Two years ago, when I was chief talent officer for Marriott, I was tasked with streamlining and modernizing our learning and development capabilities. I’d assembled a new team and wanted to make sure we understood one another, our roles and responsibilities, and our strategic objectives before embarking on this journey. We used the personality style framework not only to understand our own strengths and weaknesses and how to work more effectively together but also to identify where we needed to augment the team and what we could realistically accomplish in our first year, and then our second.
As one of the initial steps in the strategic planning process, everyone considered their own profiles and those of their respective teams and started to staff them more appropriately. For example, the groups working on the design and development of our learning content and delivery approaches had a strong Guardian and Driver orientation; they needed to be pushed from a creative standpoint, so we added a Pioneer to lead an arm of that team. And when I staffed the group charged with the detail-oriented and collaborative process of organizing and integrating our learning and delivery offerings, I made sure to include Guardians and Integrators. As a Pioneer and Driver, I need those types around me personally, too.