Understanding Different Working Styles for Effective Teamwork

You may find yourself and your colleagues to be effective employees, delivering on deadlines, meeting or exceeding expectations, and bringing new ideas to the table. However, you may have also noticed that your team has challenges when working together. If you’re interested in driving effective teamwork, keep reading.

In this post you’ll learn about: 

• The 4 different working styles
• How these working styles clash and complement each other
• Methods for working better together

But before we dive in, a little story…

My husband and I convinced his family to take a trip to St. John for five days back in 2016. We were a group of 13 people of varying ages and interests. We knew that it would be no easy task to organize our group and the details of the vacation. Our family seemed overwhelmed by the task, so my husband Ryan and I got right down to it. 

Divide and Conquer

I’m a natural organizer who thinks in spreadsheets, color-codes everything, and wants to know specific details about activities like duration, and whether or not there will be food made available (an important detail to me and my family). I do not however, love speaking to people on the phone, or selling people on ideas. My husband on the other hand, is a natural communicator and relishes the opportunity to present an idea to a person and sell them on why his idea is the best. 

Together we divided and conquered the task at hand. I compiled lists of potential activities, broken down by location, cost, and accessibility for older family members. I found restaurants for us to have big family dinners, organized them by average meal cost per person, and proximity to the hotel. My husband called any and all vendors to ensure we got the best price, learned about activity specifics, and supplemented my restaurant lists with consumer ratings. At the end of this project, we put together a presentation. Then my husband presented the deck to our family, and we all voted on the activities we wanted to participate in as a group.

My husband went back and booked anything that involved a phone call, and I managed anything that could be done online. Together, he and I were able to coordinate a trip for our family that we still talk about today and live on as one of the best trips we’ve taken thus far. 

Teamwork makes the dream work

You might be thinking, My partner and I could never tackle something like this, or I wish my team could work this collaboratively. The reality is that you can work together in a cohesive and collaborative fashion. But it takes knowing yourself, your values, and your working style—and that of your teammates’—to achieve effective teamwork. You need to know your own personal strengths and weaknesses so you can identify when you need to lift your team up, and when you need to get out of the way to let your partner do the work. Which leads us to four magical words that will change the way you collaborate. 

PIONEERS, DRIVERS, INTEGRATORS, AND GUARDIANS

Pioneers, Drivers, Integrators, and Guardians are the four common work styles found across organizations. We all implement a bit of these four work styles, but are more aligned with one or two of them. Each style contributes a unique approach and perspective to solving problems, achieving goals, creating ideas, and making decisions. Understanding these work styles, identifying your own work style and that of your teammates’ can help drive effective teamwork and improve interactions. 

PIONEERS:

Pioneers value possibilities and big ideas. From a Pioneer’s perspective, risks should be taken and the bolder the idea, the better.

• More likely to contribute their thoughts and opinions in meetings, and quickly take control of situations
• Prefer big ideas, and are less interested in hearing about the details and specifics of an endeavor
• Easily brush off and move on from mistakes—this may make pioneers resilient, but also more impulsive

GUARDIANS:

Unlike Pioneers, Guardian’s are risk averse and take pragmatic approaches to work. Guardians embrace data and facts, and desire understanding the details of an endeavor. They often look to the past to inform future decisions. 

• Likely to create spreadsheets or project plans with intense detail and data. This approach may cause them to appear fastidious
• Reserved and aren’t quick to offer opinions or go against the grain in meetings
• Prefer individual work over teamwork

DRIVERS:

Drivers are similar to Pioneers and Guardians in that they embrace risk but they are also data-driven. Similarly to Pioneers, Drivers want to take action as soon as possible because they want to see results.

• Have a direct approach to communication which may create fiction with Integrators
• Very curious and enjoy experimenting and questioning the status-quo
• Value individual work as they are competitive types

INTEGRATORS:

Integrators are key to teamwork because they value relationships, and consensus. One can consider Integrators as the glue that holds things together. 

