You already have a strong bid team - they just don't know it

Have you ever wondered why some teams magically ‘click’ while others - full of equally talented individuals - struggle to make headway and become dysfunctional when the pressure’s on?

This dysfunctionality not only affects the quality of your pitches - it’s also something that potential clients are increasingly attuned to. As more clients make behavioural analysis part of procurement it makes sense to understand and improve team dynamics before you get into the teeth of the process.

In the world of commercial tenders it’s usually the case that every team member wants to perform as well as possible. To do that each person must understand their own behavioural traits as well as those of their colleagues. This state of affairs is surprisingly difficult to achieve.

At the Bid Coach we use a framework called Core Strengths®️ to assess and improve team behaviours. This assessment tool is based on Relationship Awareness Theory and explores each person’s motivational factors both in ‘normal’ and stressful situations.

The objective is twofold. First, understanding our own personal motivation helps us to achieve self awareness about why we behave in certain ways. Second, it helps us to understand how our behaviour is perceived by others - particularly when our behaviours and preferences are accentuated by stressful situations.

People, Process and Performance

Broadly, our core strengths can be plotted somewhere within a triangle whose points represent performance, process and people. 

I’ll deal with extremes for a minute to illustrate the significance of these biases for team dynamics and performance.

1. If I were highly process-driven (and became more so under stress) somebody else might see me as being inflexible.
2. If the majority of the team members are predominantly people-focused there’s a risk that we’d all get on famously but might struggle to make decisions.
3. People who are excessively performance-focused can sometimes be seen as insensitive architects of chaos (be honest, I bet somebody specific has just come to mind).

Everyone in these scenarios is behaving in the way that comes naturally and which they believe will lead to success. They are also seeking to achieve personal fulfilment. Nobody is ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ 

Through systematic assessment it’s possible for everyone to be given a picture of their natural behavioural motivations and how these are likely to change in stressful situations. It’s also possible to understand how our behaviours and underlying motivations can be perceived by other people and how, when taken to extremes, they can become weaknesses.

Enhanced Team Performance

So far, so good. That type of self awareness is helpful for all of us. 

When the team is able to share those insights with each other the benefits increase exponentially. Everyone understands how they might need to moderate their own behaviours and how to relate to other individuals in the team to maximise performance.

Anyone with a Core Strengths®️ profile can instantly view on-line anyone else’s profile who is within their ‘team.’ In addition, whenever a ‘team’ is created an overall team profile is generated that is available to all. Individuals within the team can assess their strengths and motivations versus the team overall. If people are added or removed from a team (for whatever reason) the team profile updates automatically.

All of this information can be viewed instantly and on-line without the need to download and read lengthy text-heavy profile reports.

The Core Strengths®️ assessment tool has proved powerful in helping bid teams we’ve worked with understand their own motivations. It’s also helped individuals to adapt their approach to other people to improve their influencing skills. 

Its uses go way beyond bid teams. Our clients are increasingly using Core Strengths®️ to help improve the efficiency of their overall communications – within their core and wider teams.

Remember too: achieving greater awareness of the traits you can identify in your own team can help you make sense of the behaviours of members of your client’s team. 

Some people are a little sceptical about the value of psychological profiling tools (sometimes with justification) but Core Strengths®️ seems different. For one thing, the results are easy to understand, remember and apply.

Having seen how the insights it offers can be quickly employed to improve the performance of a bid team - and show marked improvements - it’s something we’ll be using a lot more.