IPA Core – Focus

– Focus on role and style

IPA Core – Focus

a team roles and style analysis

IPA Core Focus analysis is a further development of IPA Nordic’s original ideas and models around the concept of Role and Style. The development of this new version has been carried out during the period 2021 and 2022, as part of IPA Nordic’s efforts to evolve and adapt our analyses to the changes that are happening in and around us.

In relation to the traditions surrounding the use of person-oriented analyses in the workplace, we at IPA Nordic take our cue from the part of psychology known as Integrative Psychology. Integrative Psychology works with a perspective and synthesis of personality psychology in a field model that captures the angles and possibilities we have to create theories and empirical evidence around personality. This is the prerequisite for us to be able to operationalize the phenomenon of personality through analysis and measurement.

In IPA Nordic, we have developed a “classical” personality model and associated measurement instrument with the IPA Analysis, which registers the part of personality that figuratively appears as the “tip of the iceberg”. These analyses are based on a systematic recording of our behaviour and the patterns in this behaviour that can be conceptualised as personality traits. This behaviourist tradition is well founded and well documented with an almost scientific precision.

Role

The Coordinator

Function

To manage, coordinate and evaluate

Systematises, creates order and overview, maintains, calculates, complies with rules and standards

Role

The Organizer

Function

To organize, execute and complete

Ensures effective governance and direction, assesses objectives and resources, prioritises, optimises and allocates roles and tasks

Role

The Motivator

Function

To motivate, facilitate and create meaning

Builds teams, facilitates collaboration and relationships, handles conflict, negotiates compromises and brings the team together

Role

Change Maker

Function

To put into perspective, change and adapt

Gathers input and ideas, summarises, creates context in relation to the company’s challenges and strategic objectives

Style

The Specialist

Gathers knowledge, analyses, finds errors, corrects

Professional and technical guarantor that things are in order, develops specific knowledge, documents, objective, patient and tenacious

Style

The Driver

Drives, completes, finishes and scores

Delivers results, performs, cuts through, energetic firebrand with high and visible activity level, impatient and restless

Style

The Mentor

Supports, advises, encourages and cuddles together

Conversation partner, catalyst, takes personal responsibility for relationships in the team, open, positive and inclusive

Style

The Idea Creator

Creating ideas, experimenting, exploring possibilities

Enthusiastic exponent of the creative and the changing, original, curious and challenging, free of habits and traditions

In-depth information about IPA Core – Focus

Now, in terms of Integrative Psychology’s field theory, we’ve reached a point where we’re digging a little deeper into the personality, working with our personal preferences in terms of taking on different roles and practicing different personal styles in our work life.

Our preferences, and thus our preferred roles and styles, are primarily based on our motive systems. So, we can draw a fairly clear connection between our motives and our preferred roles. But it’s a bit more complicated than that.

In a broad sense, we can say that our preferred roles and styles are a product of our personality (including motives) combined with the learning and experience we’ve acquired throughout our work and life. We are attracted and motivated by certain tasks, and over time we develop a certain focus in relation to our perception of the behavior that is most appropriate and effective in relation to the tasks at hand.

Over time, we develop a relatively repetitive pattern in the way we solve problems and we are attracted to certain types of tasks and functions. It is this repetitive pattern in our behavior that enables us to definitionally create concepts and models that can register a person’s roles and styles as something that is stable over time and can be meaningfully measured.

Of course, there is a fairly clear correlation between a person’s preferred roles and personal style, which is reflected in the team roles they take on. A person with a given motivational system, and thus personal preferences, will gravitate towards taking on certain functions in the team as it gives him or her the highest level of satisfaction.

The role concept is developed on the basis of a more instrumental assessment of the FUNCTIONS in the team (and in the company) that should be performed in order for the team to perform optimally. Thus, the role concept in relation to the individual is somewhat external but still very present, as reality unfolds in such a way that it is obvious that someone must take care of certain tasks in order for the whole to function satisfactorily. Our preferred roles are primarily based on the learning and experience we have acquired throughout our working lives.

The concept of style, on the other hand, is directly linked to you and your individual and personal preferences, and your personal style is therefore unique to you. Your style is fundamentally directly linked to your personality, i.e. your behavior and motives. We capture this in the IPA Teamroles.