• Prefer a diplomatic approach to teamwork and communication, and tend to be non-confrontational—however a desire for diplomacy may cause them to appear sensitive 
• Intrinsically motivated and aren’t particularly competitive in their work style

Below are a few recommendations for improving interactions between different work types. These recommendations invite individuals to adapt slightly to your colleagues’ work style so you can meet in the middle. The point is not to change who we are or our working styles, but to try to see things from the other person’s perspective, complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and collaborate to produce results.

Effective Teamwork with Pioneers

Pioneers love big, bold ideas. When working with Pioneers, try giving them space to explore different concepts and thoughts. If you’re a person who prefers detail and data rather than big ideas, you may consider giving Pioneers a window of time in which they can freely explore ideas. This allows them the freedom and creativity they crave, while providing a discussion with the necessary structure to be productive. In a scenario like this, for instance, you nurture both Pioneers and Guardian types, as it combines imaginative discussion with structure. 

Effective Teamwork with Guardians

Guardians need detail, specificity, and structure. When working with a Guardian, it’s a good idea to prepare an agenda or bullet points that provide additional clarity to a task, project, or endeavor. Guardians are also less inclined to give presentations or engage in public speaking. Guardians often need time to process or prepare information. Give Guardians some time and space ahead of a meeting to come prepared with ideas or opinions. If it’s possible, allowing Guardians to provide their thoughts in writing will also make them more comfortable.

Effective Teamwork with Drivers

Drivers enjoy debating or playing devil’s advocate. When working with a Driver, remember that questioning and debating is not a personal attack but rather a way of exploring ideas. They are, after-all, deeply curious and experimental by nature. If you’re the type to focus heavily on details, try delivering information to Drivers succinctly. Briefly illustrate how a decision will drive an outcome with quick stats or bullets, for instance. If you struggle to keep Drivers engaged in a task, you and your team can benefit from gamifying an objective to engage a Driver’s competitive nature. 

Effective Teamwork with Integrators

When working with an Integrator, engaging in small talk and niceties helps to build the and improve the relationship—which is exactly what Integrators value. For instance, a coffee meetup or lunch can go a long way. Integrators, like Guardians, may internalize mistakes or errors and spend a lot of time thinking about those errors. Nurturing an environment that allows Integrators and Guardians to acknowledge a mistake and move on from them will pay dividends in the long-term.

Drowning out the rest

It often happens that teams lack an even distribution of working styles. This can cause the minority working style to be drowned out by the majority. If you’re the leader of a team or department, try giving the minority the opportunity to speak first during a meeting or discussion. This can help ensure that the minority always has an opportunity to be heard. 

Working Together

Now that you know about the four different work styles, it’s important to consider which work style you and your teammates fall into. Remember no one falls into one category; we are typically an amalgamation of two types of work styles. Below are some questions you should think about when assessing how to drive effective teamwork in a group with different work styles:

1. Which work style are you?

Think about the style that sounds most like you, and which is a close second. Then answer these questions honestly, and remember, the way you see yourself isn’t necessarily how others see you.

2. What is the work style composition of your team?

Is your team’s work style evenly split? Is there a majority and minority work style in your group? How might that positively and negatively affect your team’s interactions? 

3. Are team roles right for the team’s composition?

With your team’s composition in mind, consider how everyone’s role may clash or compliment their work style. Perhaps a project can’t move forward because a Pioneer has been put in charge of detailing a project plan. Maybe there’s a Guardian in charge of putting the presentation together, but it’s entirely too detailed and the message is getting lost in the minutiae. Or maybe a Driver and Integrator aren’t seeing eye-to-eye because the Driver thinks the Integrator is too sensitive, while the Integrator sees the Driver as too brash. Look closely at the different dynamics to come away with some valuable insights. 

4. How can you embrace your differences?

By assessing your individual work styles, and understanding the style of your colleagues for instance, you can begin to embrace your and each other’s differences. Instead of seeing a difference as an obstacle or a wedge, consider it an opportunity to lean on each other. Your weakness may be someone else’s strength. 

Effective collaboration is possible

Working and collaborating with others isn’t always a walk in the park, but with these tips you can take steps to achieve effective teamwork. Consider sharing this blog post with your team members to get their opinions on these concepts. It may help your team be more effective.