Our discussion uncovered the following 💪 super strengths in you:

• Sense of urgency*. Your pace is relentlessly high and you have a deep inner drive to GSD.*

• Customer centricity is very strong; you will maintain a laser focus on creating winning tech which, most importantly, delivers for customers.

• Dedication and drive. You are a solution finder; you seek to find a way to get to “yes”. Resourceful.

The following observations relate to watch-outs regarding overplayed strengths, which could amp up when you feel 🏋️ under pressure:

• You behave with a relentless sense of urgency. You push hard and I suspect, all the time. In the short/medium term, this will lead to traction and commercial results.

  • To sustain the pace as a team, you must also re-charge to expand. Remember that your team needs to train hard and rest well.
  • A recommendation is to make sure to embed the ‘growth cycle’ loop into your culture, to build in review/reflection/learning loops as well as planning/action.
  • Pay attention to balancing appreciation and challenge.

• You come across as highly driven, self critical and rarely satisfied; you are dismissive of compliments. You said that you don’t easily give trust. As a manager, this critical nature can sometimes lead to a micro-managing style:

  • You are strong on detail, have high/perfectionist standards, and could go to ‘telling not coaching’.
  • Without enough delegation, you could over-stretch yourself, and stay too operational.
  • You showed evidence of challenging and questioning other people. Whilst very useful for creating better results, under pressure I felt that you could blame others. Your actions could unwittingly create an underlying sentiment of ‘fear’.
  • Over time, individual growth and development could be stymied because people may not feel that they are safe to experiment and push themselves out of their comfort zone, even if they get it wrong to start with.

💨*To develop, consider the following:*

Focus on working together, to cultivate trust, accountability and autonomy in the team. We’d like to find you the right team coach, which will help the team cultivate a shared mindset and a sentiment of feeling like you are all in it, you are growing together and you are better together.

Specific team based priorities are to:

• Divide/share decision accountabilities amongst functional leaders.
• Establish communication processes which set a foundation for distributed decision making.
• Cultivate a culture of listening, feedback and learning, for example learning loops or reflection days as well as active listening forums.
• Build in habits/rituals, to celebrate and appreciate each other and the journey as well as the results.