The challenge

Different people are naturally stronger when it comes to a particular task or a project. Understanding these differences and the inherent strengths of every team member is immensely valuable to team leaders.

The same is especially true for distributed teams, like Metakomm, with members in different locations -  it's easy to misunderstand someone when you're not in the same room with them.

Experienced leaders can, or rather think they can assess people by simply observing and working together with them. To a degree, this is correct. The more experience you have working with people, the more you understand them. Or so the thinking goes.

The problem with such an approach is that it leaves leaders and executives vulnerable to biases and gut feelings that we all have. We think we know something and convince ourselves that it's true.

Metakomm was looking for a solution to bring data and science into team development. Since they were familiar with Wisnio through client work, they decided to use the platform for their own team development.

The solution

Wisnio decision tools bring data and science into team analysis and gives actionable insights to better understand and develop high-performing teams.

Christoph Grandpierre, Managing Partner at Metakomm explained that "as we had a team off-site coming up, we decided to use the Wisnio platform to analyse and understand the team composition in terms of behavioural strengths, values alignment, and competencies."

• Personal Profiles - Users complete the personality, values, and competency surveys to finish their Personal Profile, where they'll find detailed insights into their behavioural strengths, key motivators, and top competencies.

• Team analysis tools - Based on behavioural science theories on values, personality, and competencies, team members complete a series of online surveys and review their Team Profile to learn more about their colleagues' traits, motivators, and core competencies.

The result

The plan was for a two and a half-hour team development session based on Wisnio Team and Personal Profiles at the off-site. The session was built around the Team Profile with three distinct sections:

1. Competency - The competencies the team is most confident in;

2. example Personality - The behavioural characteristics of team members;

3. Values - The main motivators of team members.

The process started back home a week before the meeting when the whole team was asked to go through the Wisnio process. It consists of three questionnaires that evaluate each team member in terms of their competencies, behavioural traits, and values.

With every section, the discussion started with where the team stands overall and then went into more details on particular competencies, personality traits and values.

Competency map

Example Competency Insights from a Wisnio Team Profile. For illustration purposes only, no relation to actual Metakomm results.

The team Competency Map was used for an overall view of team competencies. And the included Competency Insights for a more in-depth look at the strengths, unique skills, and development opportunities of the team and its members.

The interactive map shows the overall competency scores and personalised results for each team member:

For illustration purposes only, no relation to actual Metakomm results.

Clicking on any of the highlights on the map or the insights opens up a pop-up that goes more in-depth with that particular competency. For example, adapting to changes:

Example Competency Insights pop-up 

Christoph explained that “using the Competency map, it became pretty clear pretty quickly on where the team is in terms of competency and who is bringing what to team along with potential team and personal development areas.” 

Personality

Depending on the task at hand, different personality traits can help with or hinder a task and can influence the setup of teams based on the challenge to address. 

Christoph gives an example of an employee being more creative or pragmatic. Some projects need a new and innovative approach or solutions, and others benefit from a more traditional and pragmatic approach.

“Knowing this information beforehand is intensely valuable. We can pick and choose consultants based on their individual strengths and match those with the project needs,” he continued.  

Example team Personality overview. For illustration purposes only, no relation to actual Metakomm results.

It was a bit of a surprise for some colleagues how far they are on the scale of a particular trait. These discoveries acted as a trigger for meaningful discussions around personality and how they affect our everyday work.

For example, a team member was on the opposite end of the trait emotional range than expected. This opened the floor for discussions around what does it mean? How do you deal with it? What can help in these situations, etc.?

Values

On values, the team had a high degree of alignment with high scores for loyalty, creativity, and autonomy. This was both reassuring and comforting. 

Reassuring that the right decisions were made when expanding the team and comforting to see that the analysed results reflected how the team intuitively felt.

Similar to Competency and Personality, the interactive Values map includes both overall team scores and individual results from all team members:

Example Values map from a Team Profile. For illustration purposes only, no relation to actual Metakomm results.

To help along discussions and understanding, each value in the Team Profile has a pop-up card with more in-depth information about it: 

For illustration purposes only, no relation to actual Metakomm results.

There was more to discuss with many topics than time allowed, and in those cases, follow-ups were agreed upon.

For example, pairing up people at the opposite ends of a particular personality trait to discuss the observations they have from working together. Or in-depth feedback on an employee's Personal Profile. 

Overall, feedback from the session was very positive. The team liked the ease of use and particularly how easy it is to read, use, and understand the reports. When faced with a particular problem, an employee can look at the data and results and use that as a guide on whom to ask for help.

“The Wisnio analysis was very helpful in getting a more holistic understanding on who is bringing what to the team and whom to approach which a certain topic or another. It’s like a cheat sheet for teamwork,” Christoph added.

Would you like to get an in-depth look into the inner workings of your team and understand which of the underlying competencies, personality traits, and values are driving action? Sign-up for a free Wisnio trial now!