by Tom Rath
Help people see the connections among their talents, their actions, their mission, and their successes. When people believe in what they are doing and feel like they are part of something bigger, commitment to achievement is enhanced.
Partner with someone with strong Communication talents. This person can help you with the words you need to describe vivid examples of connection in the real world.
Don’t spend too much time attempting to persuade others to see the world as a linked web. Be aware that your sense of connection is intuitive. If others don’t share your intuition, rational argument will not persuade them.
Your philosophy of life compels you to move beyond your own self-interests and the interests of your immediate constituency and sphere of influence. As such, you see the broader implications for your community and the world. Explore ways to communicate these insights to others.
Seek out global or cross-cultural responsibilities that capitalize on your understanding of the commonalities inherent in humanity. Build universal capability, and change the mindset of those who think in terms of “us” and “them.”
Connectedness talents can help you look past the outer shell of a person to embrace his or her humanity. Be particularly aware of this when you work with someone whose background is very different from yours. You can naturally look past the labels and focus on his or her essential needs.
Working With Others Who Have Connectedness
This person will likely have social issues that she will defend strongly. Listen closely to know what inspires this passion in her. Your acceptance of these issues will influence the depth of the relationship you can build with her.
Encourage this person to build bridges to the different groups in your organization. She naturally thinks about how things are connected, so she should excel at showing different people how each relies on the others.
If you also have dominant Connectedness talents, share articles, writings, and experiences with this person. You can reinforce each other’s focus.
CONSISTENCY
Balance is important to you. You are keenly aware of the need to treat people the same, no matter what their station in life, so you do not want to see the scales tipped too far in any one person’s favor. In your view this leads to selfishness and individualism. It leads to a world where some people gain an unfair advantage because of their connections or their background or their greasing of the wheels. This is truly offensive to you. You see yourself as a guardian against it. In direct contrast to this world of special favors, you believe that people function best in a consistent environment where the rules are clear and are applied to everyone equally. This is an environment where people know what is expected. It is predictable and evenhanded. It is fair. Here each person has an even chance to show his or her worth.
Consistency Sounds Like This:
Simon H., hotel general manager: “I often remind my senior managers that they shouldn’t be abusing their parking privileges or using their position to take golf tee times when there are guests waiting. They hate my drawing attention to this, but I am just the kind of person who dislikes people abusing their perks. I also spend a great deal of time with our hourly employees. I have tremendous respect for them.”
Jamie K., magazine editor: “I am the person who always roots for the underdog. I hate it when people don’t get a fair shot because of some circumstance in their life that they couldn’t control. To put some teeth to this, I am going to set up a scholarship at my alma mater so that journalism students of limited means can do internships in the real world without having to keep paying for their college tuition. I was lucky. When I was an intern in New York at NBC, my family could afford it. Some families can’t, but those students should still get a fair shot.”
Ben F., operations manager: “Always give credit where credit is due; that’s my motto. If I am in a meeting and I bring up an idea that one of my staff actually came up with, I make sure to publicly attribute the idea to that person. Why? Because my bosses always did that with me, and now it seems like the only fair and proper thing to do.”
Ideas for Action
Make a list of the rules of consistency by which you can live. These rules might be based on certain values that you have or on certain policies that you consider “non-negotiables.” Counterintuitively, the more clear you are about these rules, the more comfortable you will be with individuality within these boundaries.
Seek roles in which you can be a force for leveling the playing field. At work or in your community, become a leader in helping provide disadvantaged people with the platform they need to show their true potential.
Cultivate a reputation for pinpointing those who really deserve credit. Make sure that respect is always given to those who truly performed the work. You can become known as the conscience of your organization or group.
Find a role in which you can enforce compliance to a set of standards. Always be ready to challenge people who break the rules or “grease the wheels” to earn an unfair advantage for themselves.
Keep your focus on performance. Your Consistency talents might occasionally lead you to overemphasize how someone gets work done, and ignore what he or she gets done.
