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Written by Hilary Tupling, Consulting Psychologist, Sydney Australia

Consulting Psychologist Hilary Tupling discusses how she is using the SDI with couples in conjoint therapy and in personal development workshops.

Developing a New Respect

In therapy the SDI provides both partners with insights into themselves and their relationship and as such offers a non-judgemental explanation of how they come to misinterpret each other’s behaviour. It helps them to develop a new respect for their partner’s differences (and see these as strengths), as well as assist with managing conflict more effectively.

Growing from this work has been a conviction that that tool and theory are an invaluable resource for those who had (recently) broken up from partnerships and needed to understand better what went wrong: and those who felt that they rarely, if ever, seemed to get long-term satisfaction and commitment in their relationships. The SDI helps to give pointers for understanding and accepting a new partner’s behaviour, rather than just walking away when it becomes alien to their own. Read the rest of this entry »

Performance management systems wouldn’t fail so often if they accounted for the full spectrum of human elements in their process. This article, by DR Katarina Hackman (FAHRI), ran in Australia’s HR Monthly. Dr. Hackman is managing director of K. Hackman & Associates. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Gladwell’s Outliers it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery! Speaks volumes to the value of retaining and developing people. I have often thought about the importance of developing and retaining good people. Clearly investing in the growth of our employees is essential to the success of the organization.

But this statistic caused me to stop and reconsider my thinking about the organizational costs of loosing an employee who has reached a significant level of mastery. It made me think about the true value of the individual, and the importance of retaining and continuing to develop these exceptional people. Read discussion…

“It’s non-threatening and non–labeling.. they’re the things we like most about the SDI.”
- John Brooks, Senior Operations Officer at the Hobart headquarters of the Australian Antarctic Division

John has used the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) as a key part of the pre-expedition briefing procedures for groups of people heading south to the ice. “Living and working in Antarctica presents people with a range of new challenges and a different set of conditions form the ones they’re used to meeting in Australia,” John says. “That’s one of the reasons we like to raise our expeditioners’ awareness of their personal relating styles, and the SDI is an effective way to achieve this.” As part of the extensive training, John’s Station and Field Operations team uses the Premier Edition of the SDI with groups of 20-25 people. Read the rest of this entry »

I went to use my SDI Charting Poster a few weeks ago and discovered that three of the participants had used regular, non-erasable markers. After initiating the start of my conflict sequence, I was relieved to discover that Mr. Clean Magic Eraser took the regular marker off and did not appear to hurt the finish of the poster! It can still be written on and erased with the appropriate marker.

Submitted by Bob Schultz, Robert Schultz Consulting

Written by Olin and Laura Jennings of The Jennings Group. Both are SDI Master Trainers

Applying Relationship Awareness Theory and the SDI tool to build emotional intelligence as a practical skill set in ministers and pastors has transformed them.  They were confident spiritual leaders, but now they have relaxed into their roles as leaders and motivators of people and their churches.  They now are better equipped to impact their churches and communities.  They applied this new awareness to difficult members of their staff, elder boards, and congregations.  Suddenly, they understood why they were having such severe problems.  They were able to identify more constructive ways to deal with their own negative emotions and take the lead in solving these difficult people issues.  Many of the people issues that kept them awake at night and were constant emotional discussion topics with their spouses (as part of the church leadership team) were resolved.  They also applied this new knowledge to their own marriages, strengthening their marriages and their leadership influence as the first leadership team of their churches.  This case study includes personal growth metrics achieved during the training program. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for more ways to link self-awareness and workplace behavior? Consider building an activity around an organization’s values and mission. With the organization’s values statement (or similar document) in hand, try one of the following levels of activity: Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Justus Lewis, PhD, facilitator, educator, consultant and coach working in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. This article is from her e-zine newsletter.

This issue of the e-zine focuses on Relationship Awareness Theory. I have personally found it to be a very practical and helpful tool in understanding myself and other people. Both in working with teams in organizations and coaching individual clients, I have found that Relationship Awareness Theory, the associated Strength Deployment Inventory, and other related ‘tools’ give people the ‘Ahah!’ experience, and help them to understand and resolve some of the dynamics of conflict.

I was recently talking to a sales manager who described a conflict with one of his suppliers. This supplier had a history of being frequently on the telephone to the manager about one thing or another. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Lea Symonds, Director, Personal Strengths, Australia

Recently I read an article by Patrick Lencioni about “Addressing Team Dysfunctions”.  It made me think about how the SDI could be used to think about those times when a team is not functioning effectively.

In his article, Patrick recommended that some simple questions were useful to identify warning signs and as I read, I started to wonder how SDI might be able to add some valuable insights. Perhaps these questions would be useful when using SDI with teams.

Consider…

Do team members openly and readily disclose and share opinions, or information that is relevant to others? Which styles might have difficulty doing this and what would they need in order to be more willing to share. Are there any current situations that are working against openness? Thinking about team member MVS –- are there any situations that some people might find confronting and so they are reticent about disclosure or pointing a point-of-view forward?  Read the rest of this entry »