‘Every advance, every conceptual achievement of mankind, has been connected with an advance in self-awareness’ Dr Carl Jung
When your people truly understand themselves, the potential of your business goes through the roof. Highly performing teams share a common platform – that of trust. And that trust is built on self-awareness (weaknesses as well as strengths), an ability to relate to others (adapting styles), and an encouragement of alternative perspectives (diversity of thinking).
Many companies understand this and use psychometric tools to support this self-awareness of individuals and teams. Psychometric comes from the Greek meaning ‘mental’ and ‘measurement’ and it’s not a new concept: Hippocrates observed four distinct groups of characteristics that make up personality. Dr Carl Jung developed this further and his work forms the basis of the Insights Discovery model.
At Growth Plans, we are accredited practitioners of Insights Discovery which is actually kitemarked by the BPS (British Psychological Society) along with other global standards. Insights Discovery looks at personality preferences – it provides context around what comes easily to some people, and what others find draining – helping you to create a team which maximises its strengths and energies.
Unlike an exam at school or a general knowledge quiz, there are no right or wrong answers. The aim is to give a view of a person: how do they problem-solve; what’s their strategic thinking like; how do the manage; or like to be managed; are they a team player; what environment will bring out the best in them?
Benefits of psychometric testing with Growth Plans includes not only:
but also:
Team profiling is the start of a journey towards highly effective teams. It leads to an appreciation of talents and strengths across the group. With that understanding comes the ability to appreciate why people behave the way they do, why some types complement each other and why, at times, there can be clashes within the team.
Working with the leadership team, using Insights Discovery, we can help you remove challenges that exist as well as improve communication, performance, management style and working environment.
For example, we worked with the leadership team of Uzin Utz UK Ltd. MD, Matthew Brown, realised it would be a useful tool for people to understand themselves but also their colleagues and how they could work together in an efficient and effective way.
“The whole process has helped the leadership team work together more closely,” explains Matthew, “Because they have a greater appreciation and a degree of empathy for an individual’s working style. This, in turn, filters down through their teams because they understand how people want to be worked with. One of the big things we’ve taken away from this is that working against a personality type can be counterproductive for the whole business.”
Insights Discovery gives a leadership team a safe language and tools to communicate more effectively, recognising behaviours that contribute positively to the effectiveness of the team as well as react to challenges to its performance.
We use Insight Discovery psychometric profiling in our Leadership Development services, either with individuals or with teams. It’s an incredibly effective tool for leadership teams. The success of any business is built on the performance of its people and with improved understanding of themselves, people can adapt and connect with others, which leads to workplaces where innovation, creativity and productivity thrive.
If you would like to learn more about our Leadership Development services and Insights Discovery, do get in touch with Liz: [email protected]
