Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for joining. I could see some familiar faces, which is always nice when you’re doing this kind of thing. If we haven’t met before, it’s really nice to be presenting to you today. With a slight apology, my colleague, Zara, is is unavoidably detained at the moment. However, we’re part of the same organization.

And what I’m gonna take you through, as part of this, this session today is our take on, sort of change agility from an, individual, a team and an organizational perspective.

We are, obviously, we’re a distributor asset five in the UK, and we have been for many years.

We also, a consultancy. So what I’m gonna be sharing is our latest view on this topic. But what I thought would be really interesting to bring to put in the mix today is, when we’re talking about change agility within organizations.

What are the qualities and the capabilities we’re actually interested in as far as people within that organization, are concerned. So I’m gonna give you our take on organizational change agility through our research, our conversations with our many clients, and also looking looking at, sort of desk desktop informat desk research and information. And I’m gonna overlay it with some suggestions as to, what we might look for when we’re looking for people’s natural characteristics and tenders tendencies, obviously thinking, in domain about their traits and their and their factor scores. So Why why are we doing this? We know since the pandemic and moving forward, organizations need to continually evolve. This is research that we’ve been speaking to our clients about, for, for, for quite a while now, and it’s our, it’s our main position, around the idea of of constant, either, of of continually evolving, as if, to stay relevant, because changes change is difficult.

And if you think about the context within organ within which organizations are operating, the financial, the social, the the geographical, and even the environmental context, all of this puts huge pressure on organizations to stay to stay relevant. So we coined the term rapid evolution.

Rapid evolution actually exists in, you know, in biology.

We did talk about this last year, but we’re taking it to our clients now.

Rapid evolution allows, species to adapt very rapidly to their environment. And in the same way, we can use the the the similar similar terminology to talk about organization So, we’ve, we’ve looked at literature, we’ve looked at academic research, and we’ve had, conversations with our clients, to understand what they think they will need in order to keep ahead of the curve.

So these are the this is the key concept that we are we are concerned with.

So the the idea of a growth stall in an organization. So in other words, an organization that experiences some kind of rapid growth for a while, and then all of a sudden something happens, to really kind of impede and and and suddenly make that much, much harder.

The example that my colleague, uses is Peloton, who obviously boomed during the pandemic, because people needed to keep exercising and they did so at home.

To the idea that having to look at your product proposition, your offering, and to be able to adapt to the fact that everyone’s going back to work again, So we need to think about how do we, how do we adapt our business in order to cope with that change, which is pretty, pretty sudden in those terms.

There’s an example there of a growth story where suddenly you’re you kinda hit this brick wall and you you need to do something quite quickly. What we’re interested are in is the, the growth associated with the diagram, you can see, bottom right there. So in other words, we need to rapidly evolve. We need to have a look at what it is we do.

And in some way, we need to be able to turn on the six months. We need to be able to suddenly change course and thinking about the qualities that organizations need you know, enable to be able to do that. We we’ve come up with what we call, key tensions and key principles So the principles of rapid evolution that you can see here are that change change becomes who you are and what you do anybody who’s been, out there who’s been involved in any kind of change, a leadership or chain change programs where people are concerned is that you’ll be familiar with the idea that change is a constant.

So, change becomes who you are and what you what you do. And we have to think big, what we have to ask Both organizations who who start to think in agile terms in terms of fail failing fast, where you need to get something out quickly and you you’re relying less on your perfectionist tendencies and more on your tendencies to be able to take something to market very quickly to a small confined group of people and then bring it bring it back.

The third principle there about fast, fast, slow, we have to know when when we need to push forward and when when reflection is required, and you’ll see that in some of these, these tensions that we’ll be exploring.

Lesses more. And then finally, the idea that tension creates energy for change, if you look around, in, looking, around the world tension is something which is, present in all kinds of different dimensions and elements. So if you think about a suspension bridge for example, it’s held up on the basis of tension. So tension creates energy.

Energy can either be harnessed to the positive or to the negative, and it’s about how do we harness harness tension in able to create energy for change. So these are our key principles. And from that, we we come up with, what we call five tensions. Now this is the bit that that I’m gonna start to open up a conversation about with you around these five key areas.

Tensions, around organizational behavior, which, can put an can put an organization into the best possible position to in in order to buck the trend and to, sort of push against the, the forces that are acting acting on it. So you can see these sort of summarized here. As you as you look at these, have a think about where you’ve noticed these perhaps in your own organization, but also clients that you’re familiar with, and clients that you work closely with day to day, because we we notice this in lots of hours. We’ve all, we’re all dealing with really, really strong forces, globally on a day to day basis.

