TGI Report - General Guidelines

TGI Teamability™Self-directed Report

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Richie Etwaru

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Your TGI Teamability™ Report

You are receiving this report because you have recently had the TGI

Teamability™ experience to help you work better as a team member in your

organization. It is very likely that you have never read a report like this before, so

we are including some information here to help you make the best use of it.

The first thing you might want to do is read the report and see if you agree with it.

That's fine. We expect that. But a Teamability report has more depth to it than

you are likely to see at first, so take your time. Most people find that once they

get past the point of "I agree with this..." and "I agree with that..." they begin to

see a different level of information. Remember, you already know how you are

now. This report is focused on what you might be able to become during your

working life in the future.

Keep in mind that the report is about YOU, about your POTENTIAL, and what

you can do to develop that potential, to bring you more of the rewards that are

'out there' for you. So please don't just read it and put it away. Instead, read it, set

it aside, think about it and then come back after a day or more and take another

look. Even then, parts of the report may not make sense until you think about it

some more.

Your Role

When a group of people form a team with goals and objectives, that organization

will often - as some people might say - "take on a life of its own". When this

happens, something deep inside the team members causes them to want to

serve the needs of the team itself, such as planning for the group's future,

preserving knowledge and information about the group, or performing essential

tasks that maintain the group's existence. TGI's Role-based approach (RBA)

measures this 'attraction' to serving group needs, and it is called Role. Your Role

02/19/13 Copyright © 2010-2013, The Gabriel Institute. All Rights Reserved. 1/9

tells you what kind of work you will find satisfying and what you are probably

going to be good at.

There are ten universal needs that all organizations have. For some people, their

desire to serve feels like a mission they have been given. For others, it is less of

a quest, but no less important. When you are engaged in work that is aligned with

your Role, you are more productive. When you learn to do your Role even better

than you do now, you can contribute even more to your team.

Some people may be drawn to serving in more than one Role. If this is true for

you, the other Role(s) will be briefly described in an 'Alternative Roles' section. If

you are using this report for your own self-improvement, remember that

becoming stronger in your preferred Role will also make you stronger in other

areas. Focusing on your weaknesses will be less effective. A team will always be

stronger when each team member has job responsibilities that are a good match

for their Role.

Whether you own a business or you work in one, you will most likely have to work

well with many people. Your personal satisfaction and productivity will depend, in

part, on your ability to work well with others. The more you know about how you

can best do that, the better you are going to be at doing it well and the more you

will enjoy your work life. We use a special term, Coherent Human Infrastructure,

to describe an organization where people work in effective teams, each person

understanding how their Role complements the Roles of others, and all members

secure in the knowledge that each member's effort will be trusted, valued, and

respected.

In Coherent Human Infrastructure terms, you are a Vision Former .

The Vision Former is the heart of the team. You are like the base on which the

lever that moves a Vision rests. A common folk idea is that behind every

successful person is someone in the background on whom the one in the

spotlight depends. That person is a Vision Former. Although you take your

direction from a Vision generally established by someone else, you will often find

yourself as the guiding light of the organization or any other group, and you will

guide the rest in their work. They are likely to experience your guidance as


natural, effective, and appropriate. Often you do this as if you are drawn into a

vacuum because no one else seems to know what they are doing.

In business, the Vision Former acts as a 'lens' to contain and focus the creative

energy of the Vision Mover especially. You keep the team on track and contained

so that useful work can get done. Ignite gasoline in an open dish and it will burn

but its energy will be dissipated and wasted. Yet burn that same gasoline and

contain it in an engine and it can get a great deal done. You are like that engine.

When ideas are generated, it is usually helpful to have someone to 'bounce' the

ideas off. That is one of the main creative functions of a Vision Former. You are

the one the ideas are bounced off. You listen, evaluate, and 'shape' them since

they tend to be vague and ill-defined at first. Your job is to refine them into the

kind of useful concepts that can get things accomplished. You are the one who

considers whether something makes sense or not and helps to fashion it into a

form that does. When you do this well, you make things work. If you do it poorly,

you will just weigh everything down and be seen as an interference.

You believe in respect for other people, you trust that each person will carry out

their part of the team effort properly, and you have faith in the Vision. You set the

tone for the team. As such, it is important that you feel respected and trusted,

since this will reinforce the kinds of teaming behaviors that make a truly

cooperative and smooth-working organization so effective.

Sometimes what you do is almost disciplinary in nature. If someone in the

organization wants to do something that is in a 'gray area' or is actively improper,

you will feel called upon to attempt to stop it. Such efforts, in many situations, will

be resisted and resented and the resulting anger may well be directed at you. As

a result, some Vision Formers learn to simply give in and 'play the game' but this

will result in both stress on you and, usually, great losses for the organization

when the unconstrained, undirected efforts cause huge problems. You are a

natural coach and mentor; your greatest wish is to enlighten people.

Your time focus is on the future, so you are interested in what happens over the

long haul, not the next year or so. You are heavily oriented to getting things done

well, not necessarily in making people feel warm and fuzzy. You believe that if


people will listen to you, they will be more likely to gain real success in the long

run, even if they get miffed. It may involve a small amount of interim pain but the

long term gain is what is important. You believe that what is important is

arranging for a person to have the means for what they need for them to solve

their problems. This is valuable for the achievement of the Vision, whether or not

you get full cooperation from everyone.

For more detailed, general information on Roles, go to

http://www.thegabrielinstitute.com/Roles .

Your 'Role Partner'

Each Role has a 'partner' to help you do your work better. This section will

describe that partner briefly and tell you how to recognize, respect, and work best

with him or her to achieve higher performance and greater success for your team.

Your ideal Role Partner is a Vision Mover .

As a Vision Former, your strength is in shaping other people's ideas into practical

forms but to do this effectively, you require ideas to shape. It is not that you can't

come up with ideas on your own; you can. What works more effectively, though,

is to take ideas from someone else and shape them and mold them into

something better. So, ideally, you work with someone who is a fountain of ideas

and plans and is constantly seeking to move forward and get things done. Such a

partner will seed you and give you the raw materials with which to work. That

person is the other half of the creative process. It makes you much more

productive because you can sort through many possibilities and put them

together and evaluate them and develop them into something that can truly stand

on its own. You can take ideas that are unfinished and unfocused and turn them

into works of art. Why waste your energy trying to form the ideas from nothing

when you can be at your best being seeded first?

For more detailed, general information on Role Partners, go to

http://www.thegabrielinstitute.com/Role_Partners .


The 'Tool' Associated with Your Role

Each Role has a unique 'tool' that helps the team achieve its goals. This is not a

physical tool. It is an idea or method that is something you probably already do.

This section tells you how to use this 'tool' more consciously, deliberately, and

effectively. This will enable you to do your best, and to get more done.

Every Role has a challenge and a symbolic 'tool' with which to meet that

challenge.

For the Vision Former, it is The Wings. Your challenge is to decide how high to

fly' and when it's time for the team to return to Earth for a rest. Wings are required

to balance the opposing forces of lift, which brings the team ever higher, and

drag, which pulls them down to the earth. Vision Formers can make their

organizations soar. A team may have lofty aspirations, but without a Vision

Former behind them, they are unlikely to actually accomplish very much. They

will be left on the ground, looking and wishing.

Picture a jet trying to take off from an aircraft carrier. The engines are certainly

powerful enough to keep the plane flying but a jet just can't get enough power

fast enough to take off from the short deck of an aircraft carrier. Instead they use

a steam catapult that hurls them into the air until the internal engine takes over.

You make things happen by giving those you work with a boost. An ineffective

Vision Former will feel a sense of righteous indignation when the team is not

performing up to standards and then will make impossible demands on them.

Your goal is to learn the specific motivations of each person on your team and

those outside who have a major impact on your organization and to meet those

motivations with the proper Role respect. If you are able to learn to do this, you

will be able to encourage everyone to give their best to the collective effort.

Alternative Role

Some people may be drawn to serving in more than one Role. If you do,

information about the alternative Role you are capable of filling will appear here.

Serving in more than one Role does not mean you should try to do everything

yourself. People are always more effective when they allow other people to 'team'


with them, especially when making critical decisions about team activity and

direction.

You may also fill the role of Vision Mover .

You are powerful, forceful, and aggressive in how you approach other people.

Once you are given a mission or decide upon a goal, you tend to be very

determined to reach that goal. You are able to take a Vision and start the process

of deciding how to get it done. It helps that you are an 'idea person'. Perhaps

people sometimes get annoyed with you for being too 'bossy' but that is the way

you accomplish goals.

You decide on your goals based on the Vision, and you will likely be lost and

frustrated if there isn't one, or it isn't clear. You may even find yourself acting as

the team's manager, whether you are part of a team or a just an informal group,

and regardless of who is actually supposed to be the manager. In an effective

group with lots of Roles represented, the others will experience your direction as

very natural. You may be frustrated when they are not able to make enough

useful progress or contribute what they are capable of doing. Because of your

orientation to Vision, you can often see very clearly where the group had better

go and how it can best get there.

To be an effective Vision Mover requires a sense of confidence and a strong

desire to achieve as much as possible. You feel a strong sense of responsibility

to the team and, in particular, to the Vision Former, if you are fortunate enough to

have one. This sense of responsibility is part of what motivates you. You tend to

be strongly oriented to your own ideas and can express them with confidence.

You want to get things done. There may have to be a small amount of temporary

inconvenience for others but it's what happens in the end that is important. For

example, you believe that it is more important to show people where and how to

find food rather than just feeding them because they are hungry.

Coherence

As described in a Teamability report, Coherence results in a positive contribution


to group achievement. Quite simply, Coherent people work well with others; Rigid

and Diffuse people often do not. This is partly because Coherent people manage

stress better. This section gives some tips for being a stronger contributor to your

team.

Your behavior tends to be Coherent, even under times of high pressure or stress.

Under very high stress, you will likely revert to less effective behavior, as most

people do, but you will recognize it and act to return to your usual effectiveness.

You can serve your team by doing what you can to reduce people's tension. That

might be merely reminding people of what the task at hand is, since maintaining

forward motion is often critical.

If you are on a team where others are Coherent, you will likely function well, as

long as you have the right teammates. If, however, you are working under a

Diffuse or Rigid leader, you may be quite frustrated. If this is happening, be sure

to consider all of your options before making a rash decision.

For more detailed, general information on Coherence, go to

http://www.thegabrielinstitute.com/Coherence .

Teaming Characteristics

Teaming Characteristics describe the various qualities of a person's work with

other people, both inside and outside a team. This section talks about how you

can use your Teaming Characteristics more effectively to bring more value to

group activities and relationships.

Your greatest contribution to your team is that you provide a 'moral compass' for

it to measure where they are, especially when conditions are turbulent. Your

desire to enlighten people may seem almost mystical to some and they will not

easily understand you. To perform more effectively, always consider how the

person you are trying to influence needs to be communicated with.

These additional Teaming Characteristics may or may not affect your work on

your present team. They are useful to be aware of, however, since you will be

working on other teams in the future.


You don't demand respect, although you may certainly earn it, because it

probably seems like an old-fashioned idea to you.

You are a productive idea person with a forceful style. Just be sure that you are

going in the right direction before driving the team forward.

It is hard for you to see that some people may need a lot of help, more than you

would want to give them. This is not a problem when you are working on a high

level team of solid performers.

You are very self sufficient, although it is likely that this has been out of necessity.

You have a lot of ideas and then you evaluate and focus them. While you can do

both well, you would be even more effective if you worked with a Role Partner

that would do one, while you did the other.

For more detailed, generic information on Teaming Characteristics, go to

http://www.thegabrielinstitute.com/Teaming .

Self-Development Suggestions

Finally, we have some suggestions on how you can develop yourself more fully,

with or without the help of a manager, mentor, or coach.

As a Vision Former, you are concerned not only with making things happen, but

making them happen properly and well. The single overriding principle that is

critical for you to follow is to make sure that what happens is something that

contributes to human dignity and well-being.

Part of your job is to look after the weak. Remember, weakness can be of many

types. Ignorance, lack of consent, and vulnerability are all kinds of weaknesses

that will draw out your concern. Make sure such people are protected.

You have a strong sense of justice. It is important to remember that your place is

not to punish the wrongdoer, although you can and will withdraw your support if

that is appropriate.

Like the physician, you are to be dedicated first to doing no harm and second to

doing good when and where you can in all that you do. Few others can uphold


this principle as well as you can.

It is not your place to dictate to others what they must do unless you have no

other choice. Exercise this option only with great restraint, lest you become an

obstacle rather than a fulcrum.


Career

TGI Report - General Guidelines