Meet The Team Member - Decision-Shy Dora

Each character in this series is designed to portray one of four different styles of behaviour, based on Robert Bolton and Dorothy Grover Bolton’s book, ‘People Styles at Work’. For each style, we’re looking at two examples: a person whose approach has more impact upon other people and one that has more impact upon the task in hand.

 

This month, we’re taking a look at Decision-Shy Dora, who is an Analyser. Perhaps you remember Get It Right Gordon from our October issue last year, who was also an Analayser - a logical thinker who pays great attention to detail but takes a long time to get anywhere.

 

Similarly, Dora is thorough, very steady and prudent - and really good at any in-depth analysis she is required to carry out. She writes the most detailed specifications and likes to cross-check everything using a vast range of sub-groups.

 

However, Dora is very indecisive. Her careful approach can work well when there is little or no time pressure. Unfortunately, such occasions are few and far between for most Insight teams! Organisations seem to want everything more and more quickly so that they can keep up with today’s rapidly changing business environment.

 

If Dora’s in the driving seat, it will be almost impossible to meet your deadlines, especially if your team is involved in a project.

 

You need to encourage Dora to find ways of speeding up – probably by getting her to accept some compromises. The Pareto principle of 80-20 is a good place to start. A rough and ready answer (which Dora will never be satisfied with!) can probably be reached with 20% of her normal time investment.

 

More realistically for Dora, she could probably achieve the required results by carrying out 80% of the work she would normally undertake. Those final little elements of detail that she uses to hone everything to perfection are seldom worth the amount of time invested.

 

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