Highly Effective Team or Free-for-All? You Choose.
Leadership teams function best when team members disagree, dispute, and deviate with one another. Leadership teams can also fall apart when members disagree, dispute, and deviate. So, how can both team scenarios work together?
In this article we discuss how listening to and understanding opposing viewpoints is facilitated when team leaders know how their fellow leaders are wired. Moreover, when differing views are honestly considered and given the respect they deserve, the entire organization benefits. When this happens, the leadership team functions at the highest level.
Can Differences in Wiring Cause an Argument?
Our individual wiring, how one is programmed to think and feel, is the primary driver in social interactions, including business disagreements between leaders.
When leaders sit around the conference table and discuss an important issue, it is common for one or more members of the team to stop listening to the thoughts expressed by another member. Why? Maybe it’s because one of the leaders is an external thinker. He prefers to verbalize his ideas as thoughts occur to him, rather than laying out a complete idea, as internal thinkers usually do. This style may appear as rambling to an internal thinker. A conflict can easily arise between internal thinkers and external thinkers, based simply on their communication style. Ironically, that conflict may have nothing to do with the business topic under discussion.
Alternatively, if leadership team members know how other members are wired, it is probable that additional measures of courtesy and patience will be extended once wiring differences are understood. This knowledge enhances the team’s efficacy and ability to reach an intelligent and durable decision.
The Murray Percival Company
MPC is a family owned business that was founded over fifty-five years ago. The company has grown into one of the leading suppliers of products to the Midwest electronics market. The company’s growth came as a result of solid leadership and good business decision-making. But, it hasn’t been easy.
Murray Percival III, General Manager of the company and grandson of the founder said, “We have lots of personalities, and we are all very different people. There were times we needed to understand each other a bit better, that we weren’t fighting each other, and that we were just wired differently.”
The AcuMax Index
The AcuMax Index is an assessment tool that measures, defines and reports on human wiring. AcuMax is not a personality evaluation, or an intelligence test. AcuMax is designed to reveal how people are wired. This knowledge helps people:
- Better align with a specific job
- Improve creativity
- Enhance communication skills
- Increase productivity
- Improve workplace satisfaction
- Become a more effective team player
- Make better decisions
This might sound too good to be true, but see what Murray Percival III has to say about AcuMax:
“We’ve used other solutions in the past, but AcuMax has been simpler. We found in more situations that we get the ‘lightbulb’ to go on a little bit easier when we understanding how our wiring affects everything we do.”
He went on to say: “AcuMax helped us be more respectful of each other’s opinions and get along a little bit better.”
The Dysfunction Conundrum
Of course, poorly functioning teams are commonplace in our world, but do we have to accept that situation?
Randy Brodzik, President of RedViking Engineering, and an AcuMax Index customer, explains how his company uses AcuMax’s team effectiveness model to turn groups in conflict into effective teams.
“We had a number of conflicts internally, but we’ve also had some hiring mistakes. We’re trying to improve on both our operation and hiring practices. We now use AcuMax and the results are surprising how well the assessment actually ‘nailed’ everybody, and accurately depicted what their hard wiring is, and how they operate.”
If you ever talked to a data-driven person the same way you talked to a creative-thinker, then you know how a person’s wiring shapes their ability to listen and understand. Wiring is universally the one common characteristic that affects all people, and learning how people are wired makes the difference between a highly effective team, and one that limps along.
Jay Hawreluk – Founder of AcuMax Index
Jay Hawreluk is the author of Unraveling the Mystery of People, and creator of the AcuMax Index. Fifteen years ago Jay became a Management Consultant, utilizing personality assessments. This experience enabled him to better understand people and how they interrelate, but it also helped him realize the shortcoming of personality and intelligence assessments. To fill a known gap in the human assessment toolbox, Jay developed the AcuMax Index to explain how a human being’s wiring affects his or her behavior at the deepest level.
For more information about the AcuMax Index or to try it for yourself, please contact us for a consultation.
