Getting more done with less stress, effort and frustration is what many business owners wish for.

At a recent presentation, Steve Hoare (Management by Reflection), explained why, if we want to grow a business, have a home life and enjoy what we do with the minimum of stress, it is important to spend our time doing the things we are good and learn to appreciate the contributions made by people who have different strengths to us.

To illustrate the point, members of the group were asked to put themselves into one of three groups that they most identified with while acknowledging that there may be some crossover.

The Blue Group identified most with the words:

Thinking, creative, problem solving, strategic, discerning, self starting, single minded.

The Yellow Group with:

Inclusive, mature, communicator, diplomatic, co-operative, enthusiastic

The Red Group with:

Challenging, dynamic, action, perfectionist, reliable, efficient, conscientious

Each group was given the same task and assigned an observer.

The idea was to show what happens when people with the same strengths work on a task, compared to when people with a whole range of strengths work together.

The result is that people adapt to fill the gaps but usually feel uncomfortable in these roles. This is OK for a short while (our experiment only lasted for ten minutes) but the longer it continues, the more the cracks begin to show.

The ensuing discussion focused on the importance of not seeing the absence of a particular type of behaviour as a weakness but on playing to people’s strengths.

It is equally important not to let the ‘weakness’ become a crutch or an excuse, e.g. “What do you expect? I’m this type of person not that type.”

In terms of identifying the people most likely to produce the best results we often look for skills first followed by personality but profiling the behaviours needed to complement a team can often improve the way everyone works and reduce the stress, frustration and effort while getting much more done in less time.

There is a huge amount of research that shows that we are really poor judges of others and relying on ‘gut instinct’ is the worst possible way to select people to work with.

When employing people, Steve recommends the Belbin Team Role profiling tool be used along with a suite of other tools for assessing personality and aptitude. Many tools on the market have no scientific validity so it is best to check this out and use an accredited practitioner to analyse the results.

Any double about the value / cost ratio will be quickly dispelled by a calculation of what it costs to make the wrong decision!