In 1984, two behavioral scientists – Dr. Janice Presser and Dr. Jack Gerber – set out to find an answer to the question “What really happens when people ‘team’ together?” Twenty-five years of research and testing, including nine years of software development, produced a technology engineered to identify and organize the ways in which people interact in teams.
This completely new ‘technology of teaming’ is not derived from personality or IQ testing, from EQ, strengths, or engagement surveys, or from any other familiar tools or methods. During the course of its development, Drs. Presser and Gerber discovered some very useful – and practical – metrics of ‘teaming.’ They include:
- Role: a person’s affinity for specific modes of service to the needs of a team
- Coherence: expressed as positive, flexible, constructive teaming behaviors
- Teaming Characteristics: individual styles of responding and relating to others, subject to situational context
- Role-respect: the unique manner in which people of different Roles experience appreciation and respect
- Role-pairing: known, replicable synergies between specific Roles
- Role-fit: an appropriate match between a person’s Role and their assigned set of job responsibilities
- Team-fit: structuring a team to include the Roles that are best-fit to the team’s mission
This ‘new way to know’ about teaming behavior was initially referred to as Role-Based Assessment (RBA). But as the importance of ‘Role’ in team interaction became clear, teaming technology and the Role-based approach to understanding team performance gradually merged into the single, simple concept of Teamability.
Teamability™ is a set of predictive metrics encompassing one’s Role, Coherence, and Teaming Characteristics as defined by TGI’s Role-based approach to the understanding of group interaction. It identifes:
- The manner in which one is attracted and motivated to contribute to a team effort
- The ability to connect with others to form a productive team
- Particular ‘teaming characteristics’ that enhance team spirit within a given organizational culture
- Effective methods for selecting, structuring, developing, and motivating individuals and teams
No where are teams more important than in the innovative startups that fuel our global economy and collectively produce more jobs than huge multinationals. As we prepare to launch a new version of Teamability, especially for entrepreneurial teams, we are proud to present Trepability: Teamability for Treps.
For those of you who represent the many groups, incubators, academic institutions and the like, please let us know who you are so we can update you on our project to provide you with free Trepability for 10,000 entrepreneurs. You can reach us at info@trepability.com.