Because you value equality, you find it hard to deal with individuals who bend the rules to fit their situation. Your Consistency talents can help you clarify rules, policies, and procedures in ways that will ensure that they are applied uniformly across the board. Consider drafting protocols to make sure that these rules are clearly stated.
Partner with someone with powerful Maximizer or Individualization talents. This person can remind you when it is appropriate to accommodate individual differences.
Always practice what you preach. This sets the tone for equality and encourages peaceful compliance.
Others will appreciate your natural commitment to consistency between what you have promised and what you will deliver. Always stand up for what you believe, even in the face of strong resistance. You will reap long-lasting benefits.
Leverage your Consistency talents when you have to communicate “not so pleasant” news. You can be naturally adept at helping others appreciate the rationale behind decisions, which will make the situation easier on them—and you.
Working With Others Who Have Consistency
Be supportive of this person during times of great change because she is most comfortable with predictable patterns that she knows work well.
This person has a practical bent and thus will tend to prefer getting tasks accomplished and decisions made rather than doing more abstract work such as brainstorming or long-range planning.
When it comes time to recognize others after the completion of a project, ask this person to pinpoint everyone’s contributions. She will make sure that each person receives the accolades he or she truly deserves.
CONTEXT
You look back. You look back because that is where the answers lie. You look back to understand the present. From your vantage point the present is unstable, a confusing clamor of competing voices. It is only by casting your mind back to an earlier time, a time when the plans were being drawn up, that the present regains its stability. The earlier time was a simpler time. It was a time of blueprints. As you look back, you begin to see these blueprints emerge. You realize what the initial intentions were. These blueprints or intentions have since become so embellished that they are almost unrecognizable, but now this Context theme reveals them again. This understanding brings you confidence. No longer disoriented, you make better decisions because you sense the underlying structure. You become a better partner because you understand how your colleagues came to be who they are. And counterintuitively you become wiser about the future because you saw its seeds being sown in the past. Faced with new people and new situations, it will take you a little time to orient yourself, but you must give yourself this time. You must discipline yourself to ask the questions and allow the blueprints to emerge because no matter what the situation, if you haven
’t seen the blueprints, you will have less confidence in your decisions.
Context Sounds Like This:
Adam Y., software designer: “I tell my people, ‘Let’s avoid vuja de.’ And they say, ‘Isn’t that the wrong word? Shouldn’t it be déjà vu?’ And I say, ‘No, vuja de means that we’re bound to repeat the mistakes of our past. We must avoid this. We must look to our past, see what led to our mistakes, and then not make them again.’ It sounds obvious, but most people don’t look to their past or don’t trust that it was valid or something. And so for them, it’s vuja de all over again.”
Jesse K., media analyst: “I have very little empathy, so I don’t relate to people through their present emotional state. Instead, I relate to them through their past. In fact, I can’t even begin to understand people until I have found out where they grew up, what their parents were like, and what they studied in college.”
Gregg H., accounting manager: “I recently moved the whole office to a new accounting system, and the only reason it worked was that I honored their past. When people build an accounting system, it’s their blood, sweat, and tears; it’s them. They are personally identified with it. So if I come in and blandly tell them that I’m going to change it, it’s like me saying I am going to take your baby away. That’s the level of emotion I was dealing with. I had to respect this connection, this history, or they would have rejected me out of hand.”
Ideas for Action
Before planning begins on a project, encourage the people involved to study past projects. Help them appreciate the statement: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
If you are in a role that requires teaching others, build your lessons around case studies. You will enjoy the search for the appropriate case, and your students will learn from these precedents. Use your understanding of the past to help others map the future.
At work, help your organization strengthen its culture via folklore. For example, collect symbols and stories that represent the best of the past, or suggest naming an award after a person who embodied the historical traditions of your organization.
