You’re taking on a complex challenge. Maybe you’re launching a new product, service, or business. Or aiming to completely transform how your company operates.
You’re willing to do the work and invest your limited time and energy in causes you believe in. But you also want to be able to relax, guilt-free, at the end of the day. Time spent on activities that drain you or keep you from the work you believe needs to happen leaves you feeling frustrated and on the verge of burnout.
So you research productivity to find better ways of working. However, implementing those tips and tools sometimes leaves you more overwhelmed and frustrated.
If that wasn’t enough, on top of your personal productivity struggles, you need to work with others to scale your impact.
But conflicting work styles can cause the group to spend too much time churning around how to plan and execute the work. Or maybe a well-meaning team lead implements processes that end up frustrating or slowing down the team. Communication issues, meetings, and time spent on project management end up taking a large portion of the workweek.
If these issues resonate with you, then the tips in this post may help.
Carson Tate, author of “Work Simply” noticed similar problems. As an entrepreneur and mother, she was successfully “doing it all.” But it wasn’t the life that she wanted to live. The busyness was wearing her down and wasn’t in alignment with how she wanted to spend her time.
She also worked with many other professionals dealing with the same issues. People with packed days and overflowing inboxes trying to stuff more into the margins of their week. Who managed to-do lists and scheduled their days but didn’t feel more productive. Working within enterprise processes and environments that made it more difficult to accomplish what was important.
She and her clients wanted to spend less time on the mechanics of planning work and more on creating the life and business they wanted.
What can we do differently as leaders and team members to be more productive ourselves and help our team perform better?
Work simply by embracing your personal work style
Tate noticed that typical productivity advice and tools didn’t work for everyone. That planning app or desk setup that your co-worker raves about might not work for you.
Tate shares that the key is to recognize that there are four different “productivity styles.” Your productivity style determines how you approach your work, including how you set goals, plan, and execute tasks. Beyond time or email management, your work strategy is what impacts how effective you are with your resources. Aligning your work style with how you think is the way to be more productive with less effort.
“Your work strategy is your approach to planning and allocating efforts across goals, activities, and time periods.”
– Carson Tate
The four productivity styles that Tate highlights are related to the four cognitive styles in Hermann’s Whole Brain Model:
- A Quadrant: logical, analytical, quantitative, fact-based
- B Quadrant: planned, organized, detailed, sequential
- C quadrant: emotional, interpersonal, feeling-based, and kinesthetic
- D quadrant: holistic, experimental, synthesizing, and integrating
Tate applied this concept to the productivity context to define four productivity styles which are:
- Prioritizer: Thinks about what. Values logic, data, analysis, prioritization, and efficiency.
- Planner: Thinks about how. Values planning, organizing, details, and compliance.
- Arranger: Thinks about who. Values personal connections, informal conversations, intuition, and empathy.
- Visualizer: Thinks about why. Values novelty, the big picture, visuals, and integrating ideas and concepts.
Tate offers a quiz in the book to help you figure out your productivity style. I ended up scoring almost equally across the board, with a slightly higher preference for Prioritizer and Visualizer. You might fall more squarely into one of these styles or have a primary and secondary style. The styles aren’t mutually exclusive so you might identify with aspects of each. She recommends experimenting with tactics within and outside of your primary style to find what works for you.
The thesis of the book is that you can escape busyness and feel more productive by applying tactics that fit your particular productivity style. Applying tactics from styles that don’t fit you might be more distracting and draining for you instead of energizing and helpful.
She also argues that we struggle with a team when we don’t communicate or delegate according to the other person’s productivity style, which can leave them confused, frustrated, or bored.
Ways to amp up your personal productivity
Here’s a quick summary of some of Tate’s tips for each style, but I recommend reviewing the book for even more advice.
If you’re a Prioritizer:
You value efficiency, facts, logic, and analysis. Spend time decluttering, streamlining, and automating your workspace and tools so you can free up mental space, time, and energy for your priorities. Set office hours so you can group interruptions into one timeslot and spend the rest of your time on focused work. You’re good at setting goals but don’t forget to think about how you’ll accomplish them, who needs to be involved or is impacted, and why this goal will help you in the long-run.
If you’re a Planner:
You value organization, planning, sequential and detailed thinking. Schedules, to-do lists, and organizational tools are the core of your work style. Audit your calendar, batch work into time blocks and set appointments to minimize interruptions and work on your priorities. You’re good at identifying and planning action steps for your projects but also reflect on why you’re taking on a project, who is impacted, and what kinds of goals or outcomes you want to achieve.
