Michael Kloss is a partner at IT consultancy Conciso GmbH and thus also a founding member of ID37 Company. As an agile coach, he also helps teams introduce agile working methods. Before joining Conciso, the computer scientist was entrusted with various agile management roles. As a result, he is very familiar with the conditions needed for effective team management in new working environments. Part 2 of the interview.
A key experience for me was a post-assessment discussion with a client whose high scores for INFLUENCE and REVENGE totally masked his equally high score for SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE in his day-to-day working life. I had known the client for some time and had never noticed that he needed recognition. Only in the post-assessment session did it become clear to me that a lack of recognition also explained why he was dissatisfied with his job.’ He never heard “That was really good work,” and didn’t receive any praise from his bosses. We worked out a way for the client to take action himself when he needs recognition. He later confirmed that the assessment brought him clarity and constituted a genuine turning point in his life.
We can better understand and support those employees with whom we have carried out personality assessments. Of course, everyone is free to create their own motive profile. We’ve noticed, however, that interest in the assessment is growing. Personally, I think this approach is well-suited to Generation Y, whom we target as employees. Take the example of an employee with a high FAMILY motive score. Nothing could be worse than sending this employee to a client 500 km away five days a week. Knowing the preferences of our employees in terms of what is important to them in life helps us create the best possible environment for them. In the consulting business in particular, it’s important to have satisfied employees. The more satisfied our consultants are, the more energy they have, and the more balanced they are. And customers appreciate this.
I can train or improve myself only when I know what my shortcomings are. Through my ID37 personality profile, for example, I know that I have a very low expression of the STRUCTURE motive. If someone tells me to be more orderly and less erratic, I can respond less emotionally than I have in the past because I know that structure is probably much more important for them than it is for me. I’ve come to understand the resources I have to tap and can train myself to recognize such situations, to curb my initial response and instead adapt my behavior to the context – especially when I’m to act as a role model in my position as a manager.
I’ve been an ID37 Master since the very beginning, when I started as a Reiss Motivation Profile Master. Altogether, I’ve been working on an ongoing basis with personality diagnostics for six years now. For me, the most important thing about ID37 is the way in which it captures the multifaceted dimensions that express our individuality. I’m also convinced that this tool – which was developed with the University of Luxembourg – will remain relevant in the future.
The agile way of working is based on three essential pillars: Transparency, inspection and adaptation – inspect exactly what happens and draw on this in adapting your next steps. This requires embracing transparency in order to obtain a full picture of things. If we want to apply this in our work, how can we not do this with ourselves? These three principles can be applied wonderfully to ourselves: Above all, ID37 gives me transparency and helps me, with these three principles, do the ongoing work of developing myself and thereby strengthen my flexibility and adaptability as a person.
Follow this link to part 1 of the interview with Michael Kloss, Partner at IT Consulting Conciso and founding member of ID37 Company.
Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash
