Improve Team Connection With Assessments

If you could enhance team connection in a virtual world, what could that do for engagement, idea generation, results and retention?  Getting the tech right is really important, but it’s actually the human side of the set up that makes the biggest difference to connection and culture.

Disconnection is a feeling that occurs when an individual feels they are unaffiliated or detached from the team or organisation they belong to. In some cases, individuals feel as though their voice is either not heard or it has little impact on the decisions made by those in charge. This lack of connection can cause disengagement and reduced productivity. 

The Current State of Disconnection

A recent report from Australian tech giant Atlassian on The State of Teams pointed out that 56% of knowledge workers feel their team is poorly connected on a personal level. With that in mind, it’s a reasonably prevalent issue for teams so why is it occurring?

A couple of reasons that disconnection is growing are:

1. Virtual teams need ways in which they can make connections with one another before operating remotely. Building trust first allows individuals working virtually to build relationships that increase engagement even when there may be geographical distance between them. Because this has not occurred broadly across organisations, a sense of disconnection has grown. 
2. Many individuals have experienced life-changing events given the extensive changes that have occurred over the past two years. They would benefit from improved self-understanding and self-connection. Unfortunately, little time has been set aside for individuals to reflect on their experiences and heal. This has created a disconnect within themselves, and subsequently between their colleagues (and possibly friends and family). 

Connecting employees around their preferences, skill sets, strengths and motivations will drive better connection and engagement. Knowing common traits among individuals on your team allows communication channels to be open so that colleagues feel known, understood and validated across differences which leads to increased productivity through teamwork. 

Using psychometric assessments is a fast way to effectively understand what drives an individual, how they prefer to operate, and what their levels of personal and social awareness are.

Individuals who are more engaged in their work have better relationships within the workplace overall, therefore reducing feelings of disconnection between employees while increasing opportunities for connection through common goals that bring about trust in one another's abilities to collaborate effectively towards achieving them together as a team.

Do you want to improve your connections at work?

Where to Start with Assessments

The use of psychometric assessments in the workplace continues to grow globally as they can be used across the entire employee lifecycle, and they expedite connectivity in teams. 

Our assessments are based on research in psychology and the social sciences and have appropriate reliability and validity scores. Each area of science that is included in an assessment provides insight into a specific layer of human performance. (For example, behavioural science is applied in the popular DISC assessment.)

Naturally, when more sciences are incorporated, then more layers of human performance can be explored. (For example, DISC is one piece of a very complex puzzle around what makes us unique.)

Taking a multi-science approach has many benefits and allows you to:

• Understand an individual (or team) with exceptional depth very quickly
• Align an individual (or team) to engaging work that gives them purpose
• Leverage an individual’s motivation levels to support career planning. 

One multi-science assessment that we recommend is TTI Success Insights’ TriMetrix EQ. It is a powerful tool that provides three perspectives to help us understand ourselves and others. TriMetrix EQ explores behavioural style, personal motivators, and emotional intelligence. The profile is a detailed 50+ page document (per person).

If you’re looking to connect a team, there is a free team wheel that helps everyone to appreciate their uniqueness, strengths and opportunities for development. We’re confident that this tool will be invaluable in helping your team achieve its goals by allowing individuals to work together more effectively as well as providing an accurate picture of how they are likely to behave when under pressure or stress. 

We invite you to request a sample “John Doe” TriMetrix EQ report so that you can see first-hand all the helpful information in the profile. From the drop down list, select TriMetrix EQ (multi-science DISC, DF and EQ).

We would be more than happy to help you understand more about using assessments in virtual and hybrid teams. Reach out at hello@dtssydney.com anytime.