If you’re an Arranger:
You value personal connections, teamwork, building relationships, and making decisions intuitively. Informal discussions help you process your thoughts and feel more connected to the team. Consider ways you can fold in personal interactions throughout your workday with collaboration tools, a personal CRM, or voice memo apps. You’re good at considering who might be impacted by or help support your goals, but also think about why you’re pursuing those goals, what some intermediate targets might be, and how you could reach them.
If you’re a Visualizer:
You value big-picture thinking and creativity. You prefer visual aids and flexible mediums over detailed systems and tools, leaning toward whiteboards, graphics, and sticky notes to express your ideas. Pay attention to how your visual environment is helping to support your current priorities and minimize visual clutter that doesn’t serve you. Create theme days or weeks to focus on your priorities while also giving you the flexibility you crave. You’re good at considering the strategic reasons to take on a project, but also consider what you might need to do to achieve that vision, how it could be done, and who needs to be involved.
Productivity Styles applied to a real-life team
Even if individuals are productive, a team can struggle when people with different productivity styles attempt to work together.
Here’s an example from my own experience, including the productivity challenges we faced and how we fixed them, viewed through the lens of Tate’s productivity styles.
I was working in an environment that’s typical in transformation projects. A multifunctional group of consultants from different backgrounds had recently formed to help a non-profit improve their product development processes and portfolio of technology products to better serve their customers and the organization.
Looking back on it with the knowledge from the book “Work Simply,” work styles clashed from the beginning, which led to team conflict and low productivity.
A group of productive individuals doesn’t always equal a productive team
The appointed team lead could fit the Arranger archetype, as someone who liked to bring people together in loosely structured meetings to share information and solve problems. They used participation in these meetings to measure team member commitment.
Meanwhile, a few of the other team members were clearly Prioritizers. They didn’t have the patience for inefficient conversations without clear goals and would decide to attend other meetings or work on other projects if they didn’t see the value they could add or receive in the meetings the Arranger was setting up. However, with a clear goal that aligned with their skills and interests, they would make it happen.
Other team members were a blend of Arrangers and Visualizers. They felt most at home empathizing with end users or clients, or in strategic brainstorming sessions. And were frustrated by conversations about what we were going to do by when, without context for why we were taking on a project and whom it impacted.
There were also a few team members who could fall into the Planner group. They felt most comfortable when the plan was clear and they had a template or process to follow to complete the work and deadlines on the calendar to reference.
This dynamic led to problems that might seem familiar. Prioritizers were frustrated by any time spent on work that seemed like a “waste” of time and energy compared to their prioritized list. The Arranger was frustrated when other team members weren’t “engaging,” measured by participation in group conversations. The Visualizers were frustrated by the lack of time spent on strategic thinking and felt that the team had lost sight of the big picture. The Planners were frustrated by vague plans or shifting priorities as the rest of the team swirled around what they wanted to do and why.
Unfortunately, this dynamic went on for longer than we’d like to admit.
How did we resolve it?
Honestly, it took a mix of team changes and conscious adjustments to individual communication styles to accommodate others. Sometimes it takes adding or removing a member to shake up team dynamics.
Visualizers recognized the team’s need for concrete plans so they started addressing pragmatic concerns about deliverables and timeframes alongside conversations about why they wanted to tackle a project and whom it would impact.
Arrangers recognized that conversation alone wouldn’t move the team ahead and instead structured their conversations around the why, what, or how to help other team members achieve their goals.
Planners spoke up when they felt that the plan was vague and the team delegated projects to them that required more adherence to process and detail. The entire team started thinking more about how the projects would get done by when.
Prioritizers understood that Arrangers and Visualizers needed to have strategic discussions to feel like a team and decide on next actions, so they blocked off some of their time and started to share more of the reasoning behind why they thought certain work was the highest priority.
As a coach, I started structuring every communication around the why, what, who, and how, leaning more towards certain aspects depending on whom I was talking to. Sometimes coaching meant reminding people of the strengths of other people’s styles and the blind spots of their own, and recommending ways to tackle a new problem or project that would blend their strengths.
“Work Simply” is a great resource for understanding why some tactics work and why your team might be frustrated and less productive. Reading through it I ran into many moments of “oh, that’s why that happened/worked” and walked away with a lot of practical advice. I thought that the most powerful piece of advice was to remember the what, how, who, and why. Touch on all four when you’re addressing a group and lead with the one that matches the person you’re talking to when working one-on-one.
What’s your productivity style? Which tactic will you apply first?