Partner with someone with strong Futuristic or Strategic talents. This person’s fascination with what “could be” will stop you from becoming mired in the past, while your deep understanding of context will stop him or her from ignoring the lessons of the past. Together you are more likely to create something that lasts.
Accept change. Remember that your Context talents do not require you to “live in the past.” Instead, you can actually become known as an active agent for positive change. Your natural sense of context should allow you to identify more clearly than most the aspects of the past that can be discarded and those that must be retained to build a sustainable future.
Use fact-based comparisons to prior successes to paint a vivid picture for others of “what can be” in the future. The real-life illustrations you create can build confidence and emotional engagement.
You recognize that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Probe your friends and coworkers about actions that might have contributed to their current successes so you can help them make better choices in the future. This will help them put their decisions into an overall context.
Read historical novels, non-fiction, or biographies. You will discover many insights that will help you understand the present. You will think more clearly.
Compare historical antecedents and situations to your current challenge. Identifying commonalities may lead you to a new perspective or an answer to your problems.
Seek out mentors who have a sense of history. Listening to their memories is likely to spark your thought process.
Working With Others Who Have Context
During meetings, always turn to this person to review what’s been done and what’s been learned. Instinctively, he will want others to be aware of the context of decision making.
This person thinks in terms of case studies: “When did we face a similar situation? What did we do? What happened? What did we learn?” You can expect him to use this talent to help others learn, especially when the need for anecdotes and illustrations is important.
When you introduce this person to new colleagues, ask them to talk about their backgrounds before you get down to business.
DELIBERATIVE
You are careful. You are vigilant. You are a private person. You know that the world is an unpredictable place. Everything may seem in order, but beneath the surface you sense the many risks. Rather than denying these risks, you draw each one out into the open. Then each risk can be identified, assessed, and ultimately reduced. Thus, you are a fairly serious person who approaches life with a certain reserve. For example, you like to plan ahead so as to anticipate what might go wrong. You select your friends cautiously and keep your own counsel when the conversation turns to personal matters. You are careful not to give too much praise and recognition, lest it be misconstrued. If some people don’t like you because you are not as effusive as others, then so be it. For you, life is not a popularity contest. Life is something of a minefield. Others can run through it recklessly if they so choose, but you take a different approach. You identify the dangers, weigh their relative impact, and then place your feet deliberately. You walk with care.
Deliberative Sounds Like This:
Dick H., film producer: “My whole thing is to reduce the number of variables out there—the fewer the variables, the lower the risk. When I am negotiating with directors, I always start by giving in on some of the smaller points right away. Then once I have taken the smaller issues out of play, I feel better. I can focus. I can control the conversation.”
Debbie M., project manager: “I am the practical one. When my colleagues are spouting all of these wonderful ideas, I am asking questions like, ‘How is this going to work? How is this going to be accepted by this group or that group of people?’ I won’t say that I play devil’s advocate, because that is too negative, but I do weigh the implications and assess risk. And I think we all make better decisions because of my questions.”
Jamie B., service worker: “I am not a very organized person, but the one thing I do without fail is double-check. I don’t do it because I am hyper-responsible or anything. I do it to feel secure. With relationships, with performance, with anything, I am out there on a limb, and I need to know that the particular branch I am standing on is solid.”
Brian B., school administrator: “I am putting together a safe-schools plan. I am going to conferences, and we have eight committees working. We have a district-wide review board, but I am still not comfortable with the basic model. My boss asks, ‘When can I see the plan?’ And I say, ‘Not yet. I am not comfortable.’ With a big smile on her face, she says, ‘Gee, Brian, I don’t want it to be perfect, I just want a plan.’ But she lets me be because she knows that the care I take now pays big dividends. Because of this pre-work, once the decision is made, it stays made. It doesn’t unravel.”
Ideas for Action
You have naturally good judgment, so consider work in which you can provide advice and counsel. You might be especially adept at legal work, crafting sound business deals, or ensuring compliance to regulations.