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PI® Applications - Your Team »
Build Strong Teams
Assembling a group of people to achieve a common goal has great power. For the team to operate effectively, it must harness that power. Diversity of experience and work styles can bring together complementary talents, enabling skillful completion of a variety of tasks. The rub, however, is that these differences can cause friction and misunderstanding. The most effective form of communication for one person may be the least effective for another. One person's decision-making style may be in direct conflict with another's. These are just two of the many causes of stress, frustration, and lost productivity and profit.
If we are to work productively with others, we need to understand, as best we can, our own impact and others' points of view. PI® provides objective information about individual motivating needs and styles, helping us to bridge gaps within the team.
A range of experiences and personalities can bring complementary talents to a group, allowing the team to accomplish great things. However, to work effectively, team members should be selected and developed with an understanding of how different members are motivated and how their operating styles can affect one another. A principal application of the Predictive Index® (PI®) is establishing and applying that understanding to enhance employee satisfaction and team performance.
Deal Effectively with Conflict
Ask most managers where they spend most of their, so-called, non-productive time, and most will answer, "Dealing with people issues!"
Differences and disagreements are a natural part of working together. In a healthy organization, where there are appropriate channels and ways of expressing differences, a certain amount of disagreement - or "conflict" - is energizing and often creative. However, when differences lead to personal confrontation, inappropriate aggression, or intolerably high levels of tension, something must be done to mitigate the tension and redirect the behaviors of those involved. This is the job of the manager, often in partnership with an HR professional.
PI is a source of information that can be a very powerful tool in helping to resolve conflict. By looking at the patterns of those involved, the manager can gain an objective understanding of similarities and differences in the people that may contribute to the underlying cause of the difficulties. She or he can also use PI to help design a way to approach the situation that will be most acceptable to, and effective with, the people involved.
Trillium360 Consulting is available to conduct conflict resolution and mediation sessions at your work location.
Back to TopHow PI® enhances team performance
Good communication, effective leadership and common purpose help teams achieve high levels of consistent performance. The performance of any team is hampered when these elements are not working congruently. Fortunately, PI provides objective information and insight about motivating needs and styles of group members. This gives managers the information they need to maximize team members' strengths, and ultimately apply those strengths to achieve top team performance. Comparing individuals' PI's with job requirements highlights fits and gaps, enabling improvements in training, coaching and leadership building, all of which contribute to engaged employees and improved team performance. PI also provides information that can help managers communicate more effectively with their team and, in the process, achieve positive changes in overall workplace behavior.
The proven value of improving team performance
The management team at DataSys is constantly building teams of disparate people. The challenge is exaggerated because teams are formed and reformed daily to meet specific demands. And for DataSys, implementation team performance represents a significant percentage of annual revenue. "Since using PI, implementation revenues have increased by 21% within one year, with no resultant increase in salary costs. These productivity gains came from increased individual and team performance," reports Lisa Daigle, Founder and President.
Shawmut Design uses PI in project team building. According to Jim Ansara, Chairman of Shawmut, "Just as we wouldn't start to build a building without a good set of blueprints, we don't put together a team of people to build a building without using PI to construct our team, and to coach them in how to resolve their conflicts. Since the time we began using PI, our sales and our employees have grown by 800%. PI has been a part of our success."
Dave O'Brien, Corporate Performance Coach of Earnhardt Auto Centers, says about PI team effectiveness: "We've used PI as our tool to put service teams together and those teams work better together; they finish cars faster. Our customer satisfaction scores at those dealerships have gone up AND stabilized."
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