Innovation role – Providing vision, direction and a sense of new possibilities
Mindset – Curiosity
Identifier’s strengths:
- Visualising and imagining the future.
- Making sense of trends and patterns and thinking about what they might mean for opening fresh opportunities.
- Being forward thinking, strategic and noticing and seeing things that other people don’t.
- Being curious and having lots of different interests and a huge appetite for learning.
- Having a positive outlook on life and seeing opportunities where others see problems.
- Outward looking and interested in the world around them.
- They often seek to add new people, whom they believe will bring new thinking, to their networks.
The swirling image illustrates the mindset of Curiosity. It is open-ended, dynamic, explorative and able to generate momentum.
Identifier’s challenges
As with all strengths, particularly if they are overdone, there can be challenges.
- As identifiers are usually big-picture thinkers, they can often miss the detail.
- As they are future-orientated, they can lose focus on the present day.
- They can get easily bored if not stimulated by new things, new ideas and new ways of thinking.
- If intellectually driven, they can sometimes be too abstract or conceptual in how they explain things to other people.
If they are good at leading others, identifiers enjoy providing strategic focus to their teams and organisations. They are also good at fostering a culture and environment that helps others to seek new areas of opportunity, inspiring people with their grand plans and big-picture thinking.
Within an organisational context, identifiers need to learn how to influence others around them as they can often be the initiators of new ways of seeing and thinking, which organisations desperately need if they are to innovate. If they do not manage to do this, they often end up frustrated, despondent and misunderstood.
The challenge for identifiers is to learn how to communicate in ways that people will understand as well as to inspire others about possibilities for the future.
HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH IDENTIFIERS
Depending on the mix of ‘I’s on someone’s profile, here are a few do’s and don’ts that will help you communicate more effectively with identifiers.
| Do’s | Don’ts |
| Stay open-minded to possibilities and opportunities | Narrow down areas of discovery too quickly or just focus on the present |
| Give them time to explore emerging trends that are orientated towards the future | Involve them in work that is focused on maintaining current systems and processes |
| Stimulate their imagination with grand visions and big plans | Limit their sphere of work to the ordinary |
| Encourage them to pioneer and trail blaze the unknown | Restrain their thinking to only solving day-to-day problems and challenges |