Chapter 7
Are You in It to Win It?
Advantage and Activity
Just how badly do you need to win? What is it you’re playing for? Prestige? Money? Status? Making the world a better place?
It’s not always easy to answer these questions honestly because of the assumptions associated with each response about the kind of person you are. This is especially true if you grew up in a family or a culture that has strict dictates about the rewards you should seek and frowns on striving only for personal gain.
The Birkman can shed light on your real reward motivation—what is called your Need for Advantage—in a way that is nonjudgmental. Your Birkman result, as always, will fall on a spectrum of reward expectations. In that way, it helps you learn what you really want to be motivated, not what someone tells you should be your reward. It also signals the intensity of your competitive need to win in status, perks, competition, or compensation.
For this discussion on motivation, it is useful to pair your Advantage with your Activity scores. Activity is another way of measuring your physical participation in your work—the degree to which you thrive on moving around. It is important in determining whether you can sit comfortably in a cubicle for a workday—or a whole career!—or whether you need some routine and regular physical activity to feel fulfilled.
These scores, when understood, can help an employer choose the best and most efficient way to offer incentives to employees and keep them engaged. Does the manager reward a sales team for meeting its goals by sending the entire group on a chartered flight to Hawaii? Or do the staff members prefer individual rewards? Employees with lower Advantage Need scores appreciate the first gesture, preferring to work toward a mutually advantageous reward. They don’t feel good about beating out their fellow team members to win a prize. They are more inclined to work for the same pay as their colleagues. They aren’t as demanding of their employers for special treatment in terms of monetary rewards and perks. They might say, “If they see my good work, they’ll want to reward me. I shouldn’t have to ask for it.” Some would describe them as idealistic because they often have to be pushed to ask for what they deserve.
High Advantage employees want a hierarchy of tangible rewards to stay motivated. They measure self-worth by how they are compensated and have stronger demands than their lower Advantage counterparts. Pay, benefits, and titles are important, but even those prizes aren’t enough for some people who seek the biggest piece of the pie. They say, “It’s not about us; it’s about me. Where is my special reward for special efforts?” Some will see them as too self-seeking or self-protective. People can be effective and successful with either style or anywhere on the Advantage spectrum. From both an individual and a leadership standpoint, what matters is understanding that people respond differently to prestige and monetary incentives.
SOFT SELL IN MEXICO
A consultant at Professional Learning Partners in Mexico City found that varying Advantage scores were behind a concern a boss had about a staff member in the Mexico City office of a large pharmaceutical company based in the United States. The employee was representing the company in tough negotiations for a big sale to a pharmacy chain. Whenever the staffer updated his boss on the negotiations, the manager saw his performance as too much of a soft sell. He “lacked forcefulness and energy,” the manager complained to the consultant, Jorge Lara.
Jorge had an idea that the problem was one of perspective, not performance, and checked the Birkmans of the two. Sure enough, the negotiator’s Advantage score showed a Need of just 14, compared with his boss’s high Need Advantage ranking of 87. The negotiator wasn’t timid; he just wasn’t interested in “coming out on top in every instance,” Jorge says. Rather than scoring a big win, he was aiming for a solution that everyone could live with.
Once his boss understood this thinking, he stopped seeing his report as a failure and instead decided that having such an approach on a team of negotiators that had others playing hardball was a good thing, and he let his report continue his strategy.
Ultimately there is no simple answer to what you might need to keep yourself motivated, and it often isn’t easy to admit to what it takes for you to give your all to a task. Consultant Jonathan Michael of Vancouver, Canada, says he “struggled” with his Advantage score when he first took the Birkman. “I grew up in a religious environment, not thinking about myself, being unselfish,” he says. In his Usual Behavior, his Advantage score was low, but his Need shocked him: 99. “I am extremely competitive,” he now admits cheerfully. After he found out his results, he went to a university to study leadership at nonprofits and admitted to himself to having a goal: to win the highest scholastic award in the school. He won that award—and then others. “I went after it wholeheartedly because of the Birkman,” he adds. “I stopped apologizing for wanting a reward. I never negotiated a salary in the past, but now I do.”
