When a founder who’s good at building relationships, networking, and business development, teams up with a founder who’s great at product development and engineering— this two-person team can effectively take care of most business functions. On their own, neither of these individuals would do everything that needs to be done to scale a startup successfully. Few questions:
How exactly can you quickly tell whether someone’s natural capabilities are complementary to yours without conducting a long-winded psychometric analysis?
How do you determine the likely natural talent gaps in your initial founding duo or founding team?
There are many ways to do this. But over the years, we have observed a pattern across multiple psychometric models and frameworks—one that can be distilled into four distinct talent footprints. The more balance you have across all four talent footprints, the more likely you will have the diversity in thought and skill that high-performing founding teams need. Read on.
The four talent footprints: How do you stack up?
According to a 3,000-year-old ancient Chinese text called The I Ching, there are four main personality traits — or talent footprints — and each person exhibits traits across the spectrum but to differing degrees.
Interesting fact: Richard Wilhelm, a German sinologist, was the first to translate the ancient text for use in the west. And today, it represents the foundation for most psychometric frameworks and tools!
1. Ideas and innovation orientation
Some people are better at seeing the forest than the trees. These visionaries — who balance introversion and extroversion — can see things in their mind’s eye. For example, Nikola Tesla used to design machines and iterate upon them in his head without taking any notes. We find most founders in early-stage startups have a strong footprint here. Key behavioral indicators:
Can solve one problem in numerous ways.
Never short of new ideas.
Often criticized for lacking focus.
Unnaturally optimistic.
2. People orientation
Folks who are incredibly extroverted and can’t help but say hello to everyone in a room fall into this second bucket. These are the people who know everyone and are energized to be around other people. Most natural marketers, PR professionals, and relational sellers have large footprints here. Key behavioral indicators:
Don’t do well when operating in siloed environments away from people.
Claim to need a break from speaking or interacting with others will instinctively engage with a friend or colleague to ‘process’ their day.
Work better when on the move— walking and talking, taking meetings, driving, addressing a crowd— rather than sitting at the desk.
Spontaneous rather than rigid with their schedule— they enjoy changing things up and frequently! Action precedes analysis!
3. Timing and pacing orientation
Some people are better at seeing the trees than the forest. They’re also more cautious and prefer taking time versus jumping headfirst into a project or initiative. Folks who have this talent footprint are also able to balance introversion and extroversion effectively. The roles they naturally excel at include customer success managers, project managers, negotiators, and risk managers. Key behavioral indicators:
They are very timely with everything (e.g., meetings, deadlines, and appointments).
Love planning everything to the most minute detail— notebooks, calendars, daily planners, scheduling software, post-its, to-do lists.
Often have a stronger sense for the undercurrent (i.e., unspoken thoughts and sentiment) amongst team members and will often check in on team members when they know something is up for that person.
Risk-averse and can easily tell you why something shouldn’t or can’t be done, and more importantly, why. They can be misinterpreted as ‘buzz kills’ in meetings.
4. Facts and figures orientation
Our fourth category is populated by introverted individuals who love data, numbers, and facts — the analysts, compliance officers, finance managers, and engineers of the world. While these people care about people, they’re much more interested in facts. Key behavioral indicators:
Prefer to interact with data, facts, and models than people. That doesn’t mean they don’t like people— they are just better at building relationships with information than personalities.
Speak incredibly slower than most people, and take their time to respond to questions they are asked in person. When engaging with them, you will experience extended moments of silence before you get a response.
Will almost be militant about adhering to sequences and processes and often will not expedite those processes without external intervention from their leader or manager.
The Balance
Though it’s not uncommon for someone to have an affinity for two of the talents as mentioned earlier footprints (e.g., a visionary thinker who also enjoys taking a deep dive into data), most of us are drawn to one or two categories. Whether you’re thinking about who to start a company with others or who to hire to scale your startup post-inception, it’s important to create a generally balanced footprint across the four talents. Follow these steps to get started:
Identify which one or two of the talents are most natural to you—the ones that are most energizing for you. For example, you might be great at engaging the public. But if you find it exhausting, it is more likely an acquired talent than natural talent.
Find a team member that fills out the other categories. Likely, this person (or persons) won’t think like you, and you might find their natural style of working somewhat awkward, jarring even. This is the time to set aside your personal biases and pay attention. A complementary person will often be excited (enjoy) doing things that you consider trying, boring, even uninspiring.