Working Styles Assessment *WITH* Follow-through

Way back in the day while working as a manager for the first time in a corporate environment, for a certain massive social media company that shall not be named, I partook in a full day workshop with peers centered around a 'working styles assessment'. My internal dialogue was active throughout the process. "There is no way this information being shared could be for my benefit", "I need to make myself seem like a different, better version of myself to impress my director" etc.

Against what I would have considered to be my best judgement in the moment, I listened to my manager and answered all the questions quickly, intuitively and honestly. I was cool to see the resulting data — validating in spots, surprising in some and painful in others. We built a simple map of the team's strengths, opportunities and... working styles.

I fully anticipated that this would end up as nothing more than a one off team building exercise, which to be fair, is overwhelmingly the case with these types of things. What stood out to me and made a huge impact was my manager's unrelenting interest in supporting and accommodating everyone's unique working styles. Obviously she was unable to succeed every time but it impacted how she structured projects, made lateral moves/promotions, how she structured our 1:1 meetings and how she approached the feedback cycle.

Even if the 'customizations' she made in and of themselves were not helpful (they were), the effort, care and attention that she put into approaching her direct reports like individuals and working with their needs as opposed to enforcing the opposite, made a huge impact on me and how I choose to lead going forward.