Use HBDI to Build a High-Performing Team

My team is not performing well, so what can I do? Well, you can use HBDI to Build a High Performing Team. Our second video in this HBDI series is all about building high-performing teams. Join Darren and George as they explore ways you can super-boost your team for success.

You Can Read the Full HBDI Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hi, my name's Darren Smith and I'm here with George Araham. George, how are you?

George:

Hi Darren, how are you?

Darren A. Smith:

Very good, very good. We're at the home of the world's stickiest learning MBM, and we're talking about HBDI now the 2nd in our podcast on HBDI. And I'm going to read out the title because it's taken George and I a while to get an absolutely cracking title. My team is not performing well. What can I do? And this is based on feedback we've had from other people, OK, what can you do? And the second part is use HBDI to build a high performing team. So this podcast is all about HBDI and teamwork. And high performing teams, George, why did we come up with this as our second in our range of HBDI podcasts?

George:

Today, there's a lot of problems around the world with Teamwork and team working together or not working together. So we found out like around 15 to 16 topics around that and we want to delve into them and discover how can we tackle each one of them using HBDI and how HBDI can take team performance to the next level. Love it. Yeah.

 

Here's how to use HBDI if your team is not performing

 

Darren A. Smith:

Brilliant. Love it. So for a couple of minutes, let's do a recap on HBDI is, we'll share a profile just so the viewers can see what we're talking about in case they're new to HBDI. And then let's get straight into Team conflict, team dynamics and all that good stuff. All right, all right. So let's check in with you HBDI Hermann brain dominance instrument. That's all well and good, but what does it mean? What's your take on? What is HBDI?

George:

As in the title.

Darren A. Smith:

What does it mean to you?

George:

Well, it's a profile. An assessment profile type that helps you navigate into your like understanding or discovering your thinking style. If you're more left-brained right-brain conversion, divergent feeler or thinker, all those types of sorts of things and to help you to help guide you to use your best assets and your best tools as well as improve the areas that you need in certain circumstances to develop better work. And work better in teams as well. Yeah, indeed.

Darren A. Smith:

Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. I put George on the spot of there a little bit because we did a podcast last time, and I'm just bringing back his memory of what he retained. I've been working with HBDI for about 20 years. George, you're relatively new to it. And we did your profile, didn't we? So you did. You did 80 questions and then this thing pops out. Is that right? Yeah. OK.

George:

Yeah, yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

And what George was referring to is the left half of the brain, the right half of the brain, which most people know. This is largely logical. This is largely creative, but what Ned Herman said was there's a top half and a bottom half of the brain as well, given US 4 quadrants. So the four quadrants, if I do it as four FS fax. So this is a thinking preference for retaining lots of facts. If you've got a mate who's good at pub quizzes, brilliant.

Darren A. Smith:

This is future, so this is me. It's not my profile, but I do have a tendency to think more in the yellow quadrant, which is big picture creativity type, then we've got.

Darren A. Smith:

It is.

George:

That's what we that's why we get along very well. I love yellow and red.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes. And we're gonna come back to that. That's why we make a good team. And the red is F, which is feelings. So these people make good nurses, good teachers, particularly vocational and the greens are our form. They like structure. They're like project plans. They're like next. They're like timelines. And each we can all do all four of these. But we have a preference for pretty, for pretty much one or another. So I have a preference up here in yellow. You have a preference for some yellow and some red.

Darren A. Smith:

Less blue.

George:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

And less green. OK, so that's a whistle-stop tour of HBDI. The Herm and brain dominance instruments. What have I missed that we need to tell people about HBDI profiling?

George:

Well, actually, I'm very curious on how, since we're talking about teams, I would like to know the difference between an individual assessment profile and a team assessment profile. Like how do they defer and like, why would it be important for a team to do an HBDI assessment test? OK, no. That's the problem.

