Yeah. So, a few words about me, born and raised in Poland, but then I’m working late in a couple of some of you might have already heard. I, where I’ve been living in Italy for two months now.

And, yes, I’m a Facet5 practitioner. I’ve been using Facet5 my professional practice as a child professional, HR executive and professional coach for I think, between three and four years now.

And today, I’m going to talk about something that is super important. I think it’s fascinating, and I like to call itself awareness or deep self-aware. Miss. Alright. And, and I’m going to talk about how we approach that at KYBI, which is the tech startup that I’m working for.

So, this is what is going to happen today.

But we be before we go you know, there, I’m assuming we have drivers here, and I’m looking at the chat window now. So please confirm are you a driver?

I guess this tower status my working hypothesis. So, there’s drivers. Yes. Absolutely. We have drivers.

So, I, what I did was was I, you know, fantastic. So many drivers. Yeah. I sort of expected that.

So, guys, what I did is I prepared, immensely, a small survey that is going to introduce us to our discussion, and I’m going to share I’m going at first, I’m going to, to share my screen again another screen, which is the momentous screen.

Where is it? It’s here. So, you can see the question that I’m that I’m asking, and you can see the QR codes, where you can go to mentee dot com and use the code that is written at the top of the screen, but I will also share yeah. I’ll also share the voting link in the chat window now.

Facilitate the voting process. And the big question is yeah. I mean, if you consider you know, you’re you’re driving experiences, and when you sort of, you know, when you compare yourself to others, how good of a driver do you think you are?

Okay. We got six votes in.

Yeah.

So, you know, that’s always striking. A lot of good drivers in the room. Right. A lot of good drivers in the room, and, Yeah.

Some people who say, yeah, they are slightly worse than most because the, the essence of the question is really to sort compare yourself against the average. Right? So where are you?

Where are you? Okay.

We’ve got thirteen answers.

How many how many are we in the meeting? Twenty four. So I’d I’d love to have a few more so you can either, use the link that you can see in the in the chart window, or you can go to, mentee dot com with your mobile, with your computer, and use, and use the code.

Right?

Okay.

Okay. So, let let’s try discussing these results.

Do you see anything in particular when you look at these results, something that troubles you?

Any comments?

Anything. I’m looking at the chat window.

I’ll I’ll tell you why what I’m thinking, but I’m very curious. Yeah. People say freight highly. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

People say freight highly. Anything else?

From, from statistic.

Yeah. I think it should have more confidence.

I I mean, like, even more confidence than that.

Yes. Okay. I’m not so sure about that, but, okay. Okay.

And and from if you look at the results from if you look at how the question was formulated. And if you look at the results from statistical point of view, Do you see any discrepancy or aberration here, perhaps?

Yeah. Maybe we’re unaware of our flaws.

Maybe we are. Because, you know, what I’m seeing here, and it’s always I mean, the outcome of this exercise is always the same.

Right, is always the same.

Which is that more people rate themselves as better than others in terms of the driving skills, which is statistically impossible, because the question is that most than most. So, basically, the, the the normal result that we should have in obtaining this kind of exercise, right, should be that half of us rate themself as slightly better or definitely better than most, and the other half should rate themselves as slightly worse or definitely worse than most.

And and the outcome is is is always like that. Obviously, the, the driving is It’s, it’s a very tricky thing. We always like to think about ourselves as good drivers, but, research shows that it’s pretty much the same with with many other things.

So, yeah, going back going back to the deck. And, let’s see. Going back to the deck.

There’s somebody that wrote a book about that, and that’s somebody, and you probably know the book or might have heard about the book or the person, you might have, seen her a great tete a tete or old YouTube, presentations.

So so Tasha, she wrote a book about self-awareness. The book is called insight. And basically, you know, she says that based on her research, ninety five percent of us, you know, we think we’re self-aware.

Right? So this is our self-perception, about all self-awareness.

Right?

But what is the reality the reality is that only fifteen percent of us are really server aware. Whereas eight in ten, which is, you know, eighty percent think that they are self-aware.

So the tricky thing about self-awareness is that we tend to kinda be very confident about that self-awareness and we think we’re good at that, but it then it turns out that according to others, we are not so good about that. So, this is basically, right, I wanted to discuss with you today. And how are we going how are we going to do that?

So I’m gonna make, like, a short introduction about, you know, the self-discovery and, just, you know, how it all started then I’m going to give you a a contact software company that I’m with KYPAI, which is those tech startup that I’m working for. That I’m going to tell you about, you know, what we did with Facet5 and how have we been working with the tool for the last two years?

I will tell you a little bit about overcoming scepticism in the environment, that I’m with. That was especially, you know, in the early days.

I’ll tell you a little bit about what I like to call, you know, hacking the developments, equation.

We’ll talk a little bit about dog and intentionality in developments.

And then I’ll make, wrap up, and I’ll share with you our three most important lessons learned from, using five over the last two years in, in our organization. So, yeah. The first the first part, which is this one, mirror, mirror, on the wall.

You know, it it it all started, I think, with ancient Greeks and probably even, even before that. So, this what, you know, with what Socrates said, you know, to know yourself is the beginning of of of wisdom. So, basically, what you wanted to convey, I suppose, was that know, self-awareness knowing yourself is where it all starts.