So these these are our five tensions.

To bring this back to facet five, what I’ve done is I’ve I’ll I will take you through each of these key areas, these five key areas, and then I put a suggestion in as to what we might be looking for either within an individual, within a team, or within an organization.

Labels or limits that. Now there’s there’s great conversations here around what are we what are we prioritizing within our, our skill sets and our behaviors. So as you as you listen to the breakdown that I’m gonna go through, feel free to to put, any questions that you like into chat. I’ve asked Nicola to, play back any questions that we get, and I’ll also take a look myself, but thinking about what what what your view is on how we’re viewing, how does somebody’s profile, how does an organization’s tendency sit within all of these? So our first tension is the idea around being sure of where you wanna get to fixing your vision, we we like clarity with human beings. We tend to rely on a little bit of predictability because of our biology and because of our preferences.

Some are wedded to that more than others.

Some people, some people are generally like to know where they’re heading.

If you look at any kind of objective setting, process, if you look at any organizational strategy, you can’t decide how you’re gonna get somewhere unless you know where you’re going. So whether you’re calling it a north star or, you know, mission or a vision is being really, really crystal clear on that is our first, is our first priority. And then our tension is on deciding how we’re gonna get there.

We’ve we use constantly the acronym Voca volatile uncertain complex and ambiguous in that in that environment we we simply have to be able to flex how we get there. And then, you’re if you’re not thinking about this already, thinking about the kinds of characteristics that sit within an organization that allow it to, be able to manage these tensions. So there’s a couple of questions that you that you think to think about from a leadership perspective.

How clear are you on what the future looks like? How well have you envisioned this for your teams and how motivated our people by the vision to make it a reality. Leaders, the leadership leadership’s role is to, set direction, is to tell people where where not tell people necessarily but engage people in where the organization is going. So fixing the vision becomes a vital part of the makeup of not only the leadership, but the individuals within the team. And then the second part around flexing the journey, are we sufficient responsive enough to, to the changing landscape.

If you think about it as any kind of journey, you could be on land sea on a or in a in the air at any point. Each of those require different qualities. So What are the assumptions that we’re making about the road ahead, whether it is a road or whether whether whether it isn’t? So These two qualities become really, really important in looking in balancing.

I’ve gone simply here to the idea of, the two key factors that I think kind of dominate this this conversation are will and control.

And, any, any, you could look at this at any level. So we might look at this as an individual level. We might be coaching a leader who has really, really high will. Will describing how firmly we stick to our goals versus how flexi flexible we are. If I’m high well, I’m gonna be very decisive, very assertive, and very tenacious.

In being and sticking to the goals that I’ve set, as an individual. If I’m as part of a team, there may be more confrontation, but again, there will be a really clear, people will have clear view about, fixing that vision and then keeping the goal in mind.

Now what I find really interesting here is that Did degree of, control we prefer or we demonstrate within our, individual team or organizational preference is is really crucial here because if we’re all Scott, if we’re all looking at high control as a predominant as a predominant characteristic, control will will generally probably make the have the preference that there is one way to get or that there’s a right way to get there or the that the way to get there is structured, and we set it at the start, and this is what we stick to. We know that individuals in high control are excellent at setting a plan and sticking to it and about being very clear about that plan. Now the challenge here is if the plan changes.

Any of you who, experience this yourself or working with individuals and teams, that struggle to be able to flip and be agile will know that control plays a plays a part in this We have to we have to be able to be flexible and adaptable, which is where the the advantages of lower control come in. So, any with any individual, when you’re talking about fixing the vision and flexing the journey, yes, they can be really clear about where they’re getting to, but how do have they chosen to get there and how, let’s say, able are they to flex and adapt? So I think the two the two key qualities that we are most interested in here are to what degree does the individual team or organization demonstrate the qualities associated with high will versus What is their orientation to achieving that? How how structured or flexible do they appear to be in terms of control.

I’m just gonna pause there and see if anyone has any any, observations or or thoughts on that.

If not, I will move on to the second tension, but feel do feel free to chime in. I think what’s really interesting here is that as we were going through this, we you can make a case for, quite a lot of the behavior supported by a number of factors, but what I what I’ve tended to refer to here is what I think the most important, focus should be.

So tension on fixed division flex the journey, Okay. So we’re going to some quite interesting, language here. Now our second contention is the degree to which an organization can be self questioning. So in other words, how closely does an organization look at its priorities and question them? We call it productive paranoia.

