23 Apr The Missing Puzzle Piece You Need For Relational Success
You may be missing a key puzzle piece for your relationships to thrive. If you are missing this piece, you may find friction and conflict erupting. Whether you are on a team, or leading a team, this critical piece of relational knowledge when missing, is why strife is so frequent. However, if you have this puzzle piece and use it often, you will experience more joy and peace, and even get more done together.
Consentia Group has equipped more than 8000 pastors, missionaries, and leaders in relational awareness over the past three years, but often times the very people we have trained do not implement this critical piece of knowledge. They have learned that there are seven MVS’s and people are motivated by different things. That they get. They have learned to understand people at a deeper level and communicate more effectively as a result. But they often fail to make the important adjustment needed to be a highly functioning team.
The two assessments that accompany the SDI assessment are Personal Strengths and Overdone Strengths. (If you didn’t take these assessments, you are missing the key puzzle pieces!). Personal Strengths are the behaviors we chose to use to accomplish our motivation – what we want to see happen. For instance, as a RED, I naturally exude CONFIDENCE in conversation. I come across certain of my conclusions and stand behind my convictions. I will defend them if challenged. CONFIDENCE is a RED strength that comes naturally. I can’t imagine not being confident in my assertions.
That RED strength that is natural to me may be a problem for other people around me. They may see my level of confidence as inappropriate or even threatening. The HUB may prefer that this RED be more FLEXIBLE and be open to other ideas. The GREEN may very well be turned off by the level of confidence being displayed as they don’t seem to have done much research or have much data to back up their ideas. The BLUE in the room may notice the RED is causing conflict for the others in the room as they are sensitive to the possibility of relational friction. What is the key problem in this scenario? What is the missing puzzle piece? The RED person hasn’t learned to use a different strength that may not be natural to them. By using a different strength, they may accomplish what they so much desire.
Strengths are like tools. You may prefer the same tools because they are familiar and usually work for you. But sometimes using another tool is more effective, even though they may feel awkward and uncomfortable. The RED could choose to exhibit FLEXIBILITY even though he would naturally be CONFIDENT. For instance, the RED could ask a question to see if anyone else has some ideas and allow others to weigh in about what may be best. In doing this, they may still be confident inside about their own idea, but they would allow others to participate freely and openly.
When we use our own strengths that are natural and comfortable, we contribute greatly to others. But when we use the same strength over and over again, and double down on them, they may invite others into conflict. We call that kind of behavior overdone strengths. Often, we are unaware we are doing it. When others perceive that we are using a strength excessively or too strongly, we have a tendency to be offended because we reason that we would never do that.
The missing puzzle piece for meaningful and effective relationships is to know when to use a different strength than is natural to your MVS. It is not enough to know your own MVS or someone else’s MVS. You must go the additional step of choosing the right behaviors in light of the situation. This may take some experimenting. It may require you learning more about your strengths and tendency towards overdone strengths. With practice, we can learn to put in that missing piece of the puzzle and make a beautiful picture together.