Over the years, many Birkman consultants have had the opportunity to work with members of all kinds of sports teams. What they discovered, from baseball to basketball to football, is that even for the most highly paid, high-performing, and fiercely competitive athletes, the common denominator among the individual players trended toward a surprisingly low Advantage Need. They had very high Activity scores, as one would expect, but when it came to their Advantage Needs, the players’ mind-set was to win for the team rather than for themselves as individuals.
LIKING THAT CUBICLE?
In addition to looking at how motivated you are, or aren’t, by the opportunity to win the big prize or seek public accolades, the Birkman also takes a look at what you require to stay physically comfortable—the level of consistent movement you prefer throughout your day. In the Activity Component, we can gauge how necessary it is for you to be in a job that offers some degree of physical effort, as well as how much you demand a kinesthetic outlet for your physical energy.
This is a fancy way of saying that even at a desk job, a high Activity person will tend to get up from the desk and move around as often as possible, perhaps making three trips down the hall to do three errands, whereas lower Activity folks are good at conserving their energies and might stay more anchored to the office chair, perhaps rising only after combining several tasks into one trip down the hall.
Identifying your physical Activity Need is another way the Birkman will help you and your employer figure out how to make the best use of your energies. Do you conserve your energy, or do you need outlets throughout the day to get rid of the antsy feeling that long days at the computer can generate? You might get more done on the walk to lunch than at the lunch itself. Many business leaders have talked about getting their best ideas during their morning exercise routines.
The Activity Component, however, isn’t addressing your workouts at the gym; in fact, many people who have low Activity scores are diligent about their exercise routines. Rather, this Component gives insight as to what degree you are likely to regularly need an outlet to express your physical energies throughout the day in order to be at ease and to thrive.
As with each of the other Birkman Components, there are pluses that accompany each score wherever it appears on the spectrum. But each Birkman Need score also carries with it a potential trap that is its flip side. Both behavioral styles are essential, but both can do damage when out of control.
AN UNEXPECTED FACTOR
Consultant Peter Capodice of Sarasota, Florida, found the Activity score to be a significant—and unexpected—factor when he was helping an emerging dry cleaning franchisor based in the Chicago area find a director of marketing. “We’re small, so the head of marketing would be the person,” says Michael Corrao, the chief operating officer for the company, CD One Price Cleaners.
Over several months, the company had hired two new marketing individuals, and both had failed in the position. The first person lasted twelve months, the second even less than that. The hiring errors were costly in both the actual cost of salary and benefits—hundreds of thousands of dollars—and the intangible cost of time and stress. The senior managers couldn’t figure out why the people who were hired weren’t working out, so Peter conducted Birkmans with the CEO and his four top executives to help them communicate with each other internally before they tried to bring in another director.
All four executives had certain distinctive traits, including high Activity numbers. The lowest Activity score on the team was 66, and the average was 76. The consultant saw this as one reason that the team, which had a special dynamic of using a thoughtful, qualitative approach to decision making, also possessed the ability to move quickly once a decision was made. Their high-energy approach was needed at the time because the business wanted to make an aggressive marketing push in an industry that is especially competitive.
Peter says he typically discourages management from hiring too many people like themselves, but he also subscribes to the model that says too many differences, especially with an immediate superior, can thwart the chances for success for someone newly hired. “Yes, you want a change, or someone different from you, but we don’t want you calling me back in ninety days,” he told them. “Too much divergence will diminish productivity and organizational effectiveness.”
Peter had the C-suite executives help him map out which duties were tied to certain Birkman Components and Interests and so they were able to match the Birkman results with existing corporate culture, one element of which was the high Activity score. His strategy was to find candidates with skills that would complement the talent that already existed in the company while fitting into the overall office culture.
The executives did a series of interviews to whittle down the candidate list and then had the three finalists take the Birkman to help with the overall review among the group. Then the hiring team did extensive final interviews. “As we interviewed candidates, it was interesting to see where the differences were between them and the team,” says Michael.
“The individual they hired was a high Activity Need, although not quite as high as the overall group, and early indications are that it is a good fit,” Peter says. After the candidate was hired, the consultant helped coach the staff on how they might work together to ensure success.
