Conflict can rip a team apart, skyrocketing resentment against management or even pitting co-workers against each other. But office conflicts will calm down, or even dissolve entirely, once people understand each other’s differing Advantages. Once you know someone’s Advantages, you can see past the exterior and understand what’s really going on.
Each Advantage is like a different “language.”
For instance, Alert is the language of details, Mystique is the language of listening, and Innovation is the language of creativity. When you understand what languages your team members are speaking, you can better understand why discord is happening in the first place.
Which Advantages do your team members or employees use when they communicate?
A diverse mix of Advantages can provide balance for a team.
Rather than forcing your team members to change, help them become more of who they already are. Once you know which Advantages your team uses, you can help each person succeed by dialing up their existing traits. Rather than training people to follow a formula (and trying to force-fit them into a mold), you can support them in adding value in the way that is most effective and natural for them.
Every Advantage has an important role within an organization.
Just as employers should seek diversity in gender and backgrounds, so should they also understand the Advantages used by their existing team members and potential hires, in order to build teams with a balanced and healthy interplay of perspectives.
TELL US IN THE COMMENTS: Which Advantages do your team members use? Mostly Innovation (creative new ideas) or Mystique (strategic analysis)? If you want to find out for sure, have them take the assessment.
Sally Hogshead is an international Hall of Fame Speaker and New York Times best-selling author of HOW THE WORLD SEES YOU , a complete guide on how to defeat the threat of competition and add value to every communication. She is also the author of FASCINATE: “Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation. Sally’s books are founded on a scientifically-based system of influence, based on the brain’s hardwired patterns, and she has taught over 200,000 people how to use their natural strengths to become more persuasive.
