Does the behavior that makes individuals successful in their jobs provide the same degree of success in a team?

 The answer is frequently and sometimes surprisingly, no. On the other hand, successful people often adapt their behavior to the situation, so team members might want to take the PPS with their job as the focus and take it again with the team as the focus to see to what extent shifts occur and whether they are appropriate.

If individual behavioral styles continue to create issues for the team, a Role Behavior Analysis(tm) (RBA) can be performed to define behavioral expectations for two roles: a person's job and the role on the team. There is often a good fit between the PPS and the RBA for a person's job. It makes sense that a person who performs well in their job exhibits behaviors in that job that would make them successful. Because they're successful, their behavioral style effectively gets reinforced over time. If it becomes their natural behavioral style, they may carry over certain behaviors into their team work which can be a source of conflict for other team members.

An outside facilitator can work with the team to define the ideal role behavior for a team member based on the team's purpose and goals. Once this is done, comparisons can be made for each team member to show how their PPS compares to the ideal team behavioral style produced in the RBA.

In the case of Mark's role on the division's Management Team, the comparison graph might appear as the one on the left. As we can see in this second graph, Mark's very high D dimension of behavior is not as useful to his role as member of the management team. If Mark agrees with the analysis, he can begin developing new behaviors in the Influence and Conscientiousness dimensions and redirect some of his behaviors in the Dominance dimension for his work on the management team. This should reduce some conflict and improve effectiveness as Mark contributes in a manner that fits better with what's required of the team. The Role Behavior Analysis(^tm) instrument describes in more detail specific behaviors that apply to each dimension and where a gap may exist. Mark can then prioritize the behaviors he'd like to work on initially and develop an action plan that might also include coaching, mentoring or training. This doesn't mean that Mark has to change who he is, it just means he can learn to stretch a bit to be more effective on the team

In cases where conflict and stress persist and other team members see behavior differently than the teammate him- or herself, a 360° behavioral style (DiSC) assessment can be performed and graphed with other people's perceptions about the teammate's behavior. In this example, Anne's DiSC profile appears to be ID (her 'I' is in segment 7 and her 'D' is in segment 5), but only Person 5 in the sample perceives her that way. Person 4 perceives her as DI which is a close cousin, but the other 3 people perceive her as DC, D, and I respectively. The InterPersonal Profile describes in more detail specific behaviors that apply to each dimension and shows where gaps may exist. Anne can then explore the reasons for the gaps and develop action plans for dealing with any issues.

How do you introduce this topic to your team? It's certainly easier if you have the power. You could go through the Role Behavior Analysis^tm. instrument with the team to identify useful team behaviors based on what the goals of the team are or bring in a skilled facilitator for this portion. Should you single out individuals for corrective action in a team setting? Not within the team setting unless you're willing to go through it first. To build a truly effective team, it is very important to build trust based on mutual respect. I alluded to this in last month's article with the statement "Co-workers need to cooperate, communicate honestly and should share knowledge and skills with each other in order to attain mutually agreed-upon goals." Since trust building is a big topic and such a difficult one in a competitive, political workplace, I'll leave that for the April article.

Other instruments that can help team members include: people reading, coping and stress, diversity, leadership, learning, listening, time management, transition, unspoken work expectations, etc. For more information, visit www.russpratt.com.