Discovering the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) thirteen years ago was one of those epiphany moments.  It provided a perspective on how I was wired and what makes people tick.  I qualified as an MBTI practitioner a year later and have subsequently seen many others experience similar moments.

The MBTI describes personality in terms of preferences.  It can be used for coaching, career counselling, conflict resolution, team building and a range of other applications.  Follow this link to find out more about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) .

So what is it that makes the Myers-Briggs so popular and so effective?  I think one of the reasons is that it provides an intuitive model which describes 16 different personality types.  Arguably this is also the biggest criticism to be levelled at the MBTI – that individuals can be pigeon holed into one of just 16 boxes.  For me, the response to that argument is compelling – that while we are all individuals, we tend to differ in similar ways.

Back to those epiphany moments.  When debriefing an MBTI, I’m often told “that’s really spooky” or asked “how could you know that?”.  The MBTI really does have the ability to get under one’s skin and just in case there is any suggestion that this might all be Myers-Briggs horoscopes, I often recount a summary of the opposite type to which the response is invariably “no, that’s really not me”.

The real value of the MBTI is that in learning about ourselves, we tend to learn about others too.  This is where the MBTI can be really powerful in promoting mutual understanding, improving communication and enhancing team work.

If all of this has fired up your curiosity, you can take the MBTI online and gain some personal feedback.

Mike West

www.novaconnection.com

Canoeing down the River Orb in Southern France, it struck me what a powerful team building activity this was.

Two men in a boat, my brother-in-law Richard and I set off with little idea of what we were doing other than our destination was four hours downstream.  Launching the canoe went rather well, but within seconds we were going in the wrong direction, by which time our “instructor” had disappeared with the empty canoe trailer and was returning back to base.

We were tous seuls and quickly realised that we needed to work as a team, but there was an added dimension in that we didn’t know what we didn’t know.  We had no idea how to negotiate the rapids; the eddies which veered us in the wrong direction were a complete surprise and the “invisible” rocks just below the surface were to ground us several times.

Each of these obstacles could be a metaphor for a business challenge and we soon discovered that dealing with them required some pretty nifty team work.  The alternative to team work was to capsize – another metaphor!

So what did we learn?  Firstly, we needed a plan and a shared understanding of who was doing what.  Just getting in the boat and paddling was not the answer; we remembered that the person sitting at the back is the capitaine and should do the steering.  Then we worked out a system for paddling in a straight line.  So far so good.

Then the challenges started coming thick and fast.  The rapids.  Everything had been in slow motion up to that point.  Crikey, which route should we take and how do we make sharp turns in foaming water?  Unfortunately, sitting at the back, the capitaine did not have a good view of the rapids so Richard was quickly promoted to navigateur.  This flexibility helped us to cope with the unexpected – up to a point.

Our next challenge was to extricate ourselves from the rapids; we were jammed sideways and facing an imminent capsize.  From the front, Richard had now lost the view and relied on me for instructions.  We remembered being advised to “kiss the rock” – or lean against it - to avoid a capsize.  That worked and we made our way down the rapids, albeit backwards, only to face the next challenge - the eddy which wanted to send us back upstream and into the trees.

We learned a lot, laughed a lot and had tremendous fun.  We were reminded that effective team working does not just happen – it takes some effort and is not just about technical competence.

Keen to demonstrate our new found proficiency, we did it all over again a few days later.  We had learned much from our previous efforts but still managed to go down a set of rapids backwards!

Mike West

www.novaconnection.com

Peter Drucker famously said that management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.  It can be tough fathoming out what the right things are, particularly in difficult times such as these.  For example, is it about hitting key performance indicators at the exclusion of everything else?  Maybe it’s playing safe and doing everything “by the book”?  Perhaps the trick is to outperform your colleagues?

Drucker also said that leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ — that is flattery.  Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

It’s the idea of raising a person’s performance which I find compelling.  There’s a win-win in that – a bottom line benefit for the organisation and self-development for the individual.  But raising a person’s performance can translate into management by spreadsheet – an obsessive focus on KPIs.  Although KPIs are really important to the business they frequently have blind spots; there is a danger that they overlook the people dimension – the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

This is the point where managers often get uncomfortable; mmmm, the people dimension, that’s all fluffy bunny, right?  Wrong!  This is where real performance gains are to be found which read directly to the bottom line.

So why is it that managers struggle with the people dimension and fail to become leaders?  Getting their heads around this challenge can be genuinely difficult, which is where some kind of model or framework can be helpful – particularly when it provides real insight.  I’ve found the Human Synergistics Circumplex model to be a revelation for many managers.  It’s as if the scales are lifted from their eyes as they discover the importance of achieving a balance between task and people, and of building a constructive culture as opposed to a defensive one.

So this is my interpretation of doing the right things – leadership which raises the bar while supporting and developing individuals.  But for managers to become leaders they need some development too.  This is where programmes based on world class tools such as Leadership/Impact can make a real difference.

Mike West

www.novaconnection.com

It's a sad fact that the majority of culture change programmes fail.  Organisations simply under-estimate what it takes.  Culture change programmes rarely succeed if they are just the latest in a string of confusing initiatives.  Right, done that, here comes the next one!  A lot of us have seen and experienced that.

The problem with culture change is that it involves people.  And we've not yet found a way of applying software upgrades to the workforce.  But just imagine if, like Microsoft, we could have a monthly Patch Tuesday where all of the latest updates and hotfixes were applied.

In the real world culture change is about commitment, time and energy.  It's a big investment but the returns can be even greater.  More focus on achievement, less empire building and a greater willingness to take responsibility all have a positive impact on the bottom line.  And there is some excellent research on this which I will be writing about in a future blog.

It's certainly true that all members of an organisation have a responsibility in bringing about culture change, but the commitment of the leadership team is most important of all.  They have to be role models and evangelists, balancing the needs of people with getting the job done, keeping change high on the agenda and regularly measuring progress.

Back to the workforce, and this is why changing culture really is such a big ask.  For the culture to change, everyone in the organisation needs to alter their behaviours.  But for this to happen everyone needs to think differently and respond differently to people and situations.  That kind of change cannot be brought about by edict, software patches or even motivational posters.  And it certainly will not be achieved overnight.  It takes a great deal of commitment, hard work and investment.

Here are some suggestions for what is needed:

·         recognising that culture change is a big ask

·         decisive leaders who act as role models

·         effective two-way communications so that change can be top-down and bottom-up

·         a clear plan

·         regular measurement at organisation, team and individual level

It’s not an exhaustive list, but as Lao Tzu said, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Mike West

www.novaconnection.com