You're standing up a new project team and want it built to succeed, not just staffed by who's around
This is for you if you're standing up a new project team from people who've shared their Career Discovery results. Maybe the last team all thought alike and shipped the wrong thing fast. You want this one built to succeed, not staffed by whoever jumps on first.
Grab whoever's keen and you rarely get a balanced mix. The first to jump are one kind, fast movers itching to go. The team leans on one style and its blind spot, and no one decides whether the styles pull together or grind.
This won't settle everything a team needs to win. Mission, skills, and budget are their own work. It settles what's hardest to fix once people are in the room: whether the styles fit or clash, and whether the group covers the work.
Work from two parts of each report. Understanding Styles names their working style and, in "Working with [each style]", how their pairings land. The Five Types of Work names the work each is built to do. Set aside an hour.
- Lay the styles on the table. For each candidate, note their working style from Understanding Styles: Accelerator, Analyst, Harmonizer, or Pragmatist. Lay them side by side.
- Balance the mix. If no style is more than half the group, move on. If one is, the group shares its blind spot. Close it the first way you can: add a candidate whose style covers it, if one's available. If not, name the blind spot on the roster and assign a standing outside check, a review gate or an outside reviewer.
- Bridge the pairs who'll work closest. Pick the two or three who'll work side by side. For each pair, open their "Working with [each style]" in Understanding Styles and note the one friction to watch and what helps. The report carries the move, so you don't guess which pairs grind.
- Cover the work. Name what this project needs done. New ideas are Creative, a system run well Operational, people won Influential, pieces connected Integrative, the answer found Analytical. Lay each person's primary and complement from The Five Types of Work against that list, and fill any work the group is missing.
- Land the roster. On one page: the line-up, the shared blind spot and its cover, the friction on your close pairs, the coverage gap you filled. Write the one line you'll open kickoff with, naming how the mix pulls together instead of grinds.
