In our recent article, Capabilities, harnessing your superpowers at work, we unpacked how a capabilities-led service offering significantly contributes to an organisation by making it more agile, resilient, and best positioned to respond rapidly to market changes.
The Thomas Personal Profile Analysis (PPA)
When capabilities are combined with the Thomas Personal Profile Analysis (PPA), a science-based assessment backed by AI that provides behavioural insights to individuals and teams, organisations are super-empowered to build confident, well-integrated working relationships, with diverse, robust and highly optimised teams within a vibrant culture.
The Personal Profile Analysis (PPA), based on Marston’s DISC theory, is completed in under eight minutes and provides deep insight into people and behaviour, empowering organisations to see beyond CVs, skills and experience to build an engaged workforce and well-rounded teams.
Reliable, validated insights derived from the analysis can help to:
Understand what drives and engages people;
Improve communication and teamwork;
Support personal development by identifying key strengths, etc.
Meet Kaleidoscope’s Carla Hill-Lewis. Carla expertly guides high-performance individuals, teams and organisations through the PPA journey to uncover their key working strengths and support factors, motivations, abilities and limitations.
What to expect
A case in point springs to mind. Recently Kaleidoscope SA was privileged to engage with the financial team of a group of companies with a diverse and multidisciplinary global footprint. This highly driven professional team keeps things ticking over, often having to shift gears from one industry to another in a heartbeat, all in a day’s work.
We ask Adele, Maya and Jemma* (*not their real names) to share their experience. Their response is candid and animated. Let’s dive right into the conversation.
Tell us about your day
“As a financial team, there are certain deliverables that we can predict, such as month-end, audits, our liabilities towards SARS, etc. However, as we are working with a large and varied number of businesses within our group, each possessing a long list of deliverables, we are required to think on our feet, pivoting rapidly to meet the changing needs of the businesses as they materialise. Over and above our normal day-to-day tasks It is literally a lucky packet that gets thrown at us.”
The team bursts out laughing, their shared smiles and ringing laughter, convey a cohesive, close-knit connection. “Today is a good day.” They assure me. “You get work fit. Although we still get stressed occasionally, we know everything will be fine. We just go ahead and get it done! Variety keeps things interesting! Adaptability is a key skill to have in our team. Without it, you won’t last!”
What was your experience of the Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) journey?
“Initially, the process was challenging for us, because we are not accustomed to undefined tasks and Kaleidoscope never defined anything upfront. So the session would commence without us knowing where it was headed, the possible outcome, or how it would conclude. This made us super uncomfortable. Over time, we’ve become much better at trusting Kaleidoscope’s process.”
“Understanding the different ways a team prefers to receive and process information is always so enlightening.” Says Carla. “For example, some like to be given all the details at the get-go and then need time to process it, while others are happy just to receive a summary and then jump right into finding solutions.”
Another key benefit of the PPA is to understand how, in pressurised situations, team members shift their behaviour as a coping mechanism. With an appreciation of this, the team can recognise these behavioural shifts and are better equipped to respond and support each other when they occur.
How has the Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) resonated with you?
“We took the assessment at year-end while working super-long hours. So we rushed through the assessment late one night while we were all under pressure, feeling tired and frustrated at work. In retrospect, this probably was the best time to conduct the assessment, as our feelings showed clearly in the results. At a future stage, these findings will be great to compare in a new assessment.”
What do you enjoy the most about your roles?
“Autonomy. We have demonstrated our abilities, so, we have been entrusted to carry out the work.”
How has the work with Kaleidoscope impacted the way you work?
“As each of us works separately, remotely 90% of the time, this journey has introduced a structured routine to our way of work which compels us to connect, talk and check in more often. It works extremely well. More importantly, it has forced us to think about the future for the first time. For example, where previously we worked reactively and purely from a financial standpoint, our experience with Kaleidoscope has taught us the importance of creating the capacity to expand our horizons and extend our thinking to become more proactive, strategic and long-term. Interestingly, this requires mostly non-financial thinking.”
“The PPA provides a clear view of the different work styles that make up a team. Understanding how each team member prefers to work while allowing for greater context into behaviours in certain situations is crucial.” Explains Carla.
“From OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to systems, automation and productivity, we are now proactively thinking of ways to help us work better, faster and more efficiently. We have just implemented three automation processes which have had a massive impact on productivity.
By guiding us to think differently, Kaleidoscope has provided us with the framework to create the capacity to enable us to focus on future-proofing our roles and the business.”
What has changed significantly for you during this journey?
“Documentation of goals, OKRs, and capabilities are now clearly defined. It was a valuable exercise to put everything that had been living in our heads down on paper and to see if we were all on the same page and have robust discussions around that. Then, implementing what we always knew onto a system like Jira, a workflow management tool.
We now have greater clarity in our roles which gives us confidence when engaging with other stakeholders. We are now driving the narrative because we have a clear plan. This gives us gravitas. It makes us feel proud - we’re achieving much more and adding value.”
Resilience and future-proofing
“We are focusing on predicting the future better. By thinking strategically we have more informed insights and can position ourselves better for the future.”
Final thoughts
“Kudos to the Kaleidoscope Team! It was a breath of fresh air. They took us on a journey towards a new way of thinking. The check-in questions were so surprising, interesting and insightful, prompting entirely new conversations. It was so much fun to work with all of them.”
Does your organisation need a Thomas Personal Profile Analysis (PPA), or New Ways of Work?
We can help. It all starts with a check-in question.
Connect with us for more information: hello@kaleidoscopesa.co.za | Linkedin | Instagram
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