When we operationalize our theoretical model, we distinguish between the functional approach, which defines the more concrete roles, and the personal approach, which defines the more concrete personal preferences and styles.

Which tasks do I spend the most time on?

What do I value most in my job?

What do I notice most in my department?

Which function is the most important?

Who do I like/dislike working with the most?

What is my attitude towards change/conflict?

What is most important for a company’s success?

How do we improve our performance?

What do I value most in my colleagues?

What do I like to spend my time on?

In which situations do I feel most comfortable?

How do I like to make my decisions?

Where do I excel the most?

How do I evaluate myself and my performance?

How do I see myself at my core?

How do I want others to perceive me?

Who would I prefer to hire in my department?

Where am I most critical of my surroundings?

What mistakes do I typically crack down on?

Role – The functional viewpoint

The four basic personal styles (IPA Team roles)

When we look at the concept of style from a personal point of view, and thus describe and explain the behavior that characterizes a given person’s style, there are four basic driving forces that form the basis of the more concrete Style that we later define and operationalize in IPA Team Roles.

Based on the determination of these four basic motives, we have more concretely defined four personal styles, which when set up in a model look like this:

1

The Coordinator

First, we are talking about a security motive that drives individuals to avoid threats, dangers and destruction.

A dominant security motive creates a behaviour in which this ordering, structuring, and controlling becomes an essential basis for the concrete behaviour.

Reality is a phenomenon that must be managed, organised, systematised and ordered in such a way as to be as much in control as possible, thus creating as much predictability as possible.

2

The Organizer

Secondly, we are talking about a self-assertion motive, where making your own ego visible and emphasizing it in relation to others becomes a significant driving force for the individual.

A dominant self-assertion motive creates a behavior where the individual mirrors themselves in their achievements, their power and dominance and their social recognition.

Reality becomes a kind of battle between individuals, where the one who strives and fights to be bigger, faster and smarter than others wins the final victory.

3

The Motivator

Thirdly, we are talking about a social and emotional motive, where insight, love and care for other people are the main driving force.

Here the social motive is not personal recognition, and thus self-assertion, but the quality of the relationships one creates with other people.

It is cohesion and community, the deep and intimate relationship with another person, this being able to help and support through insight, this seeking understanding for oneself and others, that is the main driving force for a person with a strong social and emotional motive.

4

Change Maker

Fourthly, we talk about a self-actualization or self-actualization motive, where being able to utilize and actualize all your potentials, creativity, curiosity and the urge for deep cognition are dominant.

It is the person who has freed themselves from all mental restraints, who rests within themselves and therefore has the complete freedom to test themselves and their boundaries in relation to the reality in which they operate.

It is the learner, the experimenter, the playful person, for whom reaching a deep realization of the contexts in which they operate is an essential driving force.

Style – Personal preferences

The four basic personal styles (IPA Team roles)

When we look at the concept of style from a personal point of view and thus describe and explain the behaviour that characterizes a given person’s style, there are four basic driving forces that form the basis of the more concrete style that we later define and operationalize. We can clarify this in IPA Team Roles.

1

The Specialist

First, knowledge must be created, structured and planned.

Effective frameworks and systems need to be coordinated and put in place to tie things together and provide oversight.

Ensuring that the right things are always available in the right quantities and at the right time.

Rules and standards must be respected Supply lines must be ensured and specialist and control functions filled.

2

The Driver

Second, a quantitative output must be created that can be measured, weighed, priced and sold.

Milestones must be set, efforts organised, obstacles overcome and tasks carried out to a visible and measurable outcome.

Second, a quantitative output must be created that can be measured, weighed, priced and sold.

Milestones must be set, efforts organised, obstacles overcome and tasks carried out to a visible and measurable outcome.

We are talking here about the front-line function which, after ideas have been conceived, people motivated and plans made, ensures the concrete execution and completion of tasks.

3

The Motivator

Thirdly, the human resources available must be used to the full.

People need to be motivated, collaborated and communicated with, developed and conflicts resolved.

A team spirit must be created, where human and social driving forces are given free rein through the creation of a common identity and a positive climate.

4

The Idea Creator

Fourth, we need to look beyond our own borders, beyond the horizon and into the future to see what opportunities and dangers lie ahead.

New ideas for products, processes, organisation and markets need to be generated, initiatives taken and new approaches tested.

Questions must be asked and answers found, dialogues created and challenges overcome.

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