Heartstyles: Why we love it and how it can help your organisation
“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”
It’s an uncomfortable concept to some organisations that we might bring heart into business. But increasingly, we’re seeing how important it is for businesses to do just that in order to get the best out of their people.
Sales… targets… KPIs – this is the language we’re accustomed to in a business setting. That language is changing. Even before the pandemic struck, it was becoming more commonplace to talk about authenticity, vulnerability, and leading with heart in the workplace. These attributes are key to building an inclusive and open business environment in which teams can thrive.
Creating such a culture is easier said than done. That’s why Heartstyles, a life stage indicator, works so well as a part of many of our programs. Unlike most personality assessment tools that tell you what personality type you are, Heartstyles looks at why we behave the way we do and how we can change ineffective behaviour. It tells us where we are, not who we are. It provides a snapshot of our current effective and ineffective behaviour.
For leaders, it’s a great self-awareness tool that highlights the areas central to successful leadership: humility, compassion, reliability, developing and encouraging others.
The indicator is a 360-degree tool that incorporates confidential feedback from others to give a rounded snapshot of the candidate’s behaviour at that time. It identifies four principles that drive our behaviour: humility, love, fear and pride. Humility and love are considered Above the Line (ATL) behaviours, while fear and pride are Below the Line (BTL). BTL behaviour – being overly competitive, sarcastic to colleagues or constantly protecting yourself from blame or failure – can be physically and emotionally draining. Heartstyles identifies that behaviour and offers ways to address it and trade up for ATL behaviour.
Here’s how it works: candidates answer a series of questions about their behaviours – how they ‘turn up’ in different areas of their life. The Heartstyles Indicator scores them across 16 key areas of character. This score is benchmarked against those of over 130,000 other assessments, providing a clear picture of where the candidate’s character is strong and where it could be developed.
At Actualize, we conduct one-on-one debriefs with candidates to walk them through their reports to help them understand the results and identify any development opportunities they see.
For the individual, this awareness can be extremely powerful. For an entire culture, it can provide huge growth potential.
We’ve seen for ourselves the impact a coaching session can have. Here’s just one example of feedback to one of our coaches of how the insights gained from Heartstyles led to a concerted effort to move ATL.
“I wanted to thank you for running the Heartstyles program, it’s been an eye opener especially with how I was feeling at the start of the program.
“My one-on-one with you, while emotional for me, really opened my eyes to how and what I was feeling in that moment and made me realise I can’t continue on that path.
“I love that I have started the process of being above the line and focusing on being reliable in all aspects of my life. This has definitely made me feel more present, less avoiding and less approval seeking.”
We love this tool because it aligns so closely with our leadership development framework. And with results such as those we consistently see, our clients do, too.
