Your Working Style
To give you an insight into your personality preferences. Our research suggests that the most effective people are those who understand themselves, their strengths, and their weaknesses.This allows them to to be more effective team members. The H.O.T.S. questionnaire helps you to understand your personality preferences, and the people you work with, rather than fighting against those traits, or simply not being aware of them.
Here's an example of the personality traits we can uncover :
Overview:
The energetic, decisive, clear-sighted approach of the Owl often brings them to leadership roles. The directness of their personal style can sometimes cause problems for them with others.
| Overriding need | To be authoritative |
| Seen by others | As energetic, articulate, confident, vivid, funny, can seem overbearing. |
| Sees self | As always on probation. |
| Works best | With committed people who deliver what they are asked on time and are prepared to stand up for themselves. |
| Works least well | With people who seem unenthusiastic, self-indulgent and over emotional. |
| As team member | Contributes insistence on looking at the big picture; rigorous standards; concern for deadlines; enthusiasm; a passion for action. |
| Leads by | Sink or swim enthusiasm for long-term trends and selling ideas boldly to others; loves a radical overhaul; relishes growth and being entrepreneurial; leads through relentlessness and managing by walking about; devoted coach to those who can keep up with the high standards demanded. |
| Ideal organisation | Large and stable but now facing major change and needs the energy of the Owl to get things on track; rewards achievement rather than playing by the rules. |
| Ideal boss | Is respected for professional achievement; allows freedom, values energy, commitment to standards, avoids being wet or woolly; enjoys a robust discussion without getting upset. |
| In relationships | Gives a lot and expects a lot; regards being liked as less important than being right; wants intimacy and closeness but on own terms. May not always be able to resolve resulting tension. Relationships tend to be colourful, sometimes stormy. |
| Makes mistakes | When trying to control everything or getting into tussles about who is right. |
| Decides | Confidently by generating many possibilities and coming to a swift, logical conclusion |
| Sees change | As another part of life’s jigsaw; let’s make it happen now and worry about the detail later. |
| Thinks | Strategically; loves solving complex problems. |
| Communicates | Confidently and frequently; inspires with optimism; may get impatient if others don’t follow – e.g. interrupting or finishing peoples sentences for them; can speak in public fluently without notes. |
| Irritated by | Special pleading; bureaucratic detail; people who beat about the bush. |
| Irritates by | Not listening; jumping to conclusions without factual evidence; fidgeting. |
| As a parent | Wants to do the job well but often finds it difficult to devote sufficient time; May solve problem with a “quality time” approach when children are slotted in for high energy attention. |
| Relaxation | Rarely relaxes- work is usually too absorbing; ”leisure may involve competing with others, making it as exhausting as work. |
| Under stress | Gives way to emotional outbursts; drives too hard; gets caught up with detail; becomes overly self critical and feels unappreciated; over-does eating and drinking. |
OWLS may become more effective through:
• Showing that they value their staff individually and not just as work machines.
• Praising the positive and playing down the criticisms.
• Improving listening skills
• Avoiding jumping to action before reflection.
• Becoming more discerning about which deadlines really matter.
• Giving up the struggle to control everything.
• Learning patience with younger, less bright and less experienced people.
• Counting to ten or more before giving way to an emotional explosion
• Getting in closer touch with the tender and vulnerable sides of their personality.
Your preferred team role: OWL
A team role is your tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way. You can be a mixture of different types – a Hare, an Owl, a Tiger or a Squirrel. Two of these animals are planners – Hares and Owls; 2 are action oriented roles – Tigers and squirrels; and 2 are people oriented roles – Owls and Tigers. The characteristics of the 4 team roles are summarised in the table on the following page.
Owls are externally focused, introspective, altruistic, positive and have excellent people skills. They place utmost importance on helping others grow. They are warm and have a natural desire to be supportive and encouraging.
Ideal Function:
Owls are useful to an organisation because of their reliability and capacity for application. They succeed because they are efficient and because they have a sense of what is feasible and relevant. It is said that many executives only do the jobs they wish to do and neglect those tasks which they do not like. By contrast, an Owl will do what needs to be done. Good Owls often progress to high management positions by virtue of good organisational skills and competency in tackling necessary tasks.
People working together can accomplish far more than they can individually. No matter how talented you are you won’t get the synergy and power that is released when people with a common purpose work together. With a great team you have better ideas, plans and implementation.
Owls love taking ideas and planning a strategy for success. They are the activists who make connections and action plans.
Owls need to look for other people with complementary abilities who can handle work that you’re not so good at. What Owls need on their team are; Hares, Turtles and Squirrels – So you get the HOTS.
Hares are ideas people who think randomly. They love coming up with ideas, but usually get bored once they’ve thought them through. They are very creative, but others may argue that they don’t implement them.
Tigers like to take things slow and steady, they believe in tradition, proven solutions, and are good at pointing out potential problems. They allow the team to see around corners at what might happen and can save a lot of time, trouble and money.
Squirrels like to turn plans into action and get the work done step-by-step. They are hard working, supportive, and predictable. Squirrels take basic ideas and make them work in practice. They are the people who will organise and run things smoothly.
Most of the work we do falls into four categories:
Solutions are for Hares:
Brainstorming ideas to exploit opportunities and solve problems.
Strategies are for Owls:
Picking the best ideas and making an action plan.
Structure is for Tigers:
Working out the reference points for what could go right or what could go wrong.
Results are for Squirrels:
Getting the action plan to work.
Some teams have lots of new ideas but nothing ever seems to happen? These teams need Tigers to slow them down and make a plan, and Squirrels to implement the plan. Conversely, a team of Structure Tigers and Detail Squirrels can run a great system with lots of activity, but no innovative ideas or products to move forward. If you have Idea Hares and Structure Tigers you will create an endless debate of hare-brained concepts and critical hair-splitting. If you have a gap you can always bring in outside Owls to work on projects and make the team more balanced.
So how do you release the synergy and power of this team? – You get the right people doing the right work – which vastly improves the speed and capacity of your business.
HOTS profiles are based on our extensive research on the Jung - Myers-Briggs typological approach to personality and influenced by the work of Allen Fahden and Marie West as described in the best selling book The One Minute Millionaire
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