Captain
Captains love rising to meet challenges. Independent and strong-willed, they connect easily with colleagues and direct reports. They're natural leaders who both inspire and challenge their teams and raise the bar for their organizations.
Highlights: Self-starter Sociable Innovative Driving
Maximize your business potential by tapping into people’s natural strengths.
The Captain Reference Profile—like all Reference Profiles—has many unique strengths and characteristics. Understanding the differences in your people can help you build a company that achieves the results you’re after. The same way you’d build a world-class sports team, knowing how your people think and work helps you optimize for success.
Characteristics of the Captain
Captains are natural leaders; they want to make an impact. They seek to solve problems and control the big picture, and they freely delegate details and authority. For a more detailed and accurate reading of your behavioral pattern and how it pertains to your unique business situation, schedule a consultation.
Natural Strengths
Self-starter
Sociable
Innovative
Driving
Common Drivers
Independence
Connection with others
Variety and change
Flexibility
Blind Spots
May appear authoritative
Struggles to follow structure or direction
Can seem brusque
Non-conforming
The Captain on a team
Captains are naturally big-picture thinkers. They’re known to be innovative risk-takers and articulate communicators. They thrive in and help contribute to a culture of change and innovation. Teams are often designed by default rather than intention. A strategic, data-driven approach to building teams is what helps organizations win.
Business strategy and the Captain
Before you know whether someone is the right person for the job, you need total clarity and alignment on the results you’re after. What’s the goal or desired outcome? When we ask questions like this, we get a better understanding of the need to align people strategically for specific results.
When you put people in the right roles, you avoid turnover, toxicity, disengagement, and lost productivity. In the case of the Captain, while they can do a variety of things well, they naturally gravitate toward strategic activities that seek to drive change and innovation.
Managing the Captain
Often managers try to manage everyone the same way—and that’s usually the way they like to be managed. But this approach can backfire. People like to be managed differently—and it may not always be in a way that comes naturally to you. Even beyond the individual needs, teams require different leadership styles. You wouldn’t manage a sales team the same way you’d manage a team of developers.
When working with Captains, remember that they’re assertive, results-oriented, diplomatic, and impatient. They’re typically less effective in environments that require strong adherence to process. Captains are most effective working with other people and getting buy-in for their ideas. When managing this profile, consider some of the following suggestions:
Give them challenges and problems to solve.
Provide opportunities to work with and lead others.
Allow them to figure out their own approach.
Let them communicate and involve others.
Provide learning and development opportunities.
Offer flexibility in their activities.
Explore talent optimization.
Companies that struggle to build high-performing teams are often missing critical people data. With our tools, expertise, experiance, and talent optimization, you can stop guessing at how to get the most from your people— and better align your people to deliver on the results you’re after.