The language of collaboration: Building high performing, age diverse teams with behavioural profiling

In this article we will look at what value behavioural profiling can bring if you are seeking to build multigenerational teams who can collaborate excellently.

Awareness of age diversity in the workplace is growing

Diversity has rightly become a business priority within the last decade. Age diversity is increasingly gaining traction within the HR and wider business press as vital to consider for businesses who want to succeed in the next few years. For example, Harvard Business Review has released six great articles in their Big Ideas Series focussing on Getting The Best Out Of The Five-Generation Workforce.

There are also campaigners championing the cause for age diversity, such as 55/Redefined, who C-me have chosen to partner with, in order to help tackle ageism in the workplace by offering behavioural profiling to support employers looking to attract and retain employees over 55 years old, and job seekers over 55 seeking to better understand themselves in readiness for their next position.

The current challenge and opportunity we face is that our populations are living longer, and our aging workforces are not viewing retirement in the same way as previous generations. As we live longer, we have much more to give in our lifetimes. The cost of living has also skyrocketed and so a comfortable retirement seems more out of reach for many people. In their 2022 Ageism Report The Unretirement Uprising 55/Redefined quoted that by 2050 the over 60s UK population will grow by 40% (ONS, National population projections: 2020-based interim) – the age range of our workforce is increasing. This is a great opportunity for employers. Kim Chaplain, Specialist Advisor for Work at the Centre for Ageing Better, said

Businesses who want to tap into our growing workforce talent pool and build high performing, age diverse teams need tools to help their people collaborate, celebrating and utilising all the differences they bring.

Behavioural profiling offers a solution

The big secret of performance coaching is that the success of high performing teams is determined by their internal relationships. If you want to grow your team's performance, invest in the soft skills of your people and their ability to work with those who are different from themselves.

We need tools that celebrate differences within a team and educate how to work together effectively. Behavioural profiling is designed to increase performance through personal understanding - by a person understanding and harnessing their preferred working style - then gaining insight into how others are motivated and express themselves, thereby learning to value differences through recognising the 'why' driving the behaviour of others.

Behavioural profiling systems give a common language to build bridges within teams, so they are better equipped to handle setbacks, deal with conflicts healthily, have those tough conversations, draw on each other’s strengths, and support one another in their weaker areas. This results in more trusting relationships and effective teams.

What is unique about behavioural profiling?

Behavioural profiling is an arm of psychometric testing, which is commonly understood to be a standardised way of assessing an individual’s abilities, traits, and behaviours. Behavioural profiling specifically looks at a person's behavioural preferences.

Unlike our personality (consisting of our values and beliefs), which tends to be fairly set from early adulthood, our behavioural preferences develop across our lifetime and can therefore be coached for greater success. We do have preferences though; behaviours which are more 'natural' to us, which we then adapt to do well in the world and achieve success. Crucially, our behaviour is how everyone else experiences us and this is why it is a critical conversation to have in order to build inclusive, collaborative, and high performing teams.

Behavioural profiling is a business approach which can be both used to identify our personal behavioural strengths as well as areas where we have less natural affinity. Behavioural profiling systems can explain how to adapt our behaviour to achieve better outcomes. Models differ in their approach but most focus on helping people to achieve their potential and serve as a system to improve team performance, among other things.

For a more in depth explanation of behavioural profiling see our article: Why behavioural assessments are more effective in business than personality tests.

How C-me help

As we move into an ever more age diverse workplace, behavioural profiling is a powerful tool in establishing a positive working culture, providing a language for age diverse teams to achieve higher performance.

We developed C-me to provide our clients with a behavioural profiling system that is easy to use, highly accurate, fast to roll-out, integrates with your existing learning and development programmes and focusses on immediate application to clearly drive better business performance.

C-me: Your go-to platform to facilitate communication, establish trust and drive performance across your organisation

If you want help building your teams book a demo with one of us to find out more about how we can help.