Business Chemistry Core

This first section of the book is dedicated to helping you build a solid understanding of Business Chemistry.

Chapters 3 through 6 each feature one of the Business Chemistry types and should provide you with enough information to identify your own type with confidence. We'll tell you about the key traits and characteristics of the type and outline people's complaints about them. Think no one could possibly criticize your type? Think again! Each of these chapters ends with the good stuff: describing the particular value that type brings to a team. This is one reason you should read all of these chapters, even if you start with the one that sounds most like you.

In Chapter 7 we'll teach you how to make an educated guess about someone's Business Chemistry type, even with limited information. You can use these techniques to hypothesize about your colleagues', customers' or even your own type. You'll learn about some of the traits shared between types and why it's so important to consider context when attempting to intuit someone's type.

Chapter 8 offers some guidelines for using Business Chemistry responsibly. We'll address the issue of stereotyping and discuss the difference between unconscious bias and conscious categorization. Then we'll caution you about some possible pitfalls of using Business Chemistry carelessly, and suggest strategies for avoiding them.

Business Chemistry Electives

The second section of the book offers a richer view of the types. It explores many of the questions people routinely ask about how the types differ and how they relate to various other key topics. While this information will enrich your understanding of the third part, “Business Chemistry Applications,” you could go on to apply the principles without reading this section. For that reason we frame these chapters as electives. For those of you who crave numbers and graphs, there is a lot of data in this section to quench that thirst.

Chapter 9 addresses the popular topics of introversion and extroversion. We'll share how this particular lens relates to Business Chemistry and adds a level of nuance to how we see the types. We'll also illustrate some ways in which an Introvert is not just an Introvert—there are differences between our introverted types—nor is an Extrovert just an Extrovert—we see differences between those types as well.

Chapter 10 will help you develop an even deeper understanding of the types and the many ways in which they differ from one another. We'll share findings from our large-scale research studies and highlight how Business Chemistry relates to responses to stress, psychological safety, locus of control, career aspirations and priorities, and the conditions under which the types thrive. We'll also discuss when and how the distinction between Introverts and Extroverts adds an important perspective on our findings.

This section ends with Chapter 11, which addresses the age-old question of where our differences come from. Are we born with a preference for spreadsheets or whiteboards? Do we learn directness or diplomacy in childhood? Is our comfort level with ambiguity a reflection of our role at work? We'll explore these questions by viewing our Business Chemistry data through the lenses of gender, generation, organizational level, and leadership.

Business Chemistry Applications

The final part of this book will serve as your guide for applying all the understanding you gained in the first two parts. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”

Chapters 12 through 15 take you through key things not to do with each of the types, by sharing stories of “workplace hell” from each type's perspective. These examples bring to life common scenarios that sap the energy and potential of the different types in ways that can lead to lower levels of engagement, commitment, and performance. Then you'll get an insider's view into our own thoughts and perspectives about each story—what went wrong and what could work better—presented through a pen-pal–style conversation between us. Through these discussions we'll offer lots of advice for how to make your team and workplace more palatable for each type so they can perform at their best. And you'll get a good sense of how Suzanne's view of things as a Guardian-Integrator differs from Kim's as a Pioneer-Driver. We end each of these chapters with strategies that can be employed by the featured type to improve their own situation because, while it would be great if everyone's manager were a Business Chemistry expert, sometimes you have to take care of things yourself.

Chapter 16 is focused on what you can do to flex your style in order to create powerful working relationships with others. We start with suggestions for interacting with your opposite type, which is often the most challenging. We also provide tips for how to be more effective with those who are the same type as you, and those who are a different type but share key traits with you.

Chapter 17 addresses questions about the best team composition and the greatest of all Business Chemistry challenges—creating an environment where all types can thrive at the same time. Because while you're focused on meeting the needs of one type, you're often in danger of turning off another, and getting consistently high performance from a team requires balancing the needs and preferences of all types.

After some concluding thoughts in Chapter 18, we'll share a bit about ourselves and what it's like working together across our own Business Chemistry differences. Then, for you detail die-hards, we've got a data-rich appendix that outlines the specifics of the Business Chemistry system. It includes information about our process for developing the system and scoring the assessment, our research samples and methodologies, and the properties of Business Chemistry.

Personal Business

One last point before we dive in: For us, writing this book was not a purely academic exercise. It was an acknowledgment of the power of Business Chemistry that we've experienced in our own day-to-day lives. As you will learn, we're opposites. Kim is a Pioneer and a secondary Driver, while Suzanne is a Guardian and a secondary Integrator. And although we work together on the same team within Deloitte, we go about delivering on our mission in quite different ways.

As the National Managing Director of Deloitte Greenhouse Experiences, Kim's role is diverse and ever changing. Whether she's designing immersive sessions to help executives get to breakthrough, or negotiating sometimes rocky political terrain, or envisioning the next big thing for client experiences, she thrives on the pace and variety of her job. And if someone proposes karaoke at the end of the day, far be it for her to say no. These kinds of things suit her Pioneer tendencies.

Suzanne leads Deloitte's Business Chemistry research and thought-leadership efforts. She appreciates being able to concentrate deeply on one thing and to dedicate all her resources to doing it well—without disruption or distraction. From analyzing data sets to engineering survey questions to writing blogs, she thrives on the clarity and focus of her job. And the large, loud team events are not for her—especially not karaoke! She'd much prefer to grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine with a teammate or two. These kinds of things suit her Guardian tendencies.

So we're not just authors, we're believers too. As opposites, we don't always agree. And yet we know our different perspectives make our joint work richer. To that end, we haven't tried to mask our individual styles in writing this book by blending them into a neutral composite. Rather, we're offering you readers an inside view of our thought processes, our conversations, and our perspectives. We're hopeful that these different lenses—combined with data-driven context and practical advice—will make it easy to put diversity to work for you. As we like to say, it's not rocket science, but it is Business Chemistry.

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