Randy Pond is Senior Vice President of Operations, Processes and Systems at Cisco Systems Inc.
Every executive in the world is constantly in search of that book, tool, or process that can make them and their team more effective leaders and a more effective team. I have put myself and my teams through hours of individual and team coaching, teambuilding events, lectures, profiling analyses, book reviews, and more in support of this quest. All of these have had some nominal amount of success, but nothing that pushed us to the level of excellence that I was searching for. Frequently these exercises created unnecessary tension between my team and I and between the members of the team. So with these less than stellar experiences in team and personal development, I had become skeptical of the potential for success.
For these reasons, I was largely uninterested when one of my executives came to me with yet another consultant to work with the organization to improve our effectiveness. The passion he demonstrated in describing the possibility for success pushed me to meet with yet another consultant, with yet another program to improve team dynamics.
My first interaction with Paul Burgess did nothing to assuage my skepticism. His casual dress, laid back style and Aussie accent immediately cast a dark shadow on my assessment of the probable success of this relationship. Two minutes into our initial conversation my mind was screaming, “Not another profiling exercise. The team will shoot me.” But as we continued to discuss the merits of the Instinctive Drives™ approach, I began to see the difference in this and the many others that I had been associated with. I was intrigued by this concept of gaining an understanding of peoples’ motivations and tendencies, and how they could be used to better lead and manage them. We decided that the litmus test would be to run me and a broad group of my manufacturing leadership team through the assessment and then debrief with me on the results.
We completed the assessment and were entertained by the content of the questionnaire and the results. While not all my team was wildly enthusiastic about the process, all saw the possibilities. The group fell into two camps. About three quarters of them completely saw themselves in the assessment output and were eager to share their results with the team. The other quarter reacted equally strongly that they did not feel that their I.D.™ represented them. Most of the doubters could be written off to a lack of self awareness and a dislike for what they perceived as “psycho-babble”.
The true test of the value of the I.D. presented itself in two separate meetings, both of which were facilitated by Paul. In the first, I was meeting with two of my execs to discuss their plan of action for the evolution of one of the functions reporting to me and the related timetable. We had a good discussion, at the end of which I concurred both with their plan and its timing. I was generally pleased with the outcome and believed the meeting was effectively over. What I did not realize was that both of my direct reports were still trying to communicate to me, but their style had changed and I had intellectually moved on. Paul interrupted the meeting and told them that given my I.D. and the substance of the meeting, all I was hearing at this point was “blah, blah, blah".
He told them that I had received a good plan with a commitment from them and had moved on. Now they were trying to explain what could go wrong to cause them to miss the date or fail all together, but I was no longer receiving. That caused both them and me to restart the conversation and get all the issues on the table.
The second meeting was even more entertaining. My team and I had spent several hours brainstorming around what was the “the art of the possible” for taking the organization to the next level from a performance standpoint. We had compiled what I believed was a great list of ideas and the excitement was visible. Paul interrupted the conversation to remind us of two things, first the room was filled with ‘Improvisers’, and second that the organization was already complaining about the amount of change and redirection we were pushing on them. He said what we needed was a ‘Completer’ to figure out how to roadmap this new work into our current project schedule and help us reprioritize all the work on our plate. It was quite an eye opener for us that we were the source of the organization angst around changing priorities and plans.
There really is no magic process or tool that can transform a team or person into high performing overnight. I believe however that team self awareness and effective communication greatly enable that transformation. Instinctive Drives is a great process to facilitate both of those things. It has helped me re-craft my conversations with my team and peers, and it has helped me to become more self aware of the impact of my style on others. Paul and I have recently discussed how to expand the use of I.D. to my wife and kids, with the goal of improving our communications as well. So whether your team is a family, a self-managed work group, a couple, or like mine, a business team, the I.D. process can help you better understand who you are as a father, husband, coach, or leader.
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