I’ve been at Thomas for a while, and I’ve been lucky enough to sit on different teams throughout the years and work with different people. Recently, we created a new team which I head up, and which involved hiring someone new and mobilising someone who had been with us a while, into a new role. I was really aware that both of these people would be working closely together in order to deliver the goals of the team, and although one of the members of the team had been with us for a while, it was still new territory.
It gave me two important conundrums to start with. My background is psychology, and I know the importance of creating a safe culture and connection between team members. So I knew we needed to ensure well-being, productivity and ultimately a group of people who are happy in their roles. Both people had been given the new roles because they are brilliant, and I didn’t want to lose them due to them not being happy within the team.
They both started and things seemed to be going well. But after some initial one-to-ones with them, I realised that they were both saying the same thing to me. They really liked each other from a personal point of view, they had a lot in common and got on well. But professionally, they both found working with each other was not clicking as well as they had thought it would. When we spoke about it more, we realised that both team members felt that they weren’t being as effective as they wanted to be together, but neither could pinpoint why.
I’m on the team that built Thom, our AI coach, so obviously the first thing I did was suggest engaging with the tool and understanding each other’s profiles. The magic of Thom is that you can ask specific questions and use it as a digital mirror to work out how you can make things better for you or your colleagues, instead of just guessing. And importantly it’s built on solid people science. So, they both went away and separately asked Thom why they might be feeling that they aren’t being as effective as they want to be whilst working with the other person.
Initially, they assumed that the reason they weren’t working well together was because they were too different... but actually what Thom showed was that it was their similarities that was causing them to clash. Essentially, they both had very caring, perfectionist, high-standard tendencies with work, and that meant that they didn’t want to let the other person down, but equally didn’t want to come across as forceful. They both needed to be able to hold each other accountable in order to feel psychologically safe and confident within the role. Essentially, they needed to know what each was expecting of the other but hadn’t been communicating this. They were both asking each other, ‘how can I help you?’ instead of telling the other what they actually needed.
This was a lightbulb moment for them both – as they realised that they both wanted to work in the same way in order to achieve the results they’re working towards, but they weren’t communicating it well. All it took was openness and vulnerability to help their communication and improve their relationship. They were able to move quicker, spot when the other was getting frustrated and identify what actions to put in place to get the best out of each other. But without looking at each other's profiles and really understanding each other, this would have been left to guesswork.
These were two people who were passionate about their jobs and wanted to do well. Their profiles showed that they really wanted to help each other and work well as a team, and Thom AI helped them translate their profile insights into action.
Oh, and also, they smashed their targets for the year. Together. I mean, of course they did, they are both amazing individuals who are even more incredible when they work well together.