In other words, you know, are we we’re looking inward. We’re being critical, but we’re we’re looking at ourselves thinking, can we do this better? How do we improve this? Because complacence, particularly when you think about the organizations that become very successful, complacence can become the enemy. So that productive paranoia is an extremely, extremely important part of us being able to look in a mirror as an organization and decide what it is that we, perhaps need to change up or do differently.

The tension there is against pursuing and being, sort of convicted, and committed to what it is you you you believe you need to do. So we call that courageous conviction. You have a high level of conviction in what you believe the organization is there to do and you pursue it. These naturally fight against each other.

And so if we’re talking about leadership behavior, to what extent are your leaders focused on what’s going on internally versus externally, our productive paranoia has to involve an element of horizon scanning, an element of after looking ahead and thinking about, where are our strengths and what challenges are we likely to, come into? So again, you can start to think about, what the qualities, within the profile that that kind of promote that kind of behavior. Are they noticing changes in the internal and external environment early enough?

Is my radar scanning. Have I got that awareness of what’s coming up? I think you’ll you’ll probably all know what’s coming in terms of traits.

Factors.

Courageous conviction, our leaders clear on, and that they committed to the priorities that they’re pursuing. So Again, it’s a balance. You need to be, confident and committed, but also you need to be able to be able to look in the mirror and say, Okay. Are we doing this right? And are we inspiring teams to commit to pursuing these opportunities?

Again, the leader’s role there. So moving these into the, thinking about the space of factors.

As you probably suspected, I think emotionality plays a strong part with productive paranoia, excuse me, Zack.

We know that the strong qualities associated with high mortality our visit vigilance of perceptiveness among other things, not not just those, but the ability to be self critical and to want to improve that’s a really, really important element of any organization.

If we’re talking about leadership authenticity, for example, being able to admit when you’re wrong or admit when something isn’t quite what it should be and being willing willing to change it I think that’s really, really, a key quality that organizations need to flex and adapt to.

If you can imagine an organization that is it’s comprised entirely or or predominantly of lower emotionality, there might just be a little bit placements creeping in there. Yes. Things will appear confident and pros possibly optimistic, but are they falsely optimistic? So I think this is a really, really important element of, this second tension.

In association with the mortality, the work that I do with teams and individuals, I often find that those with the lower energy scores and are ones thinking it through. We know that as a preference.

So if I have higher mortality and low energy, I’m gonna be really, really focused on what’s going on here, and, I’m gonna be thoughtful less less probably less keen to share it so that we need to we need to put a process in there that gets the views from these people, but the the, lower energy will make us very, go into ourselves and think about that. So we need to balance the, the self doubt that can come out of that. But in in terms of looking inwards, organizations that have processes which capture this reflection and this natural, caution people have. Can be useful.

And then on the courageous conviction side, these may exist in one individual, but about how does that individual balance load? And that’s this is why we call them tensions.

I might be really reflective and, think really deeply about how I’m doing something or or or how we’re performing But in terms of my conviction, if I’ve got strong beliefs and I’ve got that high affection, think of the idealist profile, really strong beliefs and principles, I’m totally committed to what I believe, and I’m tenacious and goal oriented. I have also have have highwall there. There’s a there’s a natural potential effort for that to exist in in in one individual. So This isn’t, definitive, but these are the, when I was talking this through, these were the qualities that were most prevalent in the discussion that we were having around the second tension. Again, feel free to put in a question or anything, on chat, but just to just to break up, the explanations I’m giving, but hopefully there you can see, Again, at a team level, how how how good are a team at doing this? How how can a team remain committed to what they’re doing?

But also, self reflective at the same time, and and how do we nurture both of those?

Okay.

So Our next, and you can see the example there from Jeff Bezos, but, our next tension sits between fearless experimentation and sharp decisions. So in other words, you can see there, I think big acts soon start small and learn fast, being able to be comfortable with doing doing something new or doing something differently but also at the same time being able to make decisions that are, you know, are sharp and quick. I I mentioned earlier, this is the idea of failing fast. I think this is a really important element of it, and avoiding decision making biases, which push against that. So the the the status quo bar bias there preference for avoiding change in order to maintain current.

We know that that will be a preference in some profiles, risk aversion and sunk cost fallacy. So the idea that we’ve we’ve got we’ve got halfway. We might as well finish now. There’s a really common, force perception that people can have of of how they have of, let’s say a project that isn’t going to plan, the sunk cost fallacy gives us a false impression of of progress we’ve made versus progress we could make. So that that’s an example of of of another decision making bias.