And I profoundly agree with that statements. Right? So, I really, you know, like, to look at it almost like every day, you know.

And then, you know, when you think of it, you know, self-awareness, everywhere in a in a pop culture. So, mirror mirror on the wall, right, who’s the first of them all, I think we all know the story. So, you know, the magic mirror was used was used by, by the evil queen to find out who was the fairies of them all each time the queen asked or stated the question as the question, the mirror would respond, affirmatively to the queen that she was the one she was the most beautiful, the fairest of the mall, up until one day, up until one day, right, when the mirror expectedly said something else.

It replied. Yeah. That you were full of her. That is, but there was somebody else.

There was a the Snow White character. That was favourite than the than the Queen. And I don’t know if you remember how the story falls. So, the Queen basically hired and disaster to put her rival to death.

Right?

And then I like the way I like to think about it is that it didn’t have to go that way.

And basically, an adviser that would give to Queen would be to, yeah, shut up and listen to the response and try to kind of be more reflective about what she heard from the mirror.

And here is, you know, how it connects from my experience and also from research, the problem is that, you know, as human beings, most of us, we have those well-developed defence mechanisms that protect us from, from feedback that we proceed as threatening. Right? Feedback that we perceive as threatening. It’s not that we’re opposing to all feedback. It’s that we prefer to receive feedback that is positive.

Not so much the one that is negative. And that’s very natural. That’s very natural. Right?

And this is I remember when I was in my career twenty years ago. That was one of the one of the best careers, you know, advice that that I’ve ever, you know, gotten from anyone was one person told me I mean, always ask w. Always ask yourself a question of who’s your mirror? Who’s your mirror?

And then, you know, the other version of this question that I like even better is who will tell you the truth? And who’s your mirror as in who will tell you the truth, who, you know, kind of speak to you about your true reflection.

Right? And the problem, and you might have heard about that as well, is that there is a this difference in terms of, you know, how we give feedback or how people give feedback There’s that difference and differentiation that we can make between people that are nice and kind. Nice people, they give you, they tell you nice things because they want you to feel better. Maybe they want something from you, so they will tell you nice things.

And kind people are the ones who deeply care about you for this way, for this reason, one other reason, and they are the ones that will, tell you the truth because they want you to understand how to improve. Right? So again, who’s your mirror? Who’s your mirror?

Doesn’t really meaning, you know, who will tell you nice things. It’s the question about who will tell you the truth?

And then, okay, self-awareness. So, we all understand about, you know, I I think, you know, what self-awareness is. So, we’re I’m I’m not going to to debate that.

But then I promised that we’d go beyond the surface. So, you know, deep circle lines. What is deep set awareness concept really is for me. So, when I try to, Define something.

I always go for dictionary first, you know, Cambridge, dictionary, English, or, you know, Marion Webster, interact. Okay. So deep, what does deep really mean? So this is the dictionary definition of what deep is but then I go even deeper.

Right? So, what is the deep self-awareness and how it is different from just, you know, superficial, self-awareness, and the superficial self-awareness is really, you know, on the surface level being able to answer, you know, these are my strengths, these are my weaknesses. Okay. One two three, one two three.

Typically, what candidates do in a in an interview. Alright? The question that everyone expects and people say something. So, most of us, yeah, we have this at least this, like, first level self-awareness.

But what is really what is really, you know, the deep self-awareness, what’s so deep about it. Right? And I think, you know, it it relates to four dimensions.

The first dimension is that it’s profoundly penetrative.

So, it’s really going beyond the obvious. So, it’s like not the first level. It’s the going deeper towards the second, the third level. So that’s the first one.

The second I mentioned is that it extensively detailed, you know, so it’s not just about knowing the, maybe, the, the watts and the, but also the y. So, in that sense, also going much deeper.

The third dimension and the way I like to think about it is that it’s very, you know, comprehensively holistic.

So, it encompasses all the dimensions of the self. Yeah.

The emotional psychological, spiritual, intellectual.

So, in that sense, it’s all encompassing, like, fully fledged, you know.

Self-awareness.

And last but not least, we have another one which is intensely reflective.

Intends to be reflective, which is all about actively engaging with one’s inner sides and feelings.

Often requiring a significant degree of vulnerability and honesty with yourself. Again, going back to the previous argument that we tend to receive feedback that is not as positive rather than, you know, negative.

But this is not how we grow. This is not how we develop ourselves. Right? So again, penetrative detailed holistic and reflective, and it’s all very intense, and it should be intense, and it all should happen at the at the at the same time.

Good.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

I’m looking at the chat window. There’re any comments. Please do share your comments and, and remarks and the fly. Then there is, you know, if you if you think about self-awareness and know that I’m not going to say anything extraordinary here, but just wanted still wanted to make this remark that, you know, the self-awareness is the internal self-awareness. Which is how do I see myself.

Right?

And then there is how others see me.

And whether I know how they see me, Alright. So internal external self-awareness, two dimensions, and this is also how we go deeper about it. And and, obviously, at the intersection, you will have the the famous sorry window that I think everyone, you know, heard about, or or or no. So I’m not going to talk about, you know, the arena, the the blind spot, but this is super important, you know, the difference about how do I see myself, how do orders see me, and the intersection?

Intersection of it.

Then, at the end of the day, just, you know, closing this this first part of, you know, of explaining why there’s why there’s this enormous attention that I that I give to that I pay to self-awareness is that I see it as a super skill.

