Coaching a client to split the team's work by how people are wired
This is for you if you're coaching a leader whose team runs on job descriptions. Work gets handed out by title, and half the team spends the day against their own grain. The work still gets done, but people are tired in a way the workload alone doesn't explain, and the leader can't see why.
A job title tells you what someone is responsible for. It doesn't tell you how they work with other people, or what kind of work gives them their best energy.
So a team split by title runs half its people against the grain, without anyone deciding it should. The fix is to re-split the work by wiring: first how people work together, then what energizes each of them.
But you start small, with the one or two who grate most, so the leader feels the problem before you redesign the whole team.
You'll need the team's results in front of you both before the session. From each report you want two things: their working style in Understanding Styles, and their primary and complement in The Five Types of Work.
If one person hasn't done theirs, don't let it block the hour. Place them from the working style you and the leader already see them work in, and flag it as a read to confirm later.
Set aside about an hour with the leader, the team map between you.
- Start with the one or two who grate most. Ask the leader who seems most against their grain, or which pairing keeps grinding. Take just those one or two, or that single pairing.
Open their Understanding Styles and place them across the four styles: Accelerator, Analyst, Harmonizer, Pragmatist. The "Working with the other styles" pages show how that pair builds trust, decides, and handles conflict. Then check their primary and complement in The Five Types of Work, and note whether their current work is with the grain or against it.
The moment the leader sees the person they already feel friction with sitting against their grain, that flash of recognition is the work. Stop there. The questions below are built for it. The full-team map, the re-split, and the change to make are only for when the leader is ready to redesign the work.
- Map the rest of the team by working style. Now place everyone else across the same four styles.
Read the mix, not the individuals. Where are three of the same style stacked? Where does a fast Accelerator hand work to an Analyst who needs to be sure first? Write down the two or three pairings worth keeping and the one or two you'll buffer, so the re-split has something real to protect.
- Layer in energy. For each person, open The Five Types of Work and note their primary and complement: Analytical, Creative, Integrative, Influential, Operational. Mark each person's current work as with the grain or against it. The against-the-grain names are your re-assignment list.
- Re-split the work. Take one slice of against-the-grain work and move it toward whoever's energy fits, keeping the pairings you flagged in step two intact. Where a grating pairing can't be avoided, put a steadier colleague between them to carry the handoff.
- Land one real change. The leader picks one re-assignment and one pairing change to make before the next cycle. Then they draft the opening line for the person whose work is shifting. Something like: "I want to move the client updates to you, that's the kind of work you come alive in."
They leave holding a redesigned split for one real part of the team's work, and the sentence they'll use to set it in motion.
The leader owns the recognition and the move. You own the structure that made a tired team clear enough to redesign.
Coaching questions
This isn't a worksheet to run top to bottom. Once the map is in front of you both, pull whatever fits the room and follow where it goes.
Seeing the team as it really is
- Whose day is spent mostly against their grain?
- Which two people keep grinding on the same handoff, and what are their styles?
- Where do you have three of the same style stacked, and what does it cost you?
- Who lights up on work that's nowhere in their job description?
Testing a re-split
- If title weren't the organizing principle, who would own this?
- What's the one piece of work you'd move first if you could move only one?
- Which pairing needs a buffer between them, and who could be it?
- What would this person's week look like if it were built around their energy?
Making it real
- What's the smallest re-assignment you could try before the next cycle?
- How will you know in two weeks whether it's working?
- What will you say to the person whose work is changing, and when?
