I have been working with Facet5 for nearly 20 years and have used it for individual coaching, team building, in recruitment and as part of development and assessment centres.
One of my most powerful experiences of using Facet5 was during a leadership development workshop for twelve first line supervisors in a manufacturing business.
I spent several days giving individual feedbacks before the workshop. I enjoy getting to know people and their businesses during feedbacks, where they’re often prepared to share quite personal views. This was particularly useful in this instance as it was a business and a sector that I didn’t know much about: the understanding of the company and the issues it was facing were valuable in designing the subsequent workshop.
During the feedbacks, I was struck by the amount of Emotionality in the group. There was also a lot of high Affection. These scores were reflected in the passion and ethical concerns that you would expect of this combination. One team leader described mentoring a colleague who, to many managers, would have been viewed as unemployable. He was prepared to support this person in both work and personal time and continued to help him to manage social events after he had achieved a level of acceptable work performance. It was clear that, for many of the people in the group, the psychological contract with their employer and colleagues went beyond the transactional.
Emotions ran high on the workshop itself and there was a high level of engagement during discussions of how the business could be improved. Those views weren’t unanimous, particularly between people from different areas of the business, and the conversations were enthusiastic and challenging. The Affection levels prevented them becoming aggressive and they would apologise if they felt they had made a comment or criticism that would seem to be aimed at anyone in particular, but there were many bees in many bonnets that were determined to escape. At risk of mixing my metaphors, the atmosphere in the room was like being in a pan with popping corn.
A Facet5 team build was part of the process and took place on the afternoon of the first day. Having worked together for a long time, they were all excited to see each other’s profiles and guessed their scores enthusiastically. It is hard to find a better word than ‘gob-smacked’ to describe their reaction to their Emotionality scores. Of the twelve in the room, eight scored above 7.5 and five were above 8. What they took from it was:
- Wow, we’re all the same;
- We’re all passionate;
- Nothing is unimportant for any of us;
- We all want what’s best even if we can’t agree on what that is;
- We’re all a bit volatile and unpredictable, but also vulnerable.
The following day, it helped to diffuse tension as they recognised what was happening when discussions became heated. They had a sense of camaraderie, having realised that they were not alone in feeling as strongly as they did about issues.
There were many useful outputs from this workshop, which formed the basis of subsequent work. However, their aligned Emotionality score was the most profound outcome for them. During a presentation to the Board at the end of the workshop, they were keen to share their scores as they saw them as an explanation of their perceived bolshiness.
The explanation was simple: We Care too much!
Written by Janet Taylor Consulting
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