So, for me, personally, based on my experience, but also based on on research that I believe in, it’s not a trait So South awareness is not innate. It’s not something that we’re born with. We may have certain predisposition predispositions towards it. But, basically, it’s a skill. So, it’s a it’s a skill that can be learned. It’s transferable skill.

So, you can get better at it, and this is super important. This is, by the way, and, obviously, how Facet5 can help.

I I like to call it, like, a better competence so like a higher order ability, something that enables the the acquisition of other competencies, or as it is reading on the slide and and overarching, ability under which other competencies shelter.

And yes, I do believe, and there’s a like, ton of research, proving that it’s a prerequisite for the development of other competencies. Right? So it’s super, super important.

And we may say that’s a foundation upon which to grow both professionally and personally. This is super important and I’m gonna talk about it in in more detail in a while.

I can see the comment. I love that message or perhaps at the tail end of time can retain that cell awareness over time, direct conversations, situations.

Yes. Absolutely. I mean, because it’s not that, okay, you know, I I mean, again, I’m I’m speaking from my own experience twenty years of professional experience, living my life in with all my, you know, humanity and mistakes also on the personal level, having divorced and all that. You know, so you can, you can never be good enough in terms of self-awareness.

It’s never like a finished process. It’s a continuous journey. Right? And, because, you know, you might be self-aware enough in that specific context, in that specific point in time, but then you’re removed from that context.

You’re in a different context, and and the times have changed. And maybe that self-awareness that you develop up until now. It’s it’s not enough anymore. So, we have to adjust, right, because the context changes.

The situation changes to people around change people around you changed. So, that’s, it’s a constant work of self-improvement, and it’s a skill that I believe we have to work it for entire life. So, KWA, PAI, why it is super important and why it is I think fascinating about, you know, what we did here together because, so what is, K y p a I and why in this company, logic is so important, and why it is more important than intuition here.

You, you know, we’d have to look at what we’re doing as a company. So we’re a deep tech startup.

Strata that was funded, four years ago.

So, we produce enter enterprise software software as a service.

So, it’s a software that helps companies understand and change their processes So we it captures enormous amounts of information and, uses AI and machine learning to analyse it and propose and propose improvements in processes. It’s it’s also looks at the productivity.

So looks at processes, people, and technology, So it’s something, it’s something really impressive, you know, what it can do. And I joined this company two years ago, I was invited by by the founders to join the team, as one of the early joiners.

We were a little bit more than twenty people there. That was twenty twenty one, September twenty twenty one. Sit stage to see where early stage with some initial traction on the market.

Investors.

Today, we’re seventy plus people. So, you see, from twenty to over seventy people, we we probably gonna be around one hundred people early next year. So, the company is growing.

There’s a lot of market traction, you know, a lot of interest technology is really amazing. And I, you know, I vividly remember why I decided to kind of abandon my my corporate life, my my corporate a HR career, and and joined that that company, and it was for three reasons first because I saw amazing product.

Then because I saw great people and founders that really wanted to build, a great team, and I’ll talk about it a little bit more. And then because I saw amazing investors, and it was like mind blowing for me. Why? Because one of the investors is this gentleman, so, at that point, when I was joining, I’m American, VC Fanticle toll capital that is linked to Bill Gates, foundation, helped onboard and decided that this technology was super interesting. So, I decided, I mean, And this is this is the moment. This is my window of opportunity, and I decided to join the company.

And this company obviously leaves off data. So, for us, data is super important. We provide data to companies so that they can make better decisions. Right? So, so this is a little bit of what we believe in, a couple of quotes, from this gentleman that is not related to the company.

But basically, this is this is our approach. This is what we kinda, you know, evangelize. This is what we tell our customers.

And by the way, we are walking to talk also with regard with regard to people management. Right? So, when I was joined the company, I asked the founders. So, if you were so crazy about the data, if you were so profoundly interested in what what is the meaning behind data, what if I can show you a tool that will give you some data about your people.

And they say, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s try it. Yeah. And this is how the phase five story started.

And, and, basically, what is what is the objective? What, you know, when you’re in a sharp company, why are you doing that? Right? It’s not just any job.

You want to build a unicorn. So, a company that will be worth at least one billion. Right?

And, you know, there’s this this this dream that we’re chasing, you know, go for an IPO and become rich people, not the most important thing in life, but still would be nice, a nice side effect.

And and basically the way I see it, you know, if you wanna build a a unicorn, a great company, you only need three things. It’s super simple. One two three. The first one is a great product. That one we have, great investors, and great team.

Great team. So great people on board. You can’t do anything are great people. Sounds like a cliche, but it’s so true. So true. Right?

And then, okay. Besty, meaning what?

Basting, meaning what. And there is this fine distinction that I like to make. It’s that you can have either a team of stars a team of stars is something, you know, is a situation where you have extraordinary individuals working together not necessarily as a team, not necessarily in terms of perfect collaboration, but they are just brilliant individuals. Right?

Or And the alternative is that you can hit the star team. So maybe people who are not maybe, you know, debasing what they do, but together, they create synergies.

So together, they are just a star team, extra ordinary team that I can beat other teams. And sometimes star teams beat teams of stars. And when I asked my founders. So what is our objective here? What is our approach? How are we going to build this great company?