We need to play against these.

And so when you’re talking about fearless experimentation, versus sharp decisions, think about these three questions.

In which areas should we be taking more risk testing out new, more radical ideas? So notices in which areas there, where are we looking in our organization for the, new big ideas. The fear where is the fearless experimentation in what we do? We know that we need to keep some things constant.

But where are the opportunities within the organization to do something a bit different, a bit radical?

Lots of organizations now focus on particularly engineering, organizations focus on particular pockets of their organ that have the opportunity to, try something out within a, what they call a sandbox or something like that where you can actually try something with a discrete audience, get their feedback. And work it through.

Second question, what are we hanging on to that we need to let go of in order to move forwards?

Again, it’s a it’s a slightly different sense to the first question, but, conservatism, doing things in the same way will breed, you know, it will make this question quite a difficult one to to answer and consider.

What do we need to let go of in order to move forward so being able to be fearless and saying moving off with the old and and moving on with new ideas. So I think that’s a really another key question for leadership And finally, what biases are making our decision making less effective?

I’ve done a lot of work recently.

In the legal profession, looking at, cognitive diversity, and we’ve been using facet five to demonstrate the different ways in which people will approach problems and solutions, biases in things like in areas such as cognitive, when you’re thinking about cognitive identity, this is this plays a really, really strong role. So three examples there of where these tensions could play out by asking questions. So in terms of, when we’re looking at a profile, Who are the fearless experimenters? Who the who are the people that you know, will try something new and be kind of up for a change. And, obviously, a couple of examples there that make us think about this.

If I have the combination of low control, high affection, I’ll probably somebody or unlikely be somebody who has a who has a tendency or, you know, characteristically will I’ll enjoy opportunities and new things because we know that the, lower control tendencies are to challenge the way things are done.

I, I’m locotrol myself, and I and I enjoy finding new ways of doing things, sometimes to amuse myself, other sometimes to effect an improvement. It could be what for whatever reason, the motivation is there, but it’s different. But the lower control can make a really interested in, you know, what could this look like? Let’s do it differently. Let’s not use the preset rules and instructions, and let’s let’s work out a different way. But if you if you combine that with high affection, you’ll actually get a myriad of opportunities because we know that affection is linked to openness and curiosity in people and ideas. And we know from Teamscape that higher faction teams create psychological safety with each other.

This becomes really important when you’re experimenting. You don’t want to, advocate experimenting if people feel that they’re gonna get fired if it goes wrong, you need to create a psychologically safe environment. And so the the factor and the characteristics that most closely linked to that are higher affection. So, obviously, most of us on, you know, on this call are aware that flexibility is important when you’re talking about people’s factors and factor scores, but the if you have a predominance of high affection, it’s really, quite important, to, think about what biases will that create in the team in terms of its ability to experiment and be, be fearless in that experimentation. I think there’s also something in there about emotionality So talking about how those exist within, feel this experimentation is quite important. And then we’re thinking about sharp decisions.

How do you make sharp decisions? I’m not sure not too sure I’m good at that. I could see Zara, you’ve managed to solve some technical problems. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I can hear you. Whose apologies. I’m not sure where to just let you carry on.

It’s okay. I might bring you in on the conversation around around sharp decisions, actually.

I need to introduce my colleague, Zara Weisel, who who’s our director of research, has had really, really terrible technical problems. So we didn’t wanna hold you hold you up any further. But I’m really pleased you can join, and maybe we can have this conversation around, sharp decisions. So We’re talking about making decisions, in such a way, and what the the factor score, you know, the factor or characteristics that might perhaps facilitate that a little bit.

And, lower emotionality creates, people that have the give their confident and unworried impression. And I think to make sharp decisions, there needs to be an element of abandoned involved. We talked about this yesterday, didn’t we? Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Not worrying about, you know, loss immersion thing, trying to not be influenced too much by your emotions in your decision making. So, yeah, being able to separate, you know, emotions from situation or legacy issues or, you know, all of those things is really important.

So some some abandoned and then combined with, again, with higher well. I mentioned higher well earlier. It was interesting that higher well came quite a lot of our conversations, determination and decisiveness that, kind of most fearless list that people have when they have very high will in being able to decide what they’re gonna do and when they’re gonna do it. It’s it’s a really important element of sharp decision making.

Yeah. Definitely. I can largely, the the interesting thing is the fact that that might mitigate, status quo biases that we all have. So, you know, if left her own biases, then the decision would be let’s not change. Let’s not do something different, whereas that strong will might overcome the bias to just, you know, keep things as they are.