Darren A. Smith:

Imagine we haven't got one here just because of GDPR, but imagine this is your individual profile. Then we took that and we mapped it with thirty of your friends or teammates onto one of these, and so you probably come out as a red. Let's call you a red. I've been mapped as in yellow and then we put George and Bob and Ron and Julie and blah blah blah, we mapped them all up here. And then what we do is we say to them, what does that mean? Now imagine if all of them were thinking in the Red Quadrant and they didn't have any yellow, blue or green.

George:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

So this is what happened when we did some work with the NHS. Now the NHS are largely about nursing about doctors, medical looking after people bedside manner and they were Reds all Reds, which has a strength of course as each quadrant does, but each quadrant also has a weakness. Now what was happening with the NHS? These guys were really looking after their patients. But the problem is they had no analysis on what was going on. They had no future and their processes were crap.

Darren A. Smith:

So that was the challenge for them as a team. Now the answer isn't to try and shift who we are. We can only be the best version of ourselves. The answer is to try and make up for the weaknesses of the other quadrants by forcing ourselves to think in the other ways, because we can do all four.

George:

That's super interesting and it leads me to follow up question. So let's say in this example most of the in of the people in the company are red. Would you recommend for example in this instance that HR managers hire people from different quadrants in the future to help balance it? Or is it more like no, no, we like we don't want to go to this extreme like how would you tack on this problem? OK.

Darren A. Smith:

Hmm. Hmm. We work with a lot of companies who use HBDI as a recruitment tool. But here's the warning, the health warning. Make sure it's one of a number of pieces of information you use to select the right candidate, not the only one. And if there was a first thing, it must be. Are they right for the job? Skills, capability, experience. Are they a good fit for our culture? And then second, we might use HPDI and 3rd. We might look at something else, but don't let your recruitment policy be driven by trying to put all the colours together.

Darren A. Smith:

It's part of building up a picture of people.

George:

Int.

George:

Yeah, I mean that is my question, yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

Alright, now if we've got 99% Reds and we've got to hire 100th person, should they be another red? Or if they are, then we know how to deal with Reds. That's good. If they're not on there a yellow, then they might become or let's say even a blue, because opposites are where they struggle. You might bring this one person in, then they feel like a lone wolf. Their voice is not heard because it's one against 99 and that's the problem. And then these guys over time go hold up. I've been talking about analysis for three years and you guys aren't doing it.

George:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

We don't need analysis and then all of a sudden she goes and they go. Why'd you go? Well, I wasn't. You weren't doing any of that analysis stuff. We don't need it. So in the team we have to be very aware of our lone wolves, those people who aren't part of, let's call it the core, and we need to listen to them disproportionately because their voice can be very minimised.

George:

OK. That's super interesting. That's super interesting. And so OK. In general, like do you? Do you know which? So you said that opposing teams like red and blue are usually very much into opposition. Is it the same with green and yellow?

Darren A. Smith:

Yes, so it's the toughest communication and the toughest understanding is across the quadrants and this is because they're furthest apart from ourselves. So if I put that in the vernacular, the yellows can see the Greens as detailed monkeys.

George:

Hmm.

Darren A. Smith:

And the Greens see the yellows as we've got a head in the clouds, loads of ideas, but no clue what to do. And then if the Reds look at the Blues as sort of robots, they just want data and the Blues look at Reds as touchy feely, pink and fuzzy people. Now here's the thing. It's really easy to do that. It's really easy for me as a yellow to see a green as just someone who wants to fill out Gantt charts.

George:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

But here's the crazy thing. A yellow and a green get together if they don't want to understand each other. Two and two make 1/2 because they just don't go on. This isn't going to work. We're never going to see each other's world. OK, now, what about if they were to see the strengths in each other? The yellow has the ideas, and the green can make them happen. Two and two. Can it 3?

George:

Mm.

Darren A. Smith:

And that's where the power of HBDI is.

George:

That's interesting. Interesting. So OK. OK. Yeah. I'm just thinking in processing. It's very interesting. I love it.

Darren A. Smith:

Here's the power of HBDI is, yes, understanding our profile.