Welcome to the first 2nd Nature Performance blog post for business. There will also be a 2nd Nature Performance blog for sports. There will be a lot of great information in each blog. Coaches, athletes and business people will benefit from reading both.
Since this edition is focused on business and specifically on team building and team leadership I begin by quoting Ray Dalio, the founder and CEO of Bridgewater, one of the world’s largest hedge funds.
“Understand that people are wired very differently.”*
Along with Mark Bertolini, Ray Dalio co-leads a company of 1500 people. Teamwork is essential to Bridgewater’s success. So Bridgewater employs up to five different profiling tools on each employee. Everyone in the company has access to everyone else’s information which is summarized in baseball card format. This extensive knowledge on each employee’s strengths, preferences, and weaknesses allows the Bridgewater leadership to both leverage the diversity of talent in their company, and to precisely assign work to those best equipped to do it.
Recognizing, understanding, and leveraging individual differences is critical knowledge for anyone leading a business, sports team or family. Acknowledging and working with the individual differences and needs which all humans have in motivation and performance is a critical part of embracing the reality in front of you.
One of the reasons Bridgewater uses multiple profiling tools is because most profiling tools are based on paper tests. Paper tests have been proven to be quite inaccurate. In fact, the most popular, profiling tool, the MBTI, claims only 60% accuracy. Using multiple paper based profiling tools could provide a more complete picture of someone, but could also lead to less accuracy due to the inherent uncertainties of all paper tests.
2nd Nature Performance profiling tools are biodynamic. Our testing is based on physical responses to light stress and simple observations of movement, posture, and balance. Our profiling demonstrates how a person’s cognitive profile is directly linked to their physical preferences. The 2nd Nature profiling tools reveal cognitive, communication, and motivational preferences directly expressed through the mind-body connection.
Our biodynamic testing saves time and is nearly 100% accurate. The combination of our motor/cognitive profile and our motivational profile will provide a business leader with all the knowledge needed to optimally engage, motivate, and assign work to each employee. Our profiling tools will also help you give each member of your business or team a role which matches their profile. This matching allows every team member to feel essential.
We like to use the following acronym for maximizing team performance:
Recognize
Understand
Leverage
Energize
Synergize
We can help your business and teams get to synergy. More information is available on our website. There will be a lot more on team building in future posts. Thanks for reading!
*Ray Dalio, Principles, Simon and Schuster, p. 204.
