The Difference Between Working Together and Winning Together

Is your team “winning” together? Or simply working together?

Working together requires everyone to do their part to get the job done. Winning together, on the other hand, means your team has learned how to work together and how to succeed.

Working together tends to be the goal of most teams. We want everyone to get along and work together to get the job done. What most teams don’t take into account is just because people are working together doesn’t mean things are going well. Oftentimes there is a lack of ownership, a lack of respect for individual differences, and frustration runs rampant.

But when your team learns how to win together, everything changes. 

In this blog, I’ll be discussing how to take your team from simply working together to winning together through the discovery of each other’s strengths and how to not only work with them but embrace them.

Working Through The Motions Versus Working Within Your Natural Instincts

We all know what it’s like to work through the motions. Whether it’s a job that doesn’t fit you or a task you’re required to work on that doesn’t feel natural, it’s draining to work on things without enthusiasm or investment. No matter what you do, it can simply feel impossible to accomplish, really, anything.

Would it make you feel better if I told you it’s not your fault?

When we’re working outside of our natural instincts, no amount of grit and determination is going to create the enthusiasm we so desperately need.

Think back to a time you were fired up about a task or project. It may not have been a passion of yours, but you were enthusiastic about it and were invested in the outcome.

Your enthusiasm and investment came from working within your natural instincts. Your task provided you with the right environment and the right freedom to work the exact way you were designed to, allowing you to thrive.

This is what happens when we design environments that allow people to work within their natural instincts (and hire people based on the instincts needed to perform specific roles). One of the best ways to find your natural instinct, and learn how to work within them, is to explore the Kolbe A™ Index.

Using Kolbe™ To Understand Instincts

The Kolbe A™ Index gives everyone four scores, each ranging from 1-10. The four scores correlate to the four pillars of the Kolbe A™  Index: Fact Finder, Follow Through, Quick Start, and Implementor. With these four values, you are able to see your natural instincts, and specifically how you take action within each of them. 

The beauty of the Kolbe A™ Index is there is no good or bad, right or wrong score. The Kolbe scores you receive are your innate pattern of taking action when you are striving or working toward a decision or action in the creative problem-solving way. The four strengths are a continuum. Everyone is somewhere on this continuum, allowing all scores to be of equal importance. The numbers you receive help describe where you are on the continuum, not your value on the continuum. This helps take away some of the shame or fear that our scores may be different from those around us.

Your Strengths, And Working Within Them, Make You A Better Team Player

When you understand your strengths and how you work within your instincts, you are better able to understand what you need from a situation and how to interact with others. When you understand you need more details than those around you because you are a high Fact Finder, you know to make sure to ask the questions for the information you need instead of relying on others to provide it.

We call this, “right person, right seat,” and it has to do with your own individual career journey, as well as how your team hires and grows its employees and roles.

Defining Success and Accomplishing Team Effort

When a team understands each other’s strengths and how their strengths fit together, they are able to thrive. Everyone gets what they need to be successful.

This sounds great, but is this really possible outside of a perfect world?

Absolutely yes!

When working with The Instinctive Advantage, I guide your entire team through their individual Kolbe A™ Index results and how each individual’s results impact the group as a whole. I sit down with each team member individually to explore their instincts, and then we work as a group to learn how to work together within them.

Will frustration and misunderstandings happen? Of course, we’re human. But frustration and misunderstandings can be resolved simply and quickly when there is respect for each other’s instincts, and clear understandings of what we all need to operate at our best.

With the ever changing workforce, don’t just work together. Win together!  

To learn more about the Kolbe System™, and how I can help your organization, reach out to our team today. 

-E