MEANINGFUL WORK
The president of an Atlanta-based property management firm wanted his director of sales and marketing to take the Birkman because she wasn’t getting up to speed in her job. Management saw only that she didn’t have a good image of a salesperson. She regarded any sales professional as “like being a used-car salesman,” consultant Steve Cornwell recalled. No one in the organization was able to mentor her.
When Steve looked at her Advantage score, he found she had a high Advantage Need, suggesting she wanted recognition for a job well done. She also had very high Social Service (99) and Persuasive (92) Interests. “So for her to truly enjoy her work, she needed to know that what she was selling was also helping others,” he says.
Not getting proper recognition for her work and not understanding the good it was doing for the public lowered her opinion of her job. By understanding her Birkman scores, her boss learned how to meet her needs and better motivate her. He gave her feedback for jobs well done and explained to her that selling wasn’t just to push a product but to benefit people in need of a service. Reframing her role in this way worked for her. The director was able to embrace that notion and adopted a happier and more confident attitude toward her sales team. The company president told the consultant that the Birkman coaching and subsequent sales sessions helped the company’s performance significantly in just a few months.
SENSITIVE TO SELLING
Dave Agena’s first exposure to Birkman was as a senior executive at one of the largest mortgage banking operations in the United States. He wanted to get a picture of the top 10 percent of his account executives so he could use that as a template to recruit new personnel. He took the Birkman and reviewed the results with a consultant.
“I was mortified!” says Dave. “I didn’t fit the stereotype of what I felt a high-performance and highly competitive national sales executive ought to look like!”
His high Esteem scores made him look too sensitive in light of the image he had of himself as a tough national sales manager. His overall Usual Behavior on the Life Style Grid was Blue and not the more typical Red/Green that is associated more with a commission-driven sales job. He also had what the Birkman calls a reversal in his Advantage score, which is rare. That means he would tend to ask for individual rewards when he really wanted to be evaluated based on team performance—except when he did exceptionally well and wanted the recognition. In that case, he worried he was sabotaging his authentic participation in either a commission-based or a team-based reward system. “I don’t mind doing things for the team if everyone is pulling their weight, because I have adopted an altruistic worldview,” he says. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mix well in a commission-sales culture.”
He soon realized that what he considered his weaknesses were in fact his strengths. Consultant Claire Carrison showed him that he was an effective executive precisely because he related to a wide variety of people and knew how to give them the proper incentives. His effective style was to get people to buy into an idea rather than to push them. The advice served him well enough that he had a successful career in mortgage banking and then cofounded two management consulting firms.
“I have a high degree of emotional intelligence, which I didn’t understand until I took the Birkman,” says Dave, who eventually became a Birkman consultant himself. “It was like hearing yourself on a tape recorder for the first time or seeing yourself in a video for the first time. You don’t recognize yourself at first.”
A FRATERNITY’S ADVANTAGE
A college campus was having a problem with one of its fraternities, whose members were always getting into trouble with out-of-control parties and breaking a slew of university rules—about as many as they could. The fraternity had been on probation for some time and were about to get kicked off campus when Wilson Wong of Atlanta was asked to help. The consultant gave Birkmans to forty-six of the fraternity brothers.
The most striking aspect of their results was how high their Advantage scores were across the board, meaning they were driven by the promise of personal gain. They were so competitive that they were enjoying being the best at being bad! “We are all competitive, whether it’s just with our own past or with others,” Wilson says.
The consultant knew he had to give them a new focus for their rewards, which at their age still had to result in being noticed and gaining recognition. “On a college campus, Advantage is all about reputation—to be perceived as the best of the best, not only by peers but by the university.”
Wilson persuaded the fraternity members that each one of them would gain even greater notice and reputation if they focused their considerable competitive energies—they tended toward high Activity Need scores as well—on doing good. Then they would be both respected and be perceived as trailblazers. “They loved that,” he says.
The fraternity became more involved in campus activities and community work. They still threw plenty of parties, but they were responsible parties. After a while, their good deeds started to get them noticed, and even their parties were considered some of the best on campus. They started to win the praise of their campus peers and the university administration. Now, a couple of academic years later, they still are considered role models for how to run a fraternity. Wilson had helped the campus shape what a reward should look like for the students while acknowledging their high Advantage Needs.