Absolutely. I think, talking about that status quo bias, we we’ve got another potential challenge creeping in there around control as well. So if someone is in a if you have a high control organization, it will do things in a in a specific way or it will prefer to do things in a specific way. And you might see a tendency within leadership to keep things as they are and that plays against what we’re what we’re trying to achieve with this, tension.

So I’m I’m I’m asking for the comments as we go, Zara, but, I think if we move on to attention four, talk to us a little bit about this. Yeah. So, this is a really interesting one. So you’ve got enlightened empathy on the one hand, which is really deeply understanding your stakeholders, whether that’s your employees or your customers, so having that deep understanding, so being curious asking questions, you know, seeking to understand before, you know, jumping in.

So to some extent that lead to evidence based decision making, so making your decisions based on what data or information you’ve got, about your audiences.

But that is intention with this concept of leap of faith. So it’s more if you, you know, if a leader wants to try and do something different, get ahead of the curve, then there won’t be data necessarily about how might people respond in this situation because we haven’t encountered it before what might customers think about this new product where they don’t know yet because they haven’t encountered it. So it’s bringing in that little bit of creativity, and when we think about managing people that might be giving somebody, you know, a stretch opportunity. We haven’t seen them perform in this environment before or in this scenario, but I’m going to just trust my intuition, and take that leap of faith so could be with, you know, taking a risk on an employee or it could be a new product or offer or a way of doing things.

So, yeah, hopefully that explains the kind of two tensions in in terms of that.

Yeah, and they’re the sorts of questions that we’d ask leaders, aren’t they to to try and help them think about how they’re currently operating, on this tension. So, you know, do you really under stand your audiences. When’s really the last time that you spent a day in the shoes of, you know, any key stakeholder, that’s your team members or frontline employees in in your organizational customers.

So that’s that first one.

And then, you know, other questions around, well, where are the opportunity take a leap of faith to encourage others to take a leap of faith to do something they haven’t done before, or, you know, being creative putting something out there that, is a bit different to what we’ve seen in the past and trusting your intuition rather than what the evidence is necessarily telling you. So Yeah. Some interesting things there. And what what sorts? What are your reflections in terms of personalities influence on on that? Well, I when we were looking at this yesterday.

This was really interesting because, what does it mean to have empathy? I mean, we know that, when we when we, look at somebody’s profile, there are things that you can perhaps understand little cues that you can get around how how interesting others someone is going to be. And we know that affection is it really supports that. So pinning others first willing to believe, we know our characteristics of of higher affection. So the the suggestion there is that if you’ve got a a higher section team or higher section organization, you you you will have, one that probably listens to its people, hopefully in order to understand, you know, their position.

So if you combine that without having a lower well. So we’ve talked about Highworld quite a lot.

And I think one of the dangers when you’re when you’re doing this kind of work is that you can start to talk about ideals, but lower well in this case, but the onus on, it takes it away, it takes the, spotlight away from your own views and opinions, and it’s actually okay. So So, you know, what what do people think? How are how are people feeling and what what what, what’s their view?

So low lower will and high affection, I think is a potentially useful combination when you when you wanna have in life and empathy. When you wanna listen to your us. You don’t wanna bombard them with your views. This is what I think you should do.

You you you’ve got your list. I mean, we know that people with lower well are quite often better listeners that offer with people with with high high high well who who give their views a lot. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Not wanting to force your own agenda onto a situation, just being open to seeking to understand before launching in with your own, you know, agenda or issues that you want us trying to push.

Yeah, and tell us a bit more about what know, on the other side to that. So that that leap of faith that has, you know, what have we got there? I I’m reminded of the quite a few years ago, Richard Branson wrote a book called screw it. Let’s do it.

That’s what I think of when when, when I see leap of faith, you know, what’s making up that kind of psyche. And Again, I’ve got with, I was thinking about the emotionality factor. You’re making a leap.

There’s some element of fear involved there or as an implication that you there’s there’s something dangerous happening. And I think lower emotionality will give you that confidence and optimism.

So maybe you need to think about who you’re who you’re more confident, optimistic, people are when you’re when you’re when you’re needing to do this because they’re the ones that will make you feel like it’s okay, and then it’s alright to do it. Let’s let let’s go.

And then naturally, if you team that up with people who are action oriented, higher energy. So, you know, risking impulsiveness, but spontaneity is what we’re looking for a leap of faith. Let’s not think about it too much. Let’s you know, over we go.

