IPA Core – Focus

– Preferences and motives. Focus on leadership 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

Coordinator

Function

To manage, coordinate and evaluate

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

Role

Organiser

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

Creators of change

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

Specialists

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

The Mentor

The Motivator

Supports, advises, encourages and cuddles together

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

Style

The Creator of Ideas

Creating ideas, experimenting, exploring possibilities

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

Detailed information about IPA Core – Focus 

Now, in relation to the field theory of Integrative Psychology, we have reached a point where we dig a bit deeper into the personality, as we are now working with our personal preferences in relation to fulfilling different roles and exercising different personal styles in our working life.

Our preferences, and therefore our preferred roles and styles, are based primarily on our motivational systems. We can thus draw a fairly clear link 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 have acquired through our working lives and life courses. We are attracted and motivated by particular work tasks, and so over time we develop a particular focus in relation to our perception of the behaviour that is most appropriate and effective in relation to the tasks at hand.

Thus, 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 repeated pattern in our behaviour that enables us to create, definitionally, concepts and models that can record an individual’s roles and styles as something that is stable over time and can therefore be subject to meaningful measurement.

There is, of course, a fairly obvious correlation between a person’s preferred roles and personal style, which is reflected in the theme roles they take on. A person with a given motivational system, and hence personal preferences, will seek to perform certain functions in the team, as this gives him or her the greatest degree of satisfaction.

The role concept has been developed on the basis of a more instrumental assessment of the FUNCTIONS in the team (and in the company) that should be performed for the team to perform optimally. Thus, in relation to the individual, the concept of role is something external, yet very present, as reality unfolds in such a way that it is obvious that someone has to take on certain tasks for the whole to function satisfactorily. Our preferred roles are based primarily on the learning and experience we have acquired through 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 something unique to you. Your Style is basically directly linked to your personality, i.e. your behaviour and your motives. We capture this in IPA Team Roles.

Thus, when we need to operationalize our theoretical model more concretely, 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 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 best/have the hardest time working with?

What is my attitude to change/conflict?

What is most important for the success of a company?

How do we improve our performance?

What do I value most in my colleagues?

What do I like to spend my time on?

In what situations do I feel most comfortable?

How do I like to make my decisions?

Where do I excel most?

What do I rate myself and my performance on?

How do I see myself deep down?

How would I like others to perceive me?

Who do I prefer to employ in my department?

Where am I most critical of those around me?

What mistakes do I typically hit out at?

Role – The functional point of view

The four basic personal styles (IPA Team roles)

When we look at the concept of style from the personal point of view, and thus describe and explain the behaviour that characterises a given person’s style, there are four basic driving forces that, so to speak, lay the foundation for the more concrete Style that we subsequently define and operationalise in IPA Team Roles.

Based on the determination of these four basic drivers, we have more concretely defined four personal styles, which put into a model look like this:

1

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

Organiser

Secondly, we are talking about a self-assertion motive, where this making visible and highlighting one’s own ego in relation to others becomes an essential driving force for the individual.

A dominant self-assertion motive creates a behaviour where the individual mirrors himself in his achievements, his power and dominance and his social recognition.

Reality becomes a kind of battle between individuals, where the one who bets and fights to become 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

Creators of change

Fourth, we speak of a self-actualization or self-actualization motive, in which this ability to exploit and actualize all one’s potentials, creativity, curiosity and urge for deep knowledge is dominant.

It is the person who has freed himself from all constraining mental ties, who rests within himself and therefore has the complete freedom to test himself and his limits in relation to the reality in which he acts.

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

Style – The Personal Preferences

The four basic personal styles (IPA Team roles)

When we look at the concept of style from the personal point of view, and thus have to describe and explain the behaviour that characterises a given person’s style, there are four basic driving forces that, so to speak, lay the groundwork for the more concrete style we subsequently define and operationalise. We can clarify this in the IPA Team Roles.

1

Specialists

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 Creator of Ideas

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.