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Cloverleaf provides insights for leaders at all levels to leverage their team's strengths, build trust, customize communications, and support effective team collaboration. Some of the “how” of that can be overwhelming with all the potential that Cloverleaf provides leaders.
This resource shares specific strategies that leaders at different levels can leverage to incorporate Cloverleaf into the flow of work.
Best Practice for All Leaders
To get the MOST mileage out of Cloverleaf, you want your teams engaged in the platform on a regular basis.
Issue a 30-day “5 Minutes of Development Challenge” to help your team create a habit and notice the difference in their self and team awareness.
Challenge your team to either engage with their daily coaching tip email or use the my daily coaching feature of the ME dashboard every day for a month.
Create a team calendar invite for 10 minutes at the start of each day that reminds people to do this or encourages team members to schedule it within the first 2 hours of their work day.
Ask team members to bring the coaching insight that most resonated with them about themselves AND a team member that week to a team or 1-1 meeting.
At the end of the month, conduct a debrief with the following questions and discussion. This debrief may take 20-30 minutes.
What was the impact of engaging with your coaching insights on how you approached your own work?
How did engaging with your coaching insights help you work better with others?
What is the single biggest insight about yourself OR our team you’ve gained in the past month?
Collectively agree as a team on how you will engage with Cloverleaf as a team going forward and WHY it will benefit the team.
Will you continue with the current pattern?
Will you design a new approach or schedule of consumption?
What could the benefits be six months or a year from now if you all stuck to the best practice you’ve created?
Customizing Feedback & Difficult Conversations
Delivering critical feedback and having difficult conversations can be a challenge for leaders at any level.
Leaders are busy. However, going into these conversations without preparation is a disservice to the team member and the relationship between the leader and that team member.
Customizing communications can take 5-10 minutes and dramatically impact the outcomes of the conversation.
FOCUS: Cognitive Function Pairs on 16Types
The two middle letters of your type are the Perception & Judgment Functions. This pair gives insight into how these four cognitive functions mentally consume, organize and decide upon information. It is helpful to understand how a team member will respond to information to consider your style of communication.
ST(Sensing-Thinking) - This pair is logical, practical, and wants to know the details upfront. These team members appreciate getting right to the point, and they will want exact information about the impact of a mistake, backup data, and will be more receptive to feedback if it's based on fact, not perception.
*Consider mentioning your exact intention of the conversation up front, and have supporting information that is clear for whatever you need to convey. Be sure to include a step-by-step explanation of expectations or instructions for correcting actions.
NT (Intuition-Thinking) - This pair is logical, idea-focused, and seeks out the general idea of expectations leaving room for independence to design their own system that serves their vision. It’s important when delivering feedback to understand the WHY behind a team member’s decision or action so that if new approaches need to be adopted, there can be ample discussion and collaboration.
*NTs may be attached to their ideas and vision for how things get done, so seek to understand PRIOR to delivering the feedback or tackling challenging topics. Giving NTs an intellectual challenge as part of a solution can motivate them to act.
SF (Sensing-Feeling) - This pair is people-oriented, practical, and seeks out the details and expectations on the front end. Similar to STs, they appreciate the details upfront, but they also are harmony seekers, and they may struggle to give critical feedback for fear of damaging a relationship or simply wanting to keep the peace.
*Take a personal approach with SFs that incorporates acknowledgment and appreciation along with those details at the start of the communication. SFs appreciate clear expectations combined with acknowledgment and positive feedback. Expressing confidence in their abilities will go a long way.
NF (Intuition-Feeling)- This pair is people-oriented, idea-focused, and seeks out the general idea of expectations leaving room for autonomy while serving others. Being so others-focused can cause them to miss details that may result in minor errors or mistakes. Criticism may be taken very personally since it is connected to a commitment to service.
*Acknowledge the motivation and intention of NFs when giving feedback or discussing challenging topics and frame it as helping them to serve others even better by considering the feedback. Consider using a coach approach to empower NFs to design their own solutions to challenges.