And I ask them, so which of the, you know, strategies would you ask me to execute and say both? They say they wanted both. Right? So, say, okay. So, let’s try to use, you know, fast at five to to make that happen.

So, this is what we did. This is what we did.

And this is like the foundational element of So we decided from that day on that, Facet5 questionnaire assessments and ninety minutes feedback would be an intrinsic part of everyone’s onboarding. So, everyone who is coming to the company, is required to take that assessment and is invited to to a feedback session and and we make these explicits in kinda conditional, in the recruitment process. So, if you’re not interested, if for some reason you don’t want it then, okay, don’t come because this is this is the way this is the way we work. Right?

It was a little bit tricky in the beginning because we had the initial twenty people And the question was, you know, how to work with them, how to convince them that it was that it was something, you know, worth checking out. But this is what is happening. So, everyone ideally, in the first week in the company, goes through the assessment, goes through the questionnaire, and goes through the individual feedback. Right? What else are we doing?

Then usually after three to four weeks, right, after they discuss it with maybe their colleagues, maybe with their supervisor, maybe with their wives, husbands, and life partners, maybe sometimes with their children. And I I have really great stories to share about that. They can come back to HR, to me or my colleague because there’s already two of us. I am and we can schedule a follow-up session so so that they can share, you know, what were their reflections after reading it the second time, the third time after maybe discussing with their wives and husbands and maybe their their children or or their mirrors.

Right? People who are their mirrors. So, this is what we were doing. And, so some people go for that, and this is not obligatory, but most people do that.

And sometimes we sort of incentivize them to do that, so we encourage them. So, if a month passes and there is no follow-up whatsoever from their side, I kinda imping them. I messaged them saying, hey. Shall we have maybe another fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes discussion about, you know, did with that, what you’re thinking, whether, you know, it sort of convinced you, yes, no.

Right?

What we’re also doing is a in a approximately twenty people take that twenty percent of of of our people, twenty twenty five to thirty percent of our people take that path. So, some people go deeper. And I say, okay.

I wanna, you know, think deeper about my strengths and and and and risks.

I don’t I don’t like using the word weaknesses, right? And and I want to kinda translate it into my individual development plan. So, this is what we also help them, help them doing and also execute on that and make checkings and see whether they are, you know, on plan or not. What else are we doing?

Well, yes, leaders use it on a daily basis to engage with individuals, especially, you know, with onboarding, it helps us to speed up building the roberts and the and the relationship with the newcomers for the managers because they can see the part of the of the of the report where you can see, you know, how they what is the best way to manage them to leverage their potential, how to give them feedback, how to, delegate tasks to them, how to engage them in in goal setting, etcetera. So, this is something that we’re using, and everyone each one of our supervisors and leaders, they know how to do it, right, and they are required to do it.

So, there’s also a lot of kinda self-awareness and belief in that it works.

We’re also doing team workshops. And, and I’m very happy because this sort of happens same time. This happened almost, yeah. I mean, so it wasn’t really for that was the idea that maybe one day people would be mature enough and they would ask for more and they did.

So it happened sort of spontaneously. So, they came to me and said, maybe we could run like a team workshop to understand our team dynamic. So, we’re also doing that, and also repeating that each time there is, like, significant reconfiguration. The teams for new people are joining.

We’re a fast-growing company, so we have to repeat that, you know, say every year or every six months sometimes.

Yeah.

And then, obviously, we’re using it to re in in recruitment processes for some of the senior, especially leadership roles. And it’s not a laminatary.

It’s more to sort of understand, you know, what is the, what is the positions profile? What is the ideal candidate profile? And and when when there is a mismatch. And then we dig deeper, not only because we want to make sure that the person can perform in that role, but also, you know, remembering that being too much, in in being outside of the conference zone in in too many dimensions might be detrimental to your performance and also to your satisfaction and engagement. So, we’re very honest about those situations where the job might be not compatible with with with with the person’s personality. Yeah. So, and, and there is a lot of, very kind of profound, you know, reflections, around that.

Among our leadership. And, yeah, this this is what I wanted to mention. So, what was a critical success factor is the, one hundred percent litigation from the founders. So, it’s not only that they said, yeah, yeah, let’s do it.

It’s a great idea. It sort of, correlates with our, you know, us thinking about the datas, the ultimate vehicle to make business decisions, also decisions about people, but I walk the talk. So, they believe in it, they ask me if they have you know, troubles interpreting this or or or or that that we we sit down and we kinda, you know, we look at the details. So, it’s it has really been an amazing journey.

And now we wrap it up a little bit a little bit later.

And I think, you know, after two years, what what was super important was the repetition and consistency. Repetition meaning that, you know, there’s newcomers all the time And it’s not like, okay. We did it once somebody, you know, went through their Facet5 assessment and feedback two years ago, and it’s over we don’t have time for them. We try to kinda reinstate that sort of importance and sort of urgency that this is super important.

And this is something that you should, you know, revisit and revisit and revisit and revisit again. And just because you have, you know, a good reflection about yourself in terms of your awareness two years ago, it doesn’t mean that you would have the same self-reflection, today. Yeah. So, we encourage them to repeat that exercise.

Which sort of, you know, relates back to the to the remarkable question you had some time ago, which is the time dimension in it.