So that’s that that’s where my mind went when thinking about this because And to to what degree would you need to could you harness that within a team or or or cross an organization? So I think this is a this is a really, this is really, really important as well. Yeah. And you see it a lot in teams, don’t you?

So and especially in the environments people are having to in at the moment. So having to be able to act when we don’t have all of the information, it’s a real, you know, common challenge these days if you wait until you really understand that empathy piece. If you need to wait until I really just need to understand how this is gonna land with people, before you act, then sometimes it’s too late. And so in in a fast paced, you know, environment, then sometimes you do have to take the leap of faith more more often, you know, I’m gonna have to do something here even though I’m not entirely sure I haven’t got all of the information or perhaps haven’t, consulted as deeply as I wanted to. So it’s that tricky balance, isn’t it? And we we also we also know that, thinking about the two factors I’ve I’ve referenced here.

We know that higher emotionality will create more apprehension, and we know that caution comes out of that. And I can certainly relate to sometimes being paralyzed through, you know, not through fear, but through way being wary about doing something.

And when you’re talking about making a leap of faith, that could be that could be a barrier or a blocker to that. Definitely. Yeah. I think that’s really That’s really important.

Yeah. So She move on to the fifth one? Yeah.

I love it. Yeah.

Really important one here. So it’s about having that strength in diversity of every type of diverse see. So obviously, this is kind of comes back to in a vuca environment where you don’t really know what’s gonna come down the tracks, what challenges might we need to face in a few months or years’ time, having that diversity in the Swiss Andre knife, analogy is really useful when you don’t know what we might have to face because we’ve got that broad range of, you know, of stuff in our toolkit of people of of diversity of thought of all of those things. So we’ll be able to handle kind of whatever’s thrown at us.

So it’s that making sure also that we’re, you know, obviously, using people’s unique skills and preferences and background and ways of looking at situations, but it’s making sure on the other side that that, we do have alignment in the key places where it matters to be able to move forwards, you know, at pace, so that unified alignment. And I like the murmuration analogy because it’s you know, there’s some difference, but they’re they’re they’re in harmony. And yes, you might have some, you know, birds on the edge doing something a little bit different slightly over there, and that’s fine.

But so long as, you know, overall, we’re we’re moving in harmony than than that’s, you know, that’s that’s great. So it’s that tension. Yeah.

And they won’t what are we what are we what do leaders need to be thinking about then here? Do you think? Yeah. So, I mean, the classic stuff that I’m sure many people that we bring out often when we’re, you know, talking to teams about their their team facet profile. So, are you actually, how different are you in terms of your approach to a situation?

Are you using that? Are you leveraging it? Are you leveraging the difference or are we trying to get people to fit, to what we think is the best way of doing things or you know, cultural fit.

So it’s that I, you know, to what extent are you diverse and to what extent are you leveraging there.

And then, you know, in in terms of that alignment piece, if we had to really focus down on some core things are we all aligned about what those core things are?

So if we went, you know, I think it’s interesting to go out into an organization and ask people what are the main priorities? What are the things that part of our organization that really matter, are we aligned about around those, and see what the answers are? That would kind of be the difference of how tight or diverse their murmuration would be. You’ve got people who see these things as our core priorities or core principles even. And others who see it differently, then that can’t be an issue. It can certainly slow you down because you’re not moving smoothly, you know, and aligned.

No. Absolutely. And I think, for this for this particular tension, it’s where it’s, where I wanted to focus the my comments on are on how do we use the various FAST Five products in order to, consider what these look like. So with diverse communities, I I’ve been speaking to and I’m, one or two clients recently about using audition. And what’s really interesting about audition is that it obviously, it forces your hand when you’re when you’re making the decision around. Do we do we find someone who, will fit, what we believe our culture is, or do we want somebody who will add to it? And I think there’s a really there I mean, there’s a tension there is, you know, are we looking for a cultural fit or cultural ad?

And audition helps clients really think hard about that. I was on a call this morning with a client who wants to look for a a senior role using using it and the question is around how much do you want somebody who is going to, fit in with how you view a successful person in that role or are you prepared to take a risk and, take somebody who’s you know, who’s gonna come at it from a different angle, and that’s a really interesting question to ask when we’re talking about how cognitively diverse for people because we all know the biases around hiring, and we all know the biases around selection.

