Teamwork and Psychology: Insights from 30+ Years of Business Coaching

What does it take for 800 people to work together on a project with minimum friction? Back in 1983, that’s exactly what my partner Lynda-Ross and I aimed to figure out. When I fist met Lynda-Ross, she was managing a very large multi-year systems development project for a major corporation, and she was searching for tools to help the people working on the project stay motivated, reduce conflict, and perform to the best of their capabilities. Through my years of college and graduate school, I had been fascinated by theories about psychological styles—such as those posited by Carl Jung—but none of the theories I studied fit my personal experience. Beginning with my doctoral dissertation and continuing through 18 years in private practice, I had worked to create a practical, useable psychological styles theory that integrated internal experience with observable behavior. Lynda-Ross brought me in as a consultant to the project to help the management staff learn tools and techniques to improve teamwork and optimize the talents of the existing staff. The more we observed and worked with people, the more we discovered. One of the things we learned was that, not only do people who perceive the world similarly get along better, but they also had many of the same skills and abilities. As we thought about it, it made sense to us that people who perceived things similarly would possess similar skills. It was the next logical step to realize that the skill and ability similarities we observed were based on a similar style of perception, and that each of the six Perceptual Styles had an innate set of natural capacities. Together we developed processes and training that used the Perceptual Styles Theory to help build teams, diffuse unnecessary conflict, and help people to understand that seeing things differently is not wrong, just different. More than thirty years later, the same things we observed on that first project have held true, and they remain the basis of our work as coaches. Why? Because what it took for that huge team to succeed is what it takes for any team to succeed. Here are the four main components: 1.rnIt takes people with different Perceptual Styles filling different positions on the team. After all, skills and abilities are directly tied to the ways that we perceive the world as individuals. The person who excels at accounting is generally not the same type of person who thrives in customer service. 2.rnIt takes all of those people learning how to communicate effectively with one another, despite the differences in their Perceptual Styles. Simple adjustments in language and message delivery can eliminate 90 percent of all communication conflicts. 3.rnIt takes all of those people feeling motivated, even though the differences in their Perceptual Styles means that they will be motivated in different ways. A range of incentives are required for optimum momentum on a project. 4.rnIt takes leadership based on the team leader’s actual skills and abilities. There are many different ways to lead, but the only right way for any given person is the one that fits their innate Perceptual Style. At every level of development, psychological styles are a huge factor in the success or failure of a business—because no matter what it is or what it does, people are what make your business tick.