Strategize for the best use of individual talent. Plan for the development of areas that need strengthening. Celebrate the differences. Play to the home court advantage.

---

Tandem Partners is an organizational consulting firm specializing in people strategies that drive business results. For more information on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and understanding, appreciating and accommodating individual differences in your work teams, please contact Melissa McDaniel at 301-662-2400 or via email: melissa@tandem-partners.com .

Copyright 2007 Tandem Partners

Permission to use, copy and distribute this document and related graphics is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and both the copyright notice and the permission notice appear. All other rights reserved.