
So, you understand what an Ideal Team Player is, you’ve identified where you sit in the diagram, and you’ve learnt about increasing Humility and Hunger.
If you’ve been hanging out waiting for this post on Smart, go you for sticking with me each week.
Becoming “smarter” about people isn’t quite as sensitive as humility and may not be has hard as hunger, but it is still a challenge. The good thing here is that if you are lacking in this area, I know you want to improve.
I like to think I’m pretty tapped in to my “smart” which is how I know that you don’t want the chit chat, you just want me to jump straight to Lencioni’s recommendations, of which there is only one:
Basic Training: Similar to the other recommendations for Humility and Hunger, this is all about awareness. It’s not going to be easy but here’s the suggestion, ask your team, your leader or someone you work closely with (or even a family member if you want to start at home), to point out (lovingly and with emotional intelligence) whenever you do something “not-smart”. If you interrupt someone in a meeting, someone should point it out to you. If someone shares a personal struggle and you gloss over it, someone should point it out to you. If you write an email that comes across as short or dismissive, someone should point it out to you.
I’ll be honest, it’s going to be hard. But not as hard as being aware that you lack people “smart” but not doing anything about it and knowing it is impacting you and those around you.
My recommendation that I will add here is to use a self-awareness tool. There are a lot of them out there, some are better than others. Before you jump onto Google and start completing self-assessments that will tell you what bird you are or what colour represents you, I have 3 to recommend. I’m not going to go into too much detail here but if you want to know more, reply to this email and we can have a chat.
Gallup StrengthsFinder: As it sounds, this one is all about bringing awareness to your Strengths and is based on positive psychology. I love this tool and you probably have seen me post about it before.
Everything DiSC: This one explores your personality, your priorities and brings awareness to your behaviours as well as offers insight into other personality styles and how you might respond to them, and vice versa.
Hogan Personality Index: This is a very thorough and comprehensive psychometric assessment that measures your reputation through how you answer the questions – basically, people who answer questions in this way are perceived as… This is an in-depth assessment that looks at day to day behaviours, dark side behaviours (when we are stressed, under pressure or bored) and values.
All of these tools, to varying degrees, can help improve your self-awareness, which in my opinion, is the first step to building other awareness. We need to understand ourselves, our responses to things and why we think in certain ways before we can try to improve our understanding and interactions with others.
If you’ve been following my other posts, you know the drill. Comment below, right now, and tell me what you are going to do to improve your “Smart”. Please do it, I want to hear. Even if you think you are good here, you can always improve somewhere.
If you want to know more about any of the tools, let me know!
I can’t wait to hear from you.
Jess Weiss
Managing Consultant