And, yeah, I promise you I’ll talk a little bit about scepticism. So, please do remember you know, I used to work in retail companies, food retail, big corporations, food retail, goods retail, fashion retail, e commerce retail, and then suddenly I find myself, you know, working with, you know, super smart engineers. Right? And, sometimes, you know, like, really, when you think about stereotypes through typical view of of engineer.

It was really what I was facing, and I was then understanding very little. So I was thinking, you know, how do I turn it into success? You know, so how do I convince them to actually trust me and and sort of, you know, go through the go through this assessment process now it’s a policy. So we I can say to our candidates, you know, that when you join the company, you’ll be going through that process.

Do you like it? Yes. No. If you don’t like it. If you don’t want it, don’t join us.

Right? But then in the beginning, it was the twenty people that were, you know, in the company. There was this new HR guy coming, and, so I was sort of trying to think of, okay, what am I dealing with? What is the challenge going to be?

You know? So I was I was trying to think of, what do I know about, you know, software engineers?

And, that was more or less the idea that I had. Right? So you see a lot of text on the slides. Right? Yes, and they are very smart people. So they are an illogical logical technically proficient introverted, or socially reserved. Sometimes, I’m the opposite, not very introverted and not very socially reserved.

And then there are practical and detail oriented. So how do I make connections with them? Right?

So this slide is a is it’s a super bad slide because there’s a lot of reading. You’ll probably see reading through that, but I’ll make your life easy for you.

Peter’s what is important.

So this is how I approach that. So I try to kinda break it down into what do I know about, you know, engineers and how their brains work Right? And how do I sort of cater to that? How do I adjust, you know, what I learned, like, working with leaders and leadership talents And how do I do that successfully with engineering talent?

Right? And I thought, because they are logical. They they love problem solving. So maybe I I can help them solve some problems that they have, and they love science.

So maybe if I tell them that this is science based, they will listen. Right? They love systems, and I see a lot of kinda systemic thinking in in in the Facet5 model. They’re introverted.

So maybe I have to really kinda adjust the way conduct sessions based on the type of kinda introverted versus extroverted person that I have in front of me. And then details Yeah. Details. Fantastic because there’s so many details in the Facet5 report.

And then practical, yes, because there’s a there’s a lot of practical insights So it’s not, you know, the theoretical HR, mambo jumbo. It’s something very practical, something that you can say. And, you know, you have a lot of things written there. That basically tell you what you can do.

Start doing differently next Monday. So it was really the tool, but you really needed to understand, you know, how to tackle the challenge and to, you know, how to address the skepticism, the initial skepticism, and there was a lot of it. Right? So, was really at least with a couple of problems.

The first one was perceptions of HR. So, you know, like paper pushing people, not very effective, not very kinda, evidence based, you know, a little bit too emotional sometimes. I’m again, I’m I’m talking about stereotypes, but that was the I was confronting. Alright?

Then I’m clear intentions. So some people some people were asking me, you know, ex you know, outwardly. They were saying, yeah. So, So after that, if the result is not good, am I going to be fired?

What if I don’t fit? Right? So these were all the questions I was getting from those engineers. Yeah.

And I I needed to, I needed to make them feel safe. And and the answer would, there there’s no good or bad answers. There’s no good or bad results. Every result has a meaning and we’re here to discuss that meeting together what it means for you, what it means for me, what it means for organization.

Right? So that was it. Also, some people, you know, had experienced order of psychometric, assessments, which were not conducted professionally. So, so there was a lot of, you know, also this kind of bad legacy thing that I had to address.

And, obviously, they were asking, okay, so what’s in it for me?

And w I I f m, what’s in it for me? So why should I do that? What is the benefit for me? Right?

So these were the the four type of kind of questions or dots, our reasons why were sceptical. And I can tell you eighty, ninety percent were sceptical. And initially, not very much leaning, into doing that. Right?

And I needed to and I needed to convince them and and it it was my answer. Right? So the first thing, I thought, okay, obviously, it was a promise. Right?

So I was saying, I will try to improve your life.

And people were, how will you do that? And I say, what if I give you something that will help you to improve the quality of of of the relationship with the people that you care about? So I wasn’t really talking about, you know, what are the work related benefits? No. I was really catering to that intrinsic need of actually, you know, how how do I improve my life in terms of the quality of the relationship with the people that I deeply care about, which is, you know, my life partners, our children, you know, family, friends. So this is the that was the that was the first trick, and it and it’s and it’s really worked. With some people.

There there was the the second thing was, like, you know, okay, money back guarantee. So I always like really telling them you don’t risk anything.

If you don’t like it, okay. You don’t like it. By a guarantee, it’s going to be great. Yeah. I’m I’m I’m really good at what I’m doing, you know, and I’m also here to learn from you, but I guarantee that you’re going to like it.

So I was really kinda, you know, very confident about what I can do. I was really believing in it, and it turned out to be quite contagious. And then, obviously, it was the ambassadors. So I, looking at all the people that I, that I had in that cohort, initial cohort, I first talked to the ones which were more optimistic and, more leaning into. Yeah. Let’s let’s give it a try.

And they locked it. So I could say, yeah. Now I have, you know, customers who are happy about what I did with them.

You should do it too. And it worked.

Actually, we only had in two years of history, we only had one colleague that, that refused to to undergo that assessment and that person decided to lead the company.