THE BIRKMAN AT WORK: DIVERSITY
The Birkman philosophy is that individuals are complex, each one possessing important strengths that are of great value to any workplace once they are unlocked. In the bigger picture, it teaches an appreciation of the value of others and the knowledge that the strength of the whole lies in the variety of strengths of the participants. That philosophy is at the heart of the push for diversity, which most big companies define in broad terms to include gender, race, ethnicity, religion, experience, age, and a number of personal challenges. The effort to achieve greater diversity is thwarted when we stop seeing the individual and instead make a broad, quick judgment based on a first glance. The Birkman forces us to take a deeper look to see what drives and motivates individuals and how we fit together in the workplace.
Seeing the Individual
The head of diversity and leadership development for a Fortune 500 food company says the Birkman has been a valuable tool for helping to advance her company’s diversity and inclusion efforts.
“We talk about diversity layers,” she says. “The first things you see in a person might be black, white, man, woman, older, younger. But that’s not how business gets done or how work is valued.” The Birkman Method, she adds, gets people to connect with colleagues on the commonalities as well as their differences—“he likes to work alone”; “I like to work in groups”—and to see color only in terms of Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green and the valuable contributions to the work process those Birkman colors represent. “With the Birkman, all types are valued, so it generates a fast and deep level of trust so we can move to the next level,” she says.
Their employees start to speak in Birkman’s inclusive language. “At our company, we use the ‘range not change’ approach,” she explains. “You don’t change who you are, but develop a broad range of perspectives and skills to work collaboratively with those people who might be very different from you. We strive to really value that range. It unlocks the diversity of our working teams and accelerates innovation and problem solving.”
Patti Corbett Hansen, one of the Birkman consultants who has worked extensively with her company, has helped develop reports and team session formats that have enabled the diversity and leadership development team to maximize the value of their assessments. “These types of leadership development resources are impacting our culture in a positive way,” the diversity chief says, “and creating a culture where the best of all groups can succeed.”
On a case-by-case basis, the Birkman reminds us that no one can solve a complicated question with an easy answer. The director of diversity and leadership development in the human resource department of the same company recalls a problem that arose when team members began clashing with one of their directors. They began to see the problem as a diversity issue, believing that it stemmed from the fact that the team director was foreign born and so must have a different way of exerting his authority. But once the group took a look at their Birkmans, they could see why the director seemed abrasive—and it was no different from a number of their own results. He had low Esteem and low Empathy in Usual Behavior but high Needs, pointing to his dominant managing style but little tolerance in being treated by people the way he treated them.
“It got to the why and the how,” the director says. “The Birkman shows how complex every individual is, and that if we try to stereotype, we miss it, because a lot of what makes a person tick is making sure his or her needs are met. We truly have to know an individual to connect with and understand the person.”
It’s the Similarities
That story would ring true to Beroz Ferrell, a Kent, Washington, consultant who used the Birkman to resolve what had seemed to be a culture clash in a nonprofit organization. The conflict was between two employees and was becoming disruptive to the organization as a whole. “When I sat down with each of them, it was perceived that they were so different from each other—one a United States–born woman and one an Asia-born woman,” says Beroz.
“Interestingly they were clearly different in styles,” she says, “but it was their similarities that were creating the conflict. Their Esteem Need scores were the same—both high—as was their Empathy Need scores. They were both very sensitive and were just trying to get needs met in different ways.”
A conflict that was initially blamed on ethnic differences was just a typical difference between two people with differing needs and work styles. The American woman had a Usual Behavior style that made her seem confident and self-assured, but under stress, she tended to allocate blame to others. The Asian woman had a profile that suggested she tended to second-guess herself a lot and took on responsibilities for people and events more than she needed to. “These differences perpetuated the two not seeing eye-to-eye and always getting irritated by one another’s style differences,” Beroz says.
The Birkman dug below the stereotypes to reveal the individuals and counter the myth of clashing cultures. “We tend to think our most visible differences are the things that are creating the challenges,” Beroz says. “We say, ‘Well it’s our race, our background, or because we are men and women who don’t understand each other.’ But research implies it’s really style differences that get in the way unless we are conscious about them. So let’s see our different styles in Birkman, and from that understand the other dimensions of diversity.”