Hi, this is Neil here from Better Happy. In today's short video, I'm gonna share with you three simple ways to get more from your next team building behavioural profiling session and stop it from becoming a short-lived, expensive box ticking exercise. (deafening music) Just so you know you're in the right place, I'm a licensed practitioner in NBTI, Everything DiSC and Belbin Team Roles.
I've been delivering individual and team profiling sessions for 15 years. I've delivered thousands of standalone profiling programs for senior leadership teams in multinationals, and for driven small business owners, looking to find ways to motivate their employees in order to grow their business. The three tips I'm gonna share with you today have helped my clients to get more from these sessions and as a result, help them to be happier, more motivated, more productive so that they can go on to collectively achieve success. What do we mean by behavioural profiling session?
So behavioural profiling is a great way of assessing and identifying a person's behavioural default settings. If applied correctly, it can hugely improve people's self-awareness. Put simply, behavioural profiling identifies the subconscious behaviours that make up our preferences. There are loads of great behavioural profile reports on the market. And the process is essentially the same for all of them. You invest in your reports, and a licensed practitioner like me, will guide your people through an initial workshop. It's very popular.
If you take NBTI or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, then according to the Myers-Briggs Company, it's taken approximately 1.5 million times a year with 88% of Fortune 500 companies using NBTI profiling within their organisations. When done right, behavioural profiling is a fantastic way to help people to understand their own work style and their own unique strengths leading to better self-awareness teamwork and performance. In fact, we at Better Happy value profiling so much that it is the first step in our full motivational master system. So what's the problem?
Well, I've learned the hard way over many years that without clear long-term objectives, behavioural profiling sessions can be frustrating, irrelevant, boring, short-term, and deliver a poor return on investment. Done badly, behavioural profiling quickly identifies opportunities for your people to grow without explicitly showing your people how to grow. And even at the end of a good session, it can feel like being left with thousands of jigsaw pieces without a complete image to work towards. It can be done, but it can seem that we don't have the available time or energy to work it out. Another analogy is like buying a new car, but not learning how to drive it. This is especially true for the owners of rapidly growing small businesses. It looks to emulate larger businesses. The combination of being under time pressure, through spinning lots of plates and a lack of first unexperienced in designing and delivering behavioural sessions means that although interesting, they can be left scratching their heads and wondering what they actually got for their money.
So, what are the three simple steps that we can use to get a much greater return on investment from your next behavioural profiling session and ensure that the session generates clear, actionable next steps for long-term success? Step one, get everyone profiled, including yourself.
Why get everyone profiled?
Why not?
It sounds silly, but unless you install the tool as a language that you all share, it will quickly become irrelevant. Furthermore, if you don't take part yourself and demonstrate an openness around your behaviours and the way you like to do things, then why should they?
Believe me, I've seen this firsthand with a business owner who profiled 80 team members, but didn't go through the process himself. Sitting in on the session expecting them to open up around their behaviours, whilst not setting a tone of openness was toxic and rendered the whole exercise completely pointless.
Step two, link the session to your values. Very often, behavioural profiling tools are used to contextualise what role you have within the team and how you interact with the rest of the team. But less often do they ask the question, whether your values align with the teams. Value alignment is incredibly important for long-term success. Think about it, your attention to detail, your communication style, and the way you organise yourself, outlined by your report says you're a great fit for this team. But if you hate what you do and the way that you do it, you're not gonna perform. Values are essential.
Step three, use the reports as a foil for a deeper conversation. As a part of the session and the followup, a few days later, force yourselves to collectively ask, "Now what?" And too many times, even a great session ends with the profiles being popped in the top drawer and forgotten. Time and money is effectively wasted at that point. Ask yourselves, based on this insight now,
- What can we do to improve our communication?
- Now, what can we do to align the team to our collective values?
- Now, what can we do to work more effectively on a one-to-one basis with specific colleagues?
By running a session to truly understand the team's strengths, values and learn about the why of the team, you will take the first step to creating a highly motivated team who are laser clear on who they are and what they are collectively working towards. Behavioural and value profiling represents the first essential step on our full roadmap here.
But in order to ensure long-term success, we need to go deeper. And that's why it's important to account for motivation and mission. What motivates your team and how currently motivated your team is, needs to be identified and explored in order to ensure that the effort is sustained. Again, if your behaviours and values are aligned, but you're completely unmotivated, nothing's gonna happen. Only when we have this level of detail and insight into the team, can you effectively create your first meaningful business and personal mission statements and begin to set a course for success. Expanding out again, as we've done here, all of these will come crashing down if you are in pain or sick or exhausted. So we need to look at health. And at the top, unless we systemise everything, we can't empower your team to be autonomous and sustained in their effort. Only then, will you be able to step back with the freedom to be strategic or just to relax a bit. So, good luck with your next profiling session. But if you need need any help with the delivery of a behavioural profiling session, or you'd like to discuss systemising your employee performance to enable growth, free up your time, engage your people, then don't hesitate to book a call with me via the links below. Thanks for listening, take care.
About The Author - Neil Cleaver
Neil has been running small businesses that help big businesses for over 25 years. A passionate people person and strong believer, Neil helps businesses, teams and individuals unlock their potential and thrive. The insights & support Neil brings to any team always create lasting results.
Referenced Sites -