Assertiveness →
Responsiveness →
Owl
Eagle
Dove
Peacock
Enormous energy, real creative output, and almost no follow-through unless you build it in deliberately.
Where friction shows up
Great conversations that end with nothing written down. Both of you leave a meeting genuinely believing something was decided, and each of you remembers a different version. Under pressure, you both go personal, and two people who both go personal escalate fast and stay escalated.
What to do differently
- Assign an owner and a date before you leave the room. Every time. This is the whole ballgame.
- Bring in someone detail-oriented on anything that matters, and mean it.
- Cap the idea generation with an explicit stopping point.
- When it gets heated, break. Neither of you de-escalates in the moment.
What not to do
Do not let a good conversation count as progress.
One line to remember
Owner and date, or it did not happen.
Keep going
See your whole team on one map
Run the free assessment with your team and get a shared grid of who works how — then use guides like this for every pairing.
Start with your team — free