Name the bird

The four, and their birds

The model is a four-quadrant read on observable behavior, built on two axes — how much you assert yourself, and how much you show what you feel. It is David Merrill and Roger Reid's. Keep this list covered until step three.

• Driver · the EagleWants the outcome, and wants it now.
• Expressive · the PeacockThinks out loud and brings the room along.
• Amiable · the DoveSteady, dependable, holds the team together.
• Analytical · the OwlWants the evidence before the decision.

Before you run it

• No prep, no accounts, no results needed. This works cold, with a team that has never taken the assessment — and it works better that way, because nobody is defending a label they've already been given.
• Works as a warm-up. Fifteen minutes at the top of a full team session teaches the vocabulary before anyone's marker appears on the grid.
• Any size group. Above about ten people, do the guessing in pairs and compare answers rather than going around one at a time.

The 15-minute exercise

1. 1

   Put the four styles up

   2 min

   Write the four style names where everyone can see them — Analytical, Driver, Expressive, Amiable — with the two axes underneath: how much you assert yourself, and how much you show what you feel. Don't reveal the birds yet. If the team has already taken the assessment, don't show the grid either; this works better before people know where they landed.

2. 2

   Hand out the birds and let them guess

   4 min

   Give the group the four birds in a scrambled order and ask them, together, to match each bird to a style. There is a right answer, but the guessing is the point — the argument about which bird goes where is people reasoning out loud about behavior, which is the thing you actually want them doing.

   • “Which of these would you rather have run a meeting that's already late?”
   • “Which one notices first that someone's gone quiet?”
3. 3

   Give the answer, and the reason

   3 min

   Reveal the matching and read each bird's one-line hook. Then say the important part plainly: the bird is a memory aid, not a fifth thing being measured. It carries no meaning the style name doesn't already carry. The team keeps whichever name it finds easier to say out loud.

4. 4

   Go around: guess each other

   4 min

   Each person names the bird they think they are, then the group says whether it agrees. Keep it to one line each. Disagreement here is the most useful thing that happens in the whole exercise — it means the team is talking about observable behavior rather than reciting a label.

   • “Which bird would your closest collaborator say you are?”
   • “Which one do you turn into when the deadline is tomorrow?”
5. 5

   Land it on something real

   2 min

   Close by asking each person to name one pairing on the team that is a bit of work — using whichever names they prefer — and one thing they'll try differently with that person. The vocabulary was never the goal; this is.

What to watch for

“So am I a bird or a style?”

Neither is a thing you are. Both are names for a pattern in how you come across, and they name the same pattern. The style name — Analytical, Driver, Expressive, Amiable — is what this instrument calls it everywhere, including on your result. The bird is a shortcut for remembering it.

Someone latches onto the bird as an identity.

This is the one real risk of the exercise, and why it runs 15 minutes rather than an hour. If “I'm an Eagle, that's just how I am” starts doing work in the room, drop the birds and go back to the behavior: everyone uses all four, and the result describes a default under everyday pressure, not a ceiling.

The group prefers the plain names.

Then you're done, and that's a fine outcome. Plenty of teams find the adjective easier than the animal. The exercise has still done its job if people can now say what the four styles mean without looking them up.

Want to keep the birds?

If the exercise landed and your team would rather see the birds than the adjectives from here on, you can switch what this site shows you. It changes the labels on your own screens only — your result, everyone else's view of the team, and every export stay exactly as they are.

Signed in, this follows you across devices from your account settings. Signed out, it is remembered in this browser.