Cortex Leadership Consulting

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Cortex Team Strengths® Charts

 

Thank you for taking the assessment.

Below you will find an explanation of how the team strengths assessment is used to create better results for your teams at work.

When working on a team, it’s important to recognize your strengths and weaknesses to better ensure that you find and recruit others that provide a different perspective in order to avoid blindspots on the project you are working on or the team you work within.

The Four Phases:

Phase One: Vision (Why and What)  This phase in the beginning point and where you or your team broadly defines your desired outcome or vision that you want to achieve.  It is also the phase in which team members are identified.  Many times, a person or team believes that an idea is their vision.  Be sure to ask yourself things like:

What will right look like a year from now?

  1. What will we have a year (or more) from now when the project is completed?
  2. What will we/or our customers be doing differently a year (or more) from now?
  3. How will we feel when we have completed working on this project?

Phase Two: Ideation (Possibility thinking – Brainstorming)  Alternatives are generated & outside resources are identified.  Many times, the first idea is taken and you “run with it”.  To brainstorm or “ideate” properly you need to be sure to gather ideas from different perspectives and be sure you have ample ideas to move into the planning phase with.  For instance, if your vision is to create a more efficient and effective customer experience, ideas could be generated not only on the ways you currently serve customers but also add ideas that seem “crazy” or unobtainable.  That type of brainstorming allows people to build on each other’s thoughts and ideas and true innovation can occur.

Phase Three: Planning (How)  Plans are developed & potential conflicts are resolved.  By taking the ideas generated and considering which ones will impact you achieving what right will look like or the “vision” for the project you can begin to pull to the top of the pile those ideas which you can begin creating a plan to achieve.  By keeping all the ideas on file you can retrieve from that list as the project progresses.

Phase Four: Execution (Go!)  Plan is selected, implemented & results are measured.  By using short-term goals that are specific, measurable, and actionable, your team and its members can start taking the small steps to move towards the outcome you want to achieve.

The Four Premises of the work cycle:

1.  Allowing people to do work they prefer will result in achieving your desired outcomes.

2.  It is important to make an effort to spend an equal amount of time and energy for each of the four phases and not skip or move quickly past any one of them.

3.  Making sure that you have a team member or input for the phase you are working on, in the meeting, is important in achieving the best results.

4.  It’s best to use each team member’s strength in the area they prefer.

Your Cortex Team Strengths® Results scale:

58-90 Preferred/Overemphasis – you may overemphasize this area of the cycle and neglect others.  You may also become anxious or agitated when in a meeting that is outside of this scope of the cycle.
41-57 Equal Emphasis  If you have these scores for one of the phases you probably feel competent in this area.  Your experience has probably been that you are able to work in this phase with good results in this area.
18-40 Avoided/Ignored, even when needed  When asked to work in this area you may become slightly agitated or unknowingly anxious.  You may try to ignore this phase and jump more quickly into the area or areas that you enjoy or feel more confident and competent in.

To learn more about your results, you may find this article helpful to discover the common mistakes teams make.  For an overview, watch this video from a news story conducted by WFXR news.

The Cortex Team Strengths® system works best when the assessment is given to all members of your team.  Feel free to distribute this and then make an appointment with a Cortex Certified Team Coach to debrief you and your team on how to work more efficiently and effectively on your next important project at work.

[email protected]
or call us at 54o.776.9219.

The Cortex Team Strengths® assessment is part of a team building experience that has been proven to reduce meeting times by more than 50% at your organization and immediately increase team member’s productivity.

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How successful teams work together to get results

Our firm, Cortex Leadership Consulting, has analyzed some research based on data collected from an assessment we provide our clients and participants of our workshops that I thought you might find interesting and perhaps, helpful.  The study we conducted included 850 leaders, managers and executives in Virginia and North Carolina over the last 3 years.  The study found that:

  • 66% Dislike or outright avoid Visionary-like work
  • 70% Dislike or outright avoid Ideation-like work
  • 73% Like or actively pursue Planner-like work
  • 59% Like or actively pursue Execution-like work

To explain what we have been studying:  There are four phases to achieving an effective outcome based on a system known commonly referred to as a project work cycle.  The first is to have a vision of where you want to go and the outcome you want to have.  The second is to create ideas around how to get there.  The third is to develop a plan based on your resources and capabilities, and the fourth is to execute on your plan.  Nothing earth shattering about the system or the theory behind it.

Team Work Cycle ResearchWhat we found from studying leaders, though, is quite fascinating and perhaps telling.  This data we collected suggests that leaders may be doing a solid job of planning and executing, but their forward progress may be limited by the fact that they haven’t taken time to create a clear vision, communicate that vision to their team, or gather different perspectives and ideas before they go into the planning phase.  It would indicate that they can get things done, but are they always getting the right things done?  With 70% avoiding the idea phase, which is popularly known as “brain storming”, are leaders taking enough time to create and consider enough ideas before they choose one to pursue?

What we need to do is to help leaders slow down and make time to think about the outcomes they want based on the information they have collected, and be open to seeking new perspectives and ideas on how to get there.

Our team at Cortex has discovered some things that appear to be helping.

Through our research we are finding that leaders spend the majority of their time in Quadrant I – Urgent and very important tasks and don’t schedule time for things that are very important but aren’t immediately on fire.  Leaders need to learn to operate in Quadrant II.  What is that?  That’s what is known as Eisenhower’s quadrant of “Not urgent but very important”.

Leaders like you are running at 7.0 mph on a treadmill of activity, and to get you to slow that puppy down and make room for the not urgent but extremely important things is no easy task.  Training in the skills of designing your time properly and gathering data to pin point where your team is effective and where it isn’t requires the proper assessments and analysis.

The key areas we have found that leaders don’t slow down long enough for are:

  • Creating a vision for their organization, their divisions and their teams, based on core values, and communicating that vision and key accountabilities to get there, on a consistent basis
  • Hiring the right employees for the right roles at the right time
  • On boarding team members properly to ensure assimilation into their culture
  • Coaching and developing team members, consistently, to reach their potential
  • Adjusting plans when obstacles arise by circling back around and developing fresh, new, ideas for possible pathways to innovation.

Leaders, from our research, benefit greatly from learning techniques on how to listen more effectively and strategically think about the task and people before they take action.

To determine your strengths when working on a team project, contact us for a FREE ASSESSMENT at [email protected].