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What are the potential strengths in the relationship?
Victor is direct and can challenge well when needed, while Simon can also challenge well, so hat could be a strong point within their relationship. Also, Simon is strong in the inquire and diagnose voices, while Victor doesn’t lean too heavily on these. This could mean that Simon is good at asking Victor questions and analysing situations to help them move forward.
what are potential areas of tension in the relationship?
Victor is likely to be pacey and action oriented, while Simon may ask too many questions and come across as verbose at times. Simon may at times feel threatened by Victors controlling voices, particularly when under pressure.
What are your hypotheses?
Simon is quite deliberative and seems keen to discuss various options. Victor is straightforward and imposing, and can often interrupt to improve what’s happening in an interaction. This is likely to be a clash of styles, so if both understand this and can shift their energy into using some more of their repertoire, they may work more successfully together.
What lines of enquiry would you follow?
How do these voices come across to each of the guys? What works well? What presents challenges? What could be done to reduce tensions in the relationship?
What development recommendations would you make for Victor and Simon?
Victor – dial up the exploring voices to show more empathy and understand others’ point of view. Work on his capacity to describe and clarify in a precise way, rather than be too abrupt in his communication.
Simon – dial up challenge voice as it’ll work with Victors strength and he’ll likely appreciate that. Dial up his advise voice as Victor will likely appreciate Simon suggesting a course of action.
Inquire: what are your best hopes for us working together?
Probe: How did you feel when your manager spoke to you like that?
Diagnose: What I hear you say is that that situation makes you feel anxious – does that sound about right to you?
Advocate: From my experience, I believe that this is the course of action that we should take because…
Advise: I am advising you to do it this way because I have seen it work well before…
Articulate: I hear you say that you are not happy at work at the moment because you are being overworked.
Challenge: Can we please stop and refocus for a moment as I don’t think we should be approaching this task in this manner.
Direct: I’m going to be direct here and say that we should be doing this task differently…
Evaluate: The briefing document clearly explains how the client would like us to proceed with the project, but they don’t make it clear how long they’d like the sessions to be.
What do you hypothesise from Yvette’s triangle?
She scored low on all 9 voices, thus suggesting she only uses them now and again. As the MD has asked for all 12 of the senior management team to do the profile before an away day, she may have answered the questions cautiously for fear of being judged or exposed in front of her peers. On the other hand, it could be that she is well-rounded across the voices and there is no clear pattern when it comes to tendency to use a voice.
What does Yvette’s comparative track tell you about her tendencies under pressure?
When under pressure, Yvette may lean too heavily on her advocate voice which can come across as preaching. The fact that she doesn’t score at all on direct and probe suggests she very rarely places energy into these voices under pressure. Under pressure, the articulate, challenge, evaluate and advise voices are significantly less used, so this could suggest she stays within herself and doesn’t feel comfortable voicing her opinion when the pressure is on.
What are your hypotheses and lines of enquiry to explore Yvette’s profile?
A line of enquiry I would follow would be firstly understanding what pressure is for Yvette. How does she typically respond? What does she notice herself doing differently under pressure? What might be hindering her from verbalising her opinion when under pressure? Does she feel comfortable speaking up within the team? Could she use her exploring voices more often to build connection and understanding with people?
Hypotheses:
The controlling voices being high are appropriate for the role because she will have to direct, challenge in an intense environment such as the one she’s in. She will also have to advise regularly on possible courses of action and be assertive when communicating her views. It’s likely she’ll be able to offer decisive solutions to issues and assess requirements effectively. She may not be making her colleagues and partners feel understood with her low exploring voices, but this may not be neccesary to be effective in her role.
Line of enquiry:
Exploring the use and potential overuse of controlling voices. Understanding whether this works for her and whether there are situations when she might need to dial it down and draw on other voices.
Questions:
– How do your prefferred voices contribute value to your performance?
– In what way do your lower scoring voices present challenges for you?
– If you were to increase your use of a higher voice, what would that look and sound like? How might this influence your work?
– Are there times when you could use your exploring voices more often? What difference might this make to your performance and those you work with?Q1. What hypotheses do you have about how Marcia’s profile helps her to be effective in her role?
Answer: I believe Marcia’s profile helps her be effective in her role because she scores highly on the exploring voices, which will enable her to gather the detail required to make effective decisions. She’ll be able to ask the right and open questions to help her assess issues and decide on a course of action. Her use of the articulate voice should enable her to neutrally describe issues and actions to her colleagues and other members of staff. She should also be able to advise and make a case for new process that will improve the patient care pathway.Q2: Her profile may cause her difficulties in her role because she may struggle at times to implement new ideas, especially if someone is challenging her and she needs to defend her ideas. She is also supposed to be championing the adoption of a new pathway, but her advocate voice is low so this may cause her some issues.
Q3: I would expect to have an open, honest and warm conversation with Marcia. However, she may at times sit on the fence and be not particularly assertive. I may need to push her to get her thoughts and suggestions.
Q4: I think it would be useful to help her develop her advocate voice so she can promote her thoughts and ideas and champion her new patient pathway effectively.
1) Jack’s profile is very high towards the positioning voices and considerably lower with 2 of the exploring voices.
2) My first impressions are that Jack is a consultant and has to make an impression, and get across his views and opinions in an efficient and quick manner. His role is more about making clear how he thinks things should be done and explaining that, without necessarily needing to ask too many questions or get others’ point of view.
3) His role as a consultant and ops director.
4) The high level of dependency of the advocate voice – what does this involve? What does it sound like? How might it be received? Are there times when you could dial it down a little? Lower score on direct – does this present challenges for you in your consultancy position?Attack annoys me as it feels the opposite of how I generally communicate and it makes me feel closed off.