While there are plenty of tools to help understand personalities, it’s harder to gain insight into how we think and collaborate.
Don’t just out-produce the competition—outthink them.
While there are plenty of tools to help understand personalities, it’s harder to gain insight into how we think and collaborate.
The Thinking Styles approach was developed by Mark Bonchek and Elisa Steele. It offers a simple, intuitive alternative to assessment tools like DISC and Myers-Briggs, which can be complex, time-consuming and expensive, and which focus on personality rather than cognition and collaboration.
Thinking Styles can help teams move more quickly from “forming, storming and norming” to performing. Understanding our own and others’ styles accelerates collaboration, increases engagement, generates contribution and improves team performance.
By knowing how members of your team and organization think—and by others knowing how you think—everyone can be more energized, more engaged, more creative and more productive.
Remember that most people are comfortable with more than one Thinking Style, and styles can be fluid and change in different settings. However, most people have one or more dominant styles, just as they are either left- or right-handed.
Individuals find it helpful to understand their own Thinking Styles so they can see how to leverage their strengths and focus their development efforts. People are naturally energized when their work aligns to their primary Thinking Styles. And it can be empowering to master an unfamiliar style.
On teams, a “heat map” of Thinking Styles can show where the team is over- or under-represented relative to the goals and objectives. Oftentimes, team function suffers not because of what kind of thinking is done by the team, but what is not.
The distribution of Thinking Styles reveals what kind of thinking is missing so the team can compensate or bring in complementary resources.
We normally think of roles as being about what people do, such as team leader or project manager. When you need a decision, you go to the leader. When you want a status update, you go to the PM.
While certain Thinking Styles may tend to map easily to certain roles, different Thinking Styles can and do succeed in the same role. Think of the difference between a manager who is focused on planning versus a manager who is focused on energizing. Both are able to get things done, but have different ways to get there. A range of Thinking Styles is helpful across all roles.
Just as team members have assigned roles, teams also need to make sure that all thinking styles are covered.
When you know your predominant Thinking Styles, you know what naturally energizes you, why certain types of problems are challenging or boring, and what you can do to improve in areas that are important to reaching your goals.
Once you know your default styles, it helps to share them with others, and to have others share theirs with you. In this way, your Thinking Style becomes a useful tool—a kind of social currency—for the team.
We often have a hard time seeing aspects of ourselves that come naturally. If you’re having a tough time getting clear on your primary Thinking Styles, it can be helpful to turn to your colleagues for their perspectives.
Ask a few colleagues which Thinking Style they think best describes you, and why. Remember that it may or may not be a style that seems directly related to your role. You can use their response as a springboard for discussion about your respective Thinking Styles, and how they resonate or complement each other.
To assess how you relate with the different Thinking Styles, you can rank them along an axis of how much return is generated by your efforts.
When you’re using Thinking Styles that are in your “genius zones,” you’re getting the biggest return on your efforts. Think of an investment: for the same amount of money, would you rather have only 10% of your money returned, all of your money returned, or 10X of your money return? Ideally, these should be the Thinking Styles you use most in your day-to-day work. To assess your Thinking Styles, place them along this axis.
High Return: Put in 1X effort, get 10X results
Medium Return: Put in 1X effort, get 100% (1X) results
Low Return: Put in 1X effort, get 10% results
Imagine you’re putting together a team to work on a new initiative. Wouldn’t you like to know who’s energized by big-picture strategy discussions and who finds them frustrating, who likes to work on execution details, and who is energized by managing team dynamics?
Normally we think about building teams based on what people do. We select for skills and assign tasks and responsibilities. It’s a mental model that comes from the assembly line: we put everyone in the right position.
But we can also design teams based on how people think.
Leaders are responsible for creating the right mix of Thinking Styles.
Like an orchestra conductor, the leader chooses which style comes to the fore at a particular point in time to carry the tune.
Put too much focus on big picture thinking and the details won’t get done.
Give too much emphasis on action and process thinking, and you will lose the vision or drop out of trust and connection.
In the beginning of the project, Explorer and Planner thinking is helpful to set the strategy and structure the work effort. Then Connector and Energizer thinking take the lead to create the vision, access resources, and enroll stakeholders.
As strategy and planning give way to execution and operations, more detail-focused styles often take the lead. Expert and Optimizer thinking work together to hammer out details and find efficiencies. Meanwhile, Producer thinking executes the plan and crosses things off the list, while those with Coach thinking keep everyone engaged and performing at their best.
Think of the lifecycle of a recent project. For each phase of the project, note where different Thinking Styles could have made a positive impact and why.
Create a “heat map” of your group’s Thinking Styles to see where the team is over- or under-represented relative to goals and objectives.
Have your team take the self-assessment, then map their responses.
Look for patterns. Are some styles conspicuously absent from your team? This is your cue to look for complementary resources or ask other team members to compensate for gaps.
Here’s a simple way to create a heat map: On a whiteboard, draw boxes for all eight Thinking Styles, then apply sticky notes with the names of different team members.
