Using MiRo Psychometric Testing to optimise your team
Do you want to know how your team members think and behave?
Insight is a wonderful thing. If you really have a handle on a situation – if you can see and understand every aspect of it – you can have a huge amount power over it. This can be priceless in a business context, and the key asset of any law firm is the one which needs to be handled with the greatest understanding – its people.
So what would it be like if you could shine a beam of pure insight over your team? Find out not just how they think and behave but also the reasons why? What could your business achieve with this understanding?
Talking to your team may only get you so far. For many reasons, the answers they give might not represent the true picture. Maybe they want to present the best possible image of themselves, to give you the answers they believe you want to hear, or perhaps they don’t understand themselves as much as they might think.
How can you get precious, unbiased insight into your team? The answer lies in psychometric testing and, in particular, the MiRo assessment scheme.
Testing your team, or testing their patience?
You may have gone through psychometric tests in the past and I know from experience that lawyers generally aren’t keen on them (to put it mildly!). The beauty of the MiRo assessment, however, is that:
- It takes no more than 15 minutes to conduct, by completing a straightforward online questionnaire
- It is completely workplace-focused, meaning you won’t be bogged down by any irrelevant information
- It is flexible enough to adapt to any kind of business or working environment
- It is based on tried and tested concepts of working behavioural science
- It provides the opportunity to create a team report, assessing your team as a unit.
Some people can get worried by the prospect of psychometric tests, but your team members can rest assured that the MiRo assessment isn’t designed to be any kind of ‘witch-hunt’! Individuals can’t give right or wrong answers.
Have you experienced frustration when trying to understand the approach of some members of your team?
The purpose of the questionnaire is to give your team members an in-depth understanding of their own preferences when thinking and behaving at work.
MiRo identifies four behavioural modes and sets out each person’s preferences towards them in an individual report. . These modes are:
- Energising
- Organising
- Driving
- Analysing
Each person will have a tendency towards some behaviour angles more than others, although most people will have some traits from each of the four types. The balances between these behaviour types can change over time – and depending on the situation – but the MiRo assessment is designed to look behind this to see which are a person’s most natural ‘go-to’ behaviours.
Do you as a manager want a helicopter view of your team’s strengths and weaknesses?
MiRo team assessment reports are particularly useful to team managers; not only do they provide you with insight into each team member’s preferences; the team reports use that information to build a picture of the team as a whole.
This means that the manager or team leader can see from the team report how all these behaviour types work together within the team; and how best they can play to each individual’s strengths to produce a cohesive unit. A sample MiRo team report can be found here. This is also in your team members’ interests. If they are understood then the way in which they work best can be accommodated and encouraged to the benefit of all.
The MiRo system also uses these behaviour modes to provide other insights, such as how an individual perceives their place in their environment. This can have a major influence on how team members communicate, co-operate and approach challenges. In general terms, it affects whether they feel empowered and able to change the world around them, or whether they feel that their circumstances have a much greater power over them.
This is the pure beam of insight mentioned earlier! It allows you to recognise how your team think and feel in a work context. With a team report, it also gives you a clear overview of the dynamics of your team as a working unit.
Whichever reports you choose, the MiRo assessment provides its fundamental insights in the same way.
Used effectively, this can be combined with the team-building benefits of regular, properly conducted team meetings. My series of blog posts on making team meetings work for you aims to address all the challenges that can be experienced in these meetings.
The next step to the Power of Insight – Getting the most from your MiRo assessments
The reports themselves set out their findings in a way which is very easy to follow. However, the true value of the MiRo assessments, and the insight they provide, is in how you use that information. In other words, how you plan and implement changes, based on the data, to improve your team’s performance.
This is where matters might get trickier. The potential benefits from this insight are far-reaching but much of it requires some extrapolation from the report information. Some examples include:
- Identifying and harnessing the strengths of your team.
- Deciding which team members would work best together on a project.
- Determining who is most suited to a particular kind of work.
- Planning the right kind of training to develop areas where the team is at its weakest.
- Anticipating team members’ reactions to upcoming changes.
- Informing the best ways to present certain information, or explain things, to different team members.
This is where expert coaching support can help you to take full advantage of your team’s MiRo assessments. I offer 1-to-1 coaching support sessions to help you to turn the theory in the reports into real and effective action plans. In a one-hour session, I will guide you through your team’s results and work with you to build a development plan designed to unlock your team’s full potential.
To discuss arranging your team’s MiRo assessment report, with tailor-made coaching support, please get in touch with me today. More details on MiRo and our prices can be found on our MiRo assessments page, and I’m more than happy to answer any questions you may have in a friendly, no-pressure chat.