So thinking about the the ways in which we can use asset five to bring a to think around cognitive diversity, like I said earlier, using personality as a cognitive diversity measure is a really, really great way to look at it. You I’ve just put these up here for for for the sake of illustration, but you could look at a as an organizational analysis on the left hand side there where you’re looking at diversity, you know, you’re looking at distribution and factor scores across larger populations We have team Gape, essentially, where you could look at smaller groups. And then, obviously, at the individual level, you could talk about you could be you can coach a leader on on all five of these tensions based upon the type of information that we we’ve been talking about. But I think specifically around cognitive diversity, this is a really it’s a newer idea, and it is very powerful.

So, And how when you’re looking at a profile, when you’ve got that data across an organization, you’re looking at the collective facet profiles, how widely or narrowly distributed do you tend to find the profiles you know, do they have a range? Yeah. It’s interesting.

Obviously, the more people you have in a sample, the more the more normally distributed it will appear.

But we did a piece of work recently with a with a particular segment of the, I guess it’s finance.

Sector looking at a specific role, and we were looking at the differences between, I think it was lawyers, because we’re, obviously, we’re a we’re owned by a legal group. So lawyers is quite features heavily in in kinda some of the preferences that we encounter internally, lawyers bankers and accountants, I think. And and there were some subtle differences. Of significance, we did some statistical analysis on it. There were some subtle, but significant differences in the in the distribution of the sub facts, some of the sub factor scores. The most interesting one was that, lawyers were higher higher emotionality quite significantly.

Which was, which was interesting because of that that weariness and that caution, and and also perfection them as well. You see a lot of perfectionism in in the legal profession because as somebody said to me in a session I was running, It’s indoctrinated to you from day one that that, you know, it’s about the letter of the law. It’s about detail.

So you can see, obviously, there’s a lot of lot of normally distributed information, but it’s really interesting to look at the ones that are skewed either positively or. More negatively.

Another way that you can use the data, because it is about data. And, we, you know, we’ve got we’re preaching to the choir with this with of this call, I I hope, but, where you’re talking about the strength of this approach, you’re you’re talking about, norm norm groups and data reference, which, you know, is much is a much tougher to it’s much tougher to argue against that when you’re talking about significance in the groups. Yeah. And and, you know, I think the, the concept of rapid evolution and growth where where our organizations are in terms growth is another interesting question to ask when looking at profiles of a team or an organization because obviously you can look at you can look at that in terms of functional differences, and you might expect to see differences, right, in the personality profiles according to you know, the accountants in a company versus the creators versus, you know, because that that might have been, you know, something that they’ve consciously tried to do through recruitment.

But then I think if you ask that question about, well, what does the organization need, collectively?

Due to this stage of growth that they’re at, that’s another interesting question. If you’ve got lots of highly cautious individuals and yet you want to go into a rapid growth phase of your development, then, you know, it’s it’s useful to know that, well, that that could be a problem. You know, there’ll be lots of people not wanting to run fast towards this uncertain future if you’ve got, you know, particular profiles. I think helping our organizations to think about that in terms of the suitability of your profiles given where you’re at in your growth cycle is an interesting one as well.

Absolutely. I mean, piece of work I recently did with a senior exec team around, transformation really help them to understand what their preferences were in terms of, what you’re saying, you know, how how how long how likely are we to run at this versus be cautious and and it really helped them understand how they’re gonna come across to their organization and to their people. And how to how to be aware of the blind spots that they had as well. Yeah.

And how much we really need are gonna need to support people through this? And perhaps even have a reality check on the pace that you think you might be able to introduce change because, you know, if you’ve got a load of course, with individuals, then that’s gonna be a bit of a clash. So I think, yeah, it’s very useful in change management to look at profiles like these. I wonder if people have used in that way.

Can you see the chat? I don’t touch anything in case I lose this, but any questions from people or comment? Yeah. Let’s see if anyone wants to And can you call me and ask any questions?

Don’t be shy.

Oh, I guess I’m dead to move the screen. I can now see people. Hello.

What what resonated with you in terms of what we’ve been discussing in terms of those tensions and the way that you see personality playing? I’m gonna flick this back hopefully, helpfully. So that hopefully, hopefully, that’s interesting. Yeah.

There we go. I’m gonna go back to that.

Just to remind everyone where we where we’ve been.

But if you, you know, if you have any thoughts, happy to discuss, I have to say that. I might it’s supposed to say it’s supposed to typing.

I could be there all day, making it up to the next one. Thank you. Think it’s really interesting work and really insightful work, that you’ve done. And I think it it all as Rink is saying, it all does resonate.