There was an obvious, culture mismatch in that case. So, so this was about the, the skepticism.

And then I promised you, I would tell you a little bit about the, yeah, the intentionality of comment.

And this is something that I’ve got that sort of fascinates me. And again, you know, drawing from my twenty years of experience in leadership development, It’s really striking. You know, you all probably recognize the guys who Charles Darwin, the, you know, BlueJeans theory and, so the survival of the fittest and, Please do reflect and think about, you know, many companies or in all the companies that you’re working for, or maybe that you used to work for, or maybe you clients, customers, and in and and maybe your personal experiences. So many companies, so many companies. There were too many companies.

Are thinking about leadership development or people development, in an convenient manner. What does that mean? Well, basically, And and by the way, there’s a great book about that from Morgan and Marco. It’s called High Fly. It’s about high people with high potential, and he writes about that phenomenon.

And this convenient approach to developing people with sinks or swim. Right? So instead of really investing in people’s developments, we throw them into, you know, deep waters and then, okay, let’s see who can make it to the surface.

There are the ones. Where. Yeah. I it’s a way, you know, to think about it.

But, unfortunately, the research shows that the ones who make it the surface, the one who survived are not necessarily the ones that you would that you should bet on. And and that is a problem with, with the intervening approach. That is not intentional. It’s simply okay.

The survival of the fittest. Right? And many organizations, so many organizations work like that. Right?

And then one of the consequences that we have, you know, so many narcissistic or Machiavellan, you know, leaders, in the boardrooms, and and toxic cultures were yeah, the survival of the fetus in the bat sense prevails. Right? And there’s also the, individual perspective, which is If you think about your development, there is, like, okay, when I think about my developments in probably, hopefully, you know, when you think about your development, There’s three questions that you can ask yourself or you should ask yourself, which are why, what, and how.

So, and and if I recall well, on an in the early session today, we grant Grandant was mentioning the work and how, talking about strengths, but basically, what is what I should develop, how is how I should develop So, you know, what is, for instance, I know I should work on my, I know, presentations because we’re resilience and how is, oh, I should you know, have a coach, or I should work with a mentor, or I I should undergo a training, in a classroom or do, you know, whatever And and some people even start from from, you know, backwards. So they start how oh, so I need the training.

Okay. But the training about what, okay. So what’s the what question? But the first question that you need to ask yourself is why am I doing that?

What is the purpose? As an individual. And also as an organization, you can ask that question to your people. So when somebody tells you, I would like to work on my persuasion skills.

Okay. Why?

And and this why is super important. And here is why. So, it’s like a typical scenario that I encounter in conversations that we have. You know, when we start discussing the possible implications of Facet5, and also your sort of know, self-assessment of your competencies for your development.

And when we start crafting your individual development plan, so it’s, that the black circle represents your current level of competence and skill. Right? And then there’s two scenarios.

Yeah.

What should I develop? Where that depends on the why? The first why is, okay, because I want to so I want to, work on my persuasion skills because this is what is needed in my job. Maybe I’m a salesperson, And I’m lacking those, you know, persuasion skills, and I need that to improve my performance and my current job. Okay. That’s a very valid. That’s a very valid why that’s a very valid motivation and we can work on that.

But maybe maybe maybe I’m a software engineer But my dream is to lead teams or my dream is to do something else, be in a customer success or in, you know, sales or presales, whatever. Right? So I want to sort of read off my carry. I want to do something else.

Right? And that is a different way. So maybe we should think about different whats in different house. Right?

So so again, from organization perspective, the intentionality is about not going for this kind of sync or switch scenario.

And then in terms of, you know, individuals is asking yourselves all three questions and starting with the y, or never forgetting about about the y.

Right. So, time to summarize, and maybe then we we have a moment for, for a short Q and A.

So after two years, what have we learned?

Because we’ve been doing exactly that. So everything that I told you is not just, you know, theoretical. It’s it’s the, it’s it’s it what was the context, how we think about self-awareness that it is important. We dedicate a lot of time and resources and money to it.

This is how, you know, how we did it, and and also, you know, the organizational, not the convenient approach, and also encouraging individuals to think about, you know, all three questions. Right?

So this is what we learned. Again, one, two, three, three things. So the first one is that obviously, we see we’ve seen an, you know, an increase in individual awareness and in team, South awareness.

Right? So we see an increase in both, obviously. And it’s like self reported, but also we see many proofs for that. A lot of evidence, behavioral evidence for that.

And if you think about the four scenarios, so the the The worst scenario, not our scenario is they lost in the fog.

So, you know, people are not so familiar with it in team terms you know, organizations not self-aware. And there’s a second scenario, which is the, yeah, the the team of stars. So very self-aware people bought, somehow not working as a team, That’s what we want. Not a voice scenario.

The third one, it seems like a mission impossible for me. I think it’s impasse to have team self-awareness without having the individual awareness first. Right? So the individual awareness is the foundation upon which you can build team or organizational awareness.

So you can’t really start with the with the top down approach. You have to do both of the same. So you can have you need to start with leadership, you know, top down. Why are we doing that?

Why it is important? By going to start from the bottom, and you need to cover the the the, you know, the the lowers echo lines of the organization, and then kinda it clicks And, yeah, I like to think that we’re here that we’re at this, you know, starting that we’ve been dreaming about. Ask me in five years, whether we are this unicorn, whether we have this kinda word class success, right? But, I I believe to think that that we are on our way to become, to becoming a star team, like, KUI, And what we see is, you know, less tension between people.

