It’s all about the conversation

We’re quick to say that StrongSuits is not a personality assessment instrument but rather a people and team development toolset which uses cards and games to get people talking about their strengths and how they work together. Let’s take a look at some differences and similarities between personality assessments and StrongSuits.

• Most personality assessments involve an individual answering a series of questions and ending up with a personalised report. StrongSuits does have a series of single-player games and reports, but in a team workshop these are secondary to the highly engaging team-based games played in real time.
• Some personality assessment instruments go a step further by including 360-degree feedback, so that the report reflects not only the individual’s self-evaluation but also others’ perceptions. If it’s well designed then this adds a highly valuable dimension of course, but gathering this asynchronous feedback is typically time-consuming and not highly engaging. A StrongSuits workshop, on the other hand, has team-based feedback and dialogue built in.

Let’s look at an example scenario.

While playing Your Winning Hand, one of the flagship StrongSuits games to identify individual and team strengths, a team member reaches across the table to grab the Diplomacy strength card. At that moment a teammate responds with a friendly “Are you sure? I actually see more of this (pointing to the Plain Speaking card) strength in you.”. Around the table a ripple of nodding heads follow as if to say “We see it too”, to which the original team member enquires “Really? How so?”. Another teammate now enters the conversation with “I see it too, do you remember that tense meeting we had a few months ago with that supplier who hadn’t delivered on their promise? I’ll never forget that point in the meeting when you looked up at them and said ‘You promised to finish this by Friday, and I’m holding you to that’. It was exactly what everyone in that room needed to hear at that moment but nobody was saying it. That, my friend, was plain speaking.”.