I think the opportunity is how we help the individual understand their whole approach. To that model as opposed to saying there’s particularly one person or one aspect to the somebody’s personality that will drive that. I do agree. I mean, I think there are aspects where somebody will find that a bit easier, more effort.

There’s probably a bit more, do that in a bit more of a flow, but I don’t think we’ve always got the diversity in a team, unfortunately, that we always find that. So it’s about how do you then help people understand how they can stretch into those styles? Do it and I suppose my Rambling question is, do you think that people have initially the capability? And it’s a skill based and mindset thing, in order to adopt that model or to think in the way that, organizations need to go because, I think when we help under when people understand themselves, then we’ve got a great opportunity for them to be able to flex into those tensions, more knowingly and, more deliberately?

We were we were, Zara and I, we were we were talking about this because we were talking about, these as as almost like muscles. Won’t we? They’re like reflect reflective muscles that you need to be able to dial up or dial down given what your what your context is.

So, I mean, I I don’t know what you things are, but I can I can visualize a a coaching session where you’re where you’re using the tensions as in a template, and then you’re you’re using the profile information to help that English understand what they what they do well in this area and what they what they might wanna dial up given the given the situation? I’m not sure what you think, Zara. Yeah. Well, also something that’s sprung to mind.

Was that grant? Is that grant talking? Can’t Yes. Yes. Yeah.

I think you mentioned skills, didn’t you there, which strikes me as a really interesting issue in terms of the interaction between capabilities and skills and personality preferences because I think if if when we look at the overall picture as you were talking about and you recognize that somebody may need to flat to, you know, out of preference to flex out of preference in order to get a different balance with these tensions, then if if we can equip them also with some skills and capabilities to help them you know, on the side that it isn’t a natural preference, then obviously they’re gonna be able to flex more easily.

So I think there’s a nice interaction between skill. If somebody was, you know, a bit cautious and prefers, you know, to stay in their comfort zone, for instance, but if we can equip them with skills, then think it might make it easier for them to act out of preference. The moment, is that making any sense? Yeah.

That’s exactly what I mean. I think once we understand preferred approach against a model like you’ve got here, which is saying when we talk about things like productive paranoia, for example, and we’re talking about higher emotionality and, you know, maybe higher control or whatever that may be, for example, but you’ve got somebody with quite low emotionality and quite high energy and high will. And off they go kind of like a loaded gun and and drive hard place, I think just keep going. The coaching conversation is just amazing at then and saying, look, what are you missing here in this concept?

How are you, stopping slowing down and being more reflective in order to do that. And here’s some, as you say, some skills or, capabilities that you might want to to think about, or other members in the team that you can, rely on in order to help you in that process as well. So they’re not just you know, we know that lower motionality and higher energy high will naturally rate themselves quite confidently about these sort of aspects. So holding them more gently and saying, well, actually let’s just check that that’s rise before you rush off.

I think is a really powerful mechanism. So I think, and to your point, Daniel, you know, putting structure around those with tools like audition, not to assess in order to categorize, but to help people understand their approach and where the the growth of that flex is required is a really powerful coaching conversation and also an organizational development opportunity to say collectively, we have people who are, less likely to sit in productive paranoia well. Against our model, but will be great at unified alignment and cohesion.

Yeah. Great. So let’s look at how we can support that more broadly.

I know one thing one thing that just strikes my unconscious at the time changes anxiety inducing organizationally, it’s stressful, whether you experience stress or not, it’s a stressful situation. And I think it some of the things we’ve explored here bring out the fact that if you have higher emotionality, then it’s a really valuable asset to have in situations like that. And I think I do so many coaching conversations with people who come in with high emotionality and they wanna pull all the bad stuff out of it. But actually, you can actually start to talk about some of the factors which people are more critical about within themselves.

You can actually talk about how that’s a real, a real strength. So going back to skill, it’s a real skill to with high emotionality to be cautious and to be so to, you know, critical things because, although it feel like it for those people quite often. It’s, you know, they can’t switch it off. So I think there’s a real positive in in spin on that there as well.

I think it’s it’s a permission giving. Sorry. I think it wants to get something permission to to celebrate that brilliance that they have and how to access that and bringing that up and saying, did you know or have you thought of?

In this context, this is where it becomes really useful.

It you can see people’s shoulders go down and they lift up, their chest comes out and they go, yeah. Well, actually, yeah, I’ve got something else to contribute. So we’re, you know, we’re improving the law being, engagement, discretionary effort. Etcetera, etcetera, all of those, I think, come with that, permission giving and and language.

Absolutely.