How to Become More Efficient by Leveraging Your Productivity Style
How can you be more effective and impactful in your work?
Carson Tate is the Founder and Managing Partner of Working Simply. We discuss her Productivity Style Assessment, designed to help you learn your cognitive style and become more efficient at work. We’ll also talk about her view on my scores after taking the assessment!
Carson and her consulting firm work with business leaders and employees to enhance workplace productivity and engagement.
She’s also a best-selling author, and her newest book is called Own It. Love It. Make It Work.: How to Make Any Job Your Dream Job.
Keep reading to learn the best strategies for your own productivity style and how to leverage your team’s diverse styles.
Why Carson created the Productivity Style Assessment
Carson and I have a similar background in sales. She started her career in human resources and financial services. After that, Carson worked in big pharma as an outside sales rep. But deep inside, what she wanted was to start her own business.
While in grad school, Carson had researched and developed an awareness tool. She called it the Productivity Style Assessment.
So, she created ‘Working Simply,’ which now serves a fast-growing client list, including FedEx and Wells Fargo.
Today, using this assessment, Carson helps her clients figure out the best tools, apps, and approaches to improve productivity and impact.
The main idea of the productivity style self-assessment is that none of us think and work the same way. And its goal is to dial up your awareness around how you prefer to execute on projects. It’s about becoming aware of how you manage time and communicate with others to get work done.
Results help you find suggested apps, tools, and methodologies to improve your productivity and performance.
The best part: it doesn’t matter if you’re a senior or a first-time employee – the assessment still applies.
What are the types of productivity styles?
According to the productivity style assessment, there are four types of productivity styles:
1. The Visualizer
A visualizer’s thinking is characterized as very holistic and intuitive. They tend to be innovators, eager to push against tradition and the status quo.
Visualizers dislike details and prefer to focus on concepts and ideas in their head. Creative and open-minded, they excel at connecting seemingly unrelated pieces of information.
2. The Planner
Planners are the most organized of the four styles. They focus on details and have a natural tendency to hold deadlines and punctuality sacred.
Planners love schedules, lists, and rules, which makes them proficient project managers.
3. The Prioritizer
Prioritizers are highly effective workers. Having a keen sense of the importance of each task, they can quickly complete large amounts of work.
Prioritizers are also very goal-oriented – they are not going to chit-chat with you.
Organized and consistent, these are process people. They have a strong execution orientation and love checklists.
4. The Arranger
Arrangers are team-oriented workers and very effective communicators. They are well-tuned to other people’s emotions, which makes them great at persuasion and sales.
Arrangers are usually supportive, expressive people who love to collaborate on projects. They are visual and tend to decorate their office with artwork and photos.
What makes the Productivity Style Assessment so unique
When I took the test, I got: arranger, planner, prioritizer, and visualizer – in that order. However, I noticed that my scores were relatively low and close to each other.
As Carson explained to me, I don’t have an extreme preference. This means I tend to flex between an arranger and a prioritizer, depending on the context.
The assessment shows how people can adapt from one style to another if necessary. However, there will always be a tendency for a given style.
When you think about the composition of a team, the highest performing ones are diverse in terms of productivity styles.
So, what’s valuable about this assessment is that you can improve your team’s performance by leveraging their different styles.
Your goal is to put together a team with all four styles; the analytical prioritizer, the organized planner, the relational arranger. You’ll also need a visualizer who’ll be helping you to stay ahead of market trends.
For me, the productivity style assessment is unique compared to other models. In my case, I learned that I perform better when talking to people and mapping things out. But if it weren’t for this assessment, I probably wouldn’t have made the connection!
Key Takeaways
– The productivity style assessment (00:00)
– Carson’s background and journey (02:04)
– The goal of the productivity style assessment (05:05)
– The four cognitive styles: How the assessment works (06:31)
– Diving into my scores and what they mean (10:06)
– Why this assessment is different from other models (16:43)
– How to take the assessment (23:20)
Leadership Resources
Take the Productivity Style Assessment here: https://www.workingsimply.com/productivity-training/
How are the leaders at all levels of management tackling the toughest challenges each day? Learn more at: https://sartoleadershipgroup.com
About the host, Rob Fonte
Rob Fonte is the founder and President of Sarto Leadership Group, whose reputation has been built on being a transformational leader and inspirational coach with a passion for developing others. His twenty-year career spans across multiple disciplines including leading award-winning sales teams. Rob is an academically trained Executive Coach certified by The University of Texas and the International Coach Federation.