Why Understanding Different Work Styles is Key to Team Success

While strategy may be set in the boardroom, an organization's teams are the vehicle for that success. But the journey from strategic vision to execution is fraught with challenges.

According to a sobering study by Harvard Business Review, 67% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution.

McKinsey research further reveals that only 30% of organizational transformations achieve their intended goals. The disconnect between strategic intent and operational reality is both pervasive and costly.

Why does this happen, and what's going wrong? To continue the vehicle metaphor, it's typically because there's significant friction in the gears, and that friction stems from teams not gelling and team members not being positioned to do their best work—or knowing how to optimize the work of others.

The Brain: Our Universal Yet Unique Tool

We all bring the same tool to work every day—our brain—yet these operate remarkably differently! These differences translate into varied preferences and, in some cases, fundamental needs for how we work.

Neuroscience research from the Center for Creative Leadership shows that cognitive diversity within teams can increase innovation by up to 20% and reduce risks by 30%. Yet a 2023 Deloitte survey found that 72% of organizations fail to recognize or leverage these cognitive differences effectively.

These brain wiring differences shape, in practical terms, how we problem-solve, learn, communicate, and manage our energy patterns. But because most teams aren't paying sufficient attention to this reality, preferences and needs go unheard or ignored—meaning significant productivity is left on the table.

A Tale of Three Team Members

Let's explore a simple example team of three:

Ryan, the manager, is a verbal and visual thinker. He loves virtual and in-person whiteboarding and tends to give verbal instructions. He thrives in dynamic, collaborative settings and can brainstorm for hours without fatigue.

Deana, one of his two reports, doesn't find meetings a particularly comfortable or helpful forum. She isn't the most comfortable verbal contributor and prefers to process information and formulate her thoughts in her own time. She produces her best work when given clear written instructions and space for deep, uninterrupted thinking.

Bruce, their colleague, enjoys verbal and visual thinking like Ryan but also finds it tiring and needs breaks to recharge. Unlike Ryan, who finds such work energizing and never wants to stop mid-flow, Bruce requires regular pauses to maintain his cognitive performance.

Ryan, Deana, and Bruce have never discussed these differences. Instead, Ryan has assumed Deana and Bruce think like him, while Deana and Bruce haven't felt empowered to challenge this assumption.

Such dynamics are typical of teams where both individual and collective output are compromised through ignorance of "neurodiversity"—the fact that we all have a different brain.

Beyond Simplistic Personality Tests

Some teams, recognizing this fundamental fact at one level, turn to conventional personality tests for answers. Such tests often provide a one-and-done, overly simplified summary of individual contributors—perhaps Ryan is labeled a 'Creator'—that doesn't significantly aid practical collaboration. Indeed, a 2022 study in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes found that 65% of teams that relied solely on personality type indicators showed no measurable improvement in performance or collaboration.

The potential upside of addressing cognitive diversity properly is enormous. Research from MIT's Sloan School of Management demonstrates that teams with high cognitive diversity, when able to work well together, solve complex problems up to 58% faster than more homogeneous teams. Furthermore, a longitudinal study of 150 teams who received cognitive diversity training showed a 34% increase in meeting productivity and a 27% improvement in project completion rates within six months.

From Friction to Flow: Practical Solutions

So how can teams move from friction to flow? And what can organizations do to ensure their teams outperform their competitors'? Nothing will change until teams develop a new understanding and appreciation for the fact that they don't all think alike at a highly practical level—and acquire a toolkit for ensuring everybody can work at their best.

This approach, unlike that offered by personality tests, gets to the root of how our brains shape our work and interactions. It also, unlike disability training that focuses only on the handful of people who might have the courage to disclose a neuro-difference, manifestly relates to everybody and does not 'other' any particular type of thinking or work style.

At Uptimize, we observe teams that learn how to optimize for their different work styles achieve greater collaboration and performance. More than two-thirds of participants see immediate improvements in teamwork, as their teams develop a new lexicon, comfort, and tactics for ensuring their different styles can sync and flourish.

The Human Advantage in an AI World

Teams of the present and future will continue to rely significantly on AI tools, and rightfully so. But person-to-person communication has never been robotic, and we should never treat it as such. A 2024 PwC global survey found that 83% of executives believe that human skills like collaboration, creativity, and empathy are becoming more valuable, not less, in the age of AI.

It's the teams that embrace and optimize for their humanness—understanding and leveraging their cognitive differences—that ultimately win. In a business landscape where 75% of employees report communication issues as the biggest obstacle to productivity (Society for Human Resource Management), the competitive advantage lies with organizations that can transform cognitive friction into collaborative flow.

The choice is clear: continue to ignore the reality of different work styles and leave performance on the table, or embrace cognitive diversity as the powerful organizational asset it truly is.

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