I remember, when I, when I did, like, a sort of a debrief with with our engineering folks couple of months after we started. And and they were telling, you know, w, they were telling me, before I sat, you know, that my colleague he was acting so weird. And I thought that he’s he’s he was being malicious or he was kinda he was doing that on purpose. Today, I do understand that he’s simply very different from me.

And it’s his personality speaking. And, there’s no bad intentions there, and, and we have to kinda learn to to work together in a in a most efficient manner. And sometimes, you know, instead of kinda going into into conflict or, you know, we just we we can just allow about it because he’s so predictable. And I know I’m also I’m so predictable.

And I was coming from those, you know, sort of introverted engineers who who are so so fascinating and and and and and so rewarding. If you’re the person I remember, she’s She’s a very talented woman. She also, you know, she used to work in retail industry and then sort of, people that had her career to software engineering as a as a great, software, tester, a quality assurance engineer.

And, and the mother was three. And and she told me that she, and and she has, yeah, teenage children some of them ready, you know, starting at the university.

And and she shared her specified results with her family. And so when I said, yeah, I mean, this is something that can improve the quality of your relationships with the ones that you, I care about. She she went the extra mile. So she went home, and she showed them me, and so this is me.

What do you what do you think about it? And, I remember what she told. And and she shared that story in, you know, in a in a company meeting. She said, yeah, her her her children said mother, money.

I mean, it’s so it’s you. I mean, what it says is absolutely you. And and and today, they are laughing about it. Yeah.

Because, I mean, at some point, maybe you should admit that this is who I am. This is me and and deal with that. Right? So, it’s it’s not really about kind of forcing yourself to to change everything.

So I can say that, you know, with those stories, I can I I can say that at least with you know, in some cases, I delivered on the promise of making people lives better? Right?

Obviously, again, it’s about intentionality. So maybe ten or twenty percent people will have that really deep, deep, deep, deep reflection.

But she did, and many orders did. So this is really what what makes me happy is obviously better decisions. So maybe we will not force some people to take jobs that they shouldn’t, you know, take because there are not jobs for them.

Highly highly engaged people, and higher performance, high hire, because we see situations where actually, you know, instead of kinda going ballistic and kinda going into confrontation, we can work with one another right, and, in a better way because we understand that there is differences, and those differences may my cloud, our judgment. So this is super, super important.

On, you know, on leadership level in in my relationship with with all the leaders in the company and and with the founders themselves. It’s like we gained, like, three amazing things. The first one is that we have this this this understanding, this kind of common language. So when I say, you know, I mean, I mean, what you’re seeing in that candidate or what what you’re seeing in that situation is that somebody, you know, high emotionality or, you know, too high, you know, independence.

So intentions were good, but this is what we’re seeing, a combination of this and that, and they understand. So I don’t need to say, what do you mean by emotionality? No. They understand, you know, this is emotionality.

This is affection. This is how correlation works. You know, these these are the effects. So they are very proficient at that.

And it simplifies our conversation. It it it makes our conversations very precise. So when we talk about people, Right?

When we talk about people, we we can be very precise because we use specific words, and we are wanna represent sure that that those words and interpret it in the in the very same way that way we’re thinking about them. And then, obviously, the depth of of of of our discussions about our people and a a newcomers, it’s like on another level. It’s on another level. So I, I would definitely recommend to have this kind of all encompassing comprehensive approach in in getting, you know, the, the top guys in the company, onboard early and having them one hundred percent one hundred percent committed.

Voided from your experience, can you please share what contributed to the most, to cross the implementation of Facet5 insights, an unexpected side effects.

Well, I, you know, I talk about that. I mean, I don’t know if there were unexpected side effects. There were people who were, like, after that started kinda thinking about, you know, what what they should do next because they maybe saw something there that they didn’t they hadn’t seen before. So that was it.

And for instance, people people were Also, one side effect, another side effect was that people now have better understanding of what are the cross team differences? So maybe, you know, there’s no such thing as ideal candidate profile for all company, but maybe if you’re in customer success or customer support, maybe you should have higher affection.

Right?

Maybe if you’re a deployment engineer, maybe, Yeah. I mean, your life would be easier. Your work life would be easier if you have a high degree of control. Right? So people understand that. That is different you know, so so there’s no one size fits all. So that would be that would be my answer.

And last but not the least, you know, I mean, again, going back to the time remark. It’s, it’s never-ending journey for us. So self-discovery. And so we repeated and over and over and over again.

So I’m going back to, you know, to to people that I talked to two years ago, one year ago, and asking that, hey, do you want another session? Shall we discuss it and kinda reflect on the past year and kinda see how it reflects your personality and what has changed for you. It has become part of our d part of our DNA. So, it’s really, I mean, okay, Facet5.

Has become part of who we are as a company, and it has become part of our, employee value proposition. And we sort of we we talk about it outside And we like to think about as our, you know, signature EVP experience. So again, we we say to candidates that this is what they are going to encounter here. And, yeah, and we sort of advertise it.

So, this is our shanked. Right? So, I mean, because in most companies, similar to to to us.

There is this kinda very tunnel view of when when people think about developing, especially engineering, talent. So engineering talent, maybe let’s give them very, you know, technical training.

