The Five Dynamics

So, you’ve worked at a variety of companies, and with a variety of different people. So, how do you effectively engage with people who have different modes of operating?

I’ve had the benefit of being able to have coaches and different tools. And one thing that has worked well for me is something called The Five Dynamics. I know the CEO of Simplify, and it’s a tool set that helps me frame the differences and appreciate them. I even use that tool to pitch my CEO, Mike Wiacek, on hiring me as his COO.
He was doing a demonstration for a group of public company directors, and Karen was also going to be presenting The Five Dynamics of that same group. And I told myself, you don’t even need to take the assessment, I know that you’re really “high-explore” because you know more about security, and you’re more creative about how we can solve the problems than anybody else I know. And you’re also really “high-excite,” because you can get people to join you on that journey.
I’m also “high-excite,” but I’m “high-execute,” and I think we can complement each other very well. And so, what you find is that you really need all components of these different functions in order to make a team successful, in order to make a company successful, and it takes some of the emotion out of the differences, which I think is helpful. Because emotion is a difficult thing in the workplace. And I think that when people can try to remain objective about what it is you’re trying to accomplish, and how to get there, we can all be more successful.

So, I’m just curious, you mentioned five dynamics, I heard “high-excite,” and what are some, what are the other four again?

There’s explore, excite, examine, and execute. And then there’s sort of like evaluating. So that's kind of a constant thing. And we actually have used it at Stairwell to say, okay, you need every cycle. So, that helps me think about, yeah, these people may be approaching it differently, but that’s a skill we need in order to be successful.