Senior Leaders
Senior leaders who are either part of the C-Suite or serving in VP-type positions are accountable for strategy, vision and ensuring business priorities remain the focus of work.
In healthy organizations, senior leaders are not in the weeds of the day-to-day, but they empower and authorize others to direct and be accountable for work getting done. Sometimes this removal from the day-to-day can also make it hard to relate to the people doing the work on a regular basis.
Senior leaders might consider leveraging Cloverleaf in two different ways:
For informed skip-level meetings: The purpose of this type of meeting is to get deeper insight to inform decision-making and strategy in a way that the leader of the individual does not filter.
This feedback also allows senior leaders to increase their approachability and build organizational trust. Skip-level meetings aren’t idle chit-chat and should have some strategy to them on behalf of the senior leader.
This meeting can easily be done by spending 5-10 minutes reviewing the team member’s dashboard and creating a few custom questions for focus:
Look at the workstyle and motivation insights on the team member’s dashboard to craft 2-3 custom questions that engage the team member and show genuine curiosity. Apply some of the knowledge to questions about particular projects or initiatives.
Consider some of the team members’ communication insights to learn more about the style of communication that may resonate most with the team member to prepare for the conversation.
This is also an exercise in leadership development for the senior leaders to develop more self and team awareness by practicing communication customization.
To bring together groups of leaders for strategic planning: When designing high-level organizational strategies, consider creating custom cross-functional team dashboards where senior leaders can get a deeper look at the strengths and opportunities for growth within the group of people tasked with carrying out a vision or strategy.
These can be put together for one-time or ongoing initiatives:
Areas to look for to spark collaborative conversations:
Where are you missing strength in a quadrant that could impact the current strategy/initiative?
Where are the current DISC strengths, and how will you leverage/balance those strengths?
Where are the missing roles, and how does that impact the current strategy/initiative?
How do the roles inform the distribution of work/accountability?
Explore the number of people in each triad to identify balance or imbalance in decision-making. What will the team need to be more aware of when it comes to this particular strategy/initiative?
New Managers
You’ve just become a manager for the first time, and while you may have been promoted for your subject matter expertise, managing people is an entirely different skill set that often has nothing to do with industry-specific talent!
Scenario 1: Becoming a first-time manager of a team that already exists
This can be a complicated challenge depending on things like how long the team has worked together and the team culture espoused by the previous leader.
You want to be effective but don’t want to be compared to the previous manager. In this case, Cloverleaf can be your best friend! It is worth the time invested in reviewing each person’s Cloverleaf profile.
Scenario 2: Becoming a first-time manager and newly being assigned direct report.
This is a little easier because you are building your future team from the ground up. It’s also an exciting time to create a unique team culture based on the diverse team members that are about to join you.
As each new person comes aboard, have the new team member complete their assessments within week one. For detailed instructions on how to integrate Cloverleaf into the team members' first 30 days and conversations you can have, click here.
You are a new manager, and this means being more cognizant of your strengths and opportunities for growth. Consider some self-coaching questions as you refer to your coaching insights and discuss them as relevant with your manager:
Workstyle
Now that you are a manager, which of your workstyle insights will be most effective in leading others?
Which workstyle, if any, has caused any challenges or obstacles to leading effectively and why?
Communication Style
Which insight has helped you the most to communicate effectively and why?
Give an example of how one of your insights led to a productive conversation with a team member.
Motivation
On a scale of 1-5 (1 being not present at all and five being very present), rate how each of your motivational insights is present in your new leadership position and share the reason for each rating using examples.
Change
Which insight could you leverage the most to support change in the future and why?
FREE RESOURCE
*See also our chapter-by-chapter playbook for new managers to build a team that loves working together HERE. You may want to pass this on to new leaders or leaders who manage those who have just started managing others
Recognition/Trust Building
If you need a powerful way to open or close a monthly or quarterly team meeting, consider leveraging Cloverleaf Hot Seat, an opportunity to weave informal recognition into team meetings. For an entire guide to the Cloverleaf Hot Seat, click HERE.