Let’s not worry about their emotional side or, you know, soft skills because it doesn’t really matter. Right? They need to write good code.

Period.

Well, we think about it differently because we look at them more holistically. We see them as human beings as college. And, again, at the end of the day, you know, it’s about, Yeah. It’s it’s about being engaged at work, but it’s also about living a good life and being kinda, having this mythical work life integration where really feel that you’re in a good place in life at work and, and and you just, you know, go to work every day smiling. And, and this is, you know, of the things that we’re trying to do as a company to make that happen.

My advice to everyone here in the call would be, yeah, be yourself more with skill. And, yeah, definitely Facet5, I think, yeah, helps with that being yourself more with skill because it’s not about changing yourself, about forcing the change, It’s about being yourself more, but in a very skillful manner. So thank you everyone.

What questions do you have? Comments questions maybe you wanna turn off turn on your camera? Voice, there was another one in the, from Sean.

Do most who take the profile feel it is an accurate depiction of themselves when they receive the results where is it?

I’m trying to find it. It’s just above my recs.

But it’s okay. Okay. Is it two parter? Okay. Do you, do most who take the profile field is an accurate depiction?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

So I would say, you know, I I always make this I always tell them that it’s it’s highly accurate and very trustworthy in, you know, in terms of psychometric it’s psychometric qualities. And, and the and there are some people who kinda when when they look at it and say, yeah, I recognize seventy percent of myself, the rest I have to think about. And then what happens is that they talk to their wives, they talk to their partners, and they come back and say, yeah. Ninety percent accurate.

You know, in eighty, ninety percent is good. Also, what is super important is that, obviously, as part of this kinda initial feedback you know, I I first kinda describe the model, ask them about, you know, what is your self-perception and then only reveal the results. And What I see is that the people that we have, for starters, they are very self aware. Right?

So so there’s this initial self-awareness So our people are really extraordinary.

Right?

So it’s probably about how we recruit people. So they are very open towards, you know, experience, but also they have this initial self-awareness. So for them when they see it, they are not very shocked because this is how they perceive themselves. In in in in most cases.

And the second question, do we feel having lots of different personalities and the levels of self-awareness profiling self-awareness, I would say, from, mid-range to very high personalities. Yes. It’s a very good question because, There is there’s a pitfall, right, and and there is this big mistake that you can do when when building a company like ours, which is, recruiting your clones, we’re saying, yeah, we need everyone who’s like him or like her. Right?

So for instance, what we’re seeing, since we already have almost seventy people in, we see that in certain things. So for instance, you know, what would be a good example good example would be that we are on average, again, on average. There is, we have lower, you know, emotionality measures as a company on average than the population, global population, or Polish or German or American population, and the same goes for, control.

So significantly lower than in general population. And if you think about it, it makes sense because we’re a startup company. That’s the type of people that we, that we attract. And by the way, it doesn’t mean that we only want to attract people with lower control.

No. Because for instance, what we’re now doing is that we’re looking at our teams holistically princess, we look at customer success team and say, Hey. We have a lot of people who are very low in control.

So maybe, you know, when screen new candidates, interviewing candidates, we should be thinking about hiring someone with with higher degree of of of control or, you know, higher emotionality because we need more diversity in that team, and it will be safer for us and better for us as a team. Alright. So this is this is what we are doing. But then again, it’s it’s also about the transparency. So when we talk to those individuals, we tell them, hey, so there’s this concept of trouble emotionality. And by definition, if you look out the normal curve, we’re here as an organization. You’re here, which means probably that you will feel friction when you join us.

You know, how I mean, are you ready for that? Do you know what it means? So we discussed that before that person joins. So we’re very transparent.

Not only, you know, painting the beautiful picture of it’s going to be great. You’re going to love it and then they don’t. Right? It’s about not creating false expectations, but this is what we are not this is what we are doing.

Okay.

Any other questions? Yeah. Go on. Go on. Sorry. I was good. I I I had a quick question in terms of when you’re recruiting.

Do you do you use the full profile or are you using the audition reports Yeah. That’s a very good question. Thank you. So, that, so usually, So, the first part of the answer would be is when do we do it in the process?

So we don’t do it early. It’s not for screening purposes. It’s to after the first or second conversation, when we say this is very interesting person, we wanna go deeper with them. Right?

And so this is for final candidates, maybe for final two or three. Right? And then the approach is usually I send them the the spotlight report, which is gonna self-service. Right?

And I tell them, okay. We can catch up maybe five minutes, ten minutes over the phone if you want, if you have any doubts.

But then I say, And especially, you know, I do I do that to both, you know, people who are our picks. So the ones that we’re hiring, and sometimes we go through the full scale, you know, full report and feedback session before they join even, but also to once to the ones who were runner ups who were rejected maybe coming in seconds on on threat. I tell them, you know, because of the effort, and the energy and the time we invest in the process. There’s this option, you know, where we go kinda full throttle, and we go really deep into that.

So if you want, we can, we can schedule, a feedback session. I will tell you, I will give you another report you know, longer report, but you need to spend another ninety minutes with them with with us even though we can’t offer you a job. Some people do decide and go for that. Some people don’t.

Obviously, we love people who who still have their curiosity because that’s that’s really the kind of folks that that that we’re after.