Business Chemistry

Practical Magic for Crafting Powerful Work Relationships

Kim Christfort, Suzanne Vickberg

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781119501565
• eBook ISBN: 9781119501640
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

A guide to putting cognitive diversity to work

Ever wonder what it is that makes two people click or clash? Or why some groups excel while others fumble? Or how you, as a leader, can make or break team potential?

Business Chemistry holds the answers. Based on extensive research and analytics, plus years of proven success in the field, the Business Chemistry framework provides a simple yet powerful way to identify meaningful differences between people's working styles. Who seeks possibilities and who seeks stability? Who values challenge and who values connection? Business Chemistry will help you grasp where others are coming from, appreciate the value they bring, and determine what they need in order to excel. It offers practical ways to be more effective as an individual and as a leader.

Imagine you had a more in-depth understanding of yourself and why you thrive in some work environments and flounder in others. Suppose you had a clearer view on what to do about it so that you could always perform at your best.

Imagine you had more insight into what makes people tick and what ticks them off, how some interactions unlock potential while others shut people down. Suppose you could gain people's trust, influence them, motivate them, and get the very most out of your work relationships.

Imagine you knew how to create a work environment where all types of people excel, even if they have conflicting perspectives, preferences and needs. Suppose you could activate the potential benefits of diversity on your teams and in your organizations, improving collaboration to achieve the group's collective potential.

Business Chemistry offers all of this--you don't have to leave it up to chance, and you shouldn't. Let this book guide you in creating great chemistry!

The Power of Chemistry

“It's just like dating!” my colleague exclaimed as he rushed into the room. A recent divorcé, Brian had just discovered online matchmaking websites, so it was with some trepidation that I asked him, “What's just like dating?”

“Business relationships,” he replied.

At that point I was dubious about where the conversation was heading, but then he continued, saying, “It's all about the chemistry.”

Chemistry. A powerful word used to represent that magical something that can exist between people—and not just the romantically inclined. The term is applied broadly, from successful sports teams to highly rated news anchors to popular political leaders. In most cases its presence is obvious, but mysterious. It is hard to know exactly what's behind it. It's just there.

Of course, chemistry is also a branch of science that explores what matter is made of and how those ingredients interact, combine, and change. As a former pre-med student, I vividly recall my afternoons in the organic chemistry lab, carefully titrating this and heating that to create the perfect cocktail that would bring about the particular transformation I was hoping for (rather than an explosion). This other definition of chemistry pertains to the precise, analytical, and measured (literally). And yet the result still somehow feels magical.

Brian's words about business relationships made something click for me. He was right; chemistry is a huge factor in business. And not just in established working relationships, but in any interaction between people, whether they know each other well or not. Once you start looking, its presence or absence is noticeable everywhere. With that colleague you seek out when you want to riff on a new idea versus the one you avoid because he's so difficult to work with. With the client who will work with no one but you, versus the one you can't seem to click with. With the teams that achieve outsized success, versus those that churn and churn and never make progress. Time and again we've seen how chemistry can be the invisible force tilting the outcome in one direction or the other.

We often consider the great chemistry in these situations to be something we either have or don't. We think of it like luck, an abstract boon to wish for but not something to expect. However we rarely question whether there's a way we could concoct it ourselves. What if instead we viewed it as a discipline, one that explores the elements behind human interactions and how they might be brought together to minimize explosions and maximize positive outcomes? What if we took a scientific view on the art of business relationships?

That question kicked off the development of the Business Chemistry Project at Deloitte, which has become a seven-year exploration into what makes people click or clash, why some groups excel and others fumble, and how leaders can make or break team potential. What is Business Chemistry?

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• What makes people click or clash
  
• Why some groups excel and others fumble
• How leaders can make or break team potential

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In short, it is an analytics-driven tool for understanding and leveraging differences between people. It has been used by hundreds of thousands of professionals around the world to build healthier teams, enhance customer engagement, and become more effective leaders

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• Build healthier teams
  
• Enhance customer engagement
• Become more effective leaders

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This book is dedicated to helping you use the principles of Business Chemistry to build your own powerful relationships, high-performing teams, and exceptional organizations.

As one of the original architects of the system, I'm writing this first chapter to lay some groundwork for why we developed this tool in this first place. In the rest of the book my co-author, Suzanne, will join me in sharing some of the most important ways in which people differ, and how those differences can cause conflicts between individuals and inconsistent performance on teams. Think your colleague doesn't get it? Their working style may simply be the opposite of yours. Think some of your team members lack commitment? Your team norms might be draining their energy and sapping their potential. Throughout this book we'll provide you with practical strategies for creating better business chemistry with those you work with, improving the performance of everyone involved. We'll share ideas for how to manage, motivate, and influence different types of people. We'll offer strategies for earning their trust and respect. And we'll explore how to lead your teams so that everyone can excel and deliver their best performance. But in order to get there, it helps to understand first things first.

Origins

The truth is, that early conversation I had with Brian catalyzed a mass of existing interest around this topic within our team. We had noticed that certain people in our organization were consistently outperforming the average, a trend that stayed true even when they switched from one client to another. So we embarked on an effort to better understand what made these individuals special and whether we could help others to perform like them. Our corporate sleuthing revealed that, for the most part, what these outliers were doing was similar to everyone else. They performed the same types of work, on the same size projects, with the same level of expertise. What wasn't the same was their approach to working with others. These star performers weren't just delivering services, they were building relationships—with clients, with their teams, and with one another. Not only that, but it seemed they were what you might call relationship naturals. They didn't appear to consciously think about why they should build relationships or how to build them, they just did it and did it well. They each seemed to be highly attuned to their clients' individual needs, and would frequently talk about “walking in their clients' shoes.” When we spoke with their clients, they couldn't really identify why the relationships were so strong. They would say things like, “He just gets me” or “We complement one another.”

We suspected that the secret sauce for each of these individuals was empathy. Decades of studies have shown that empathy is integral to effective human connection¹, and recent research further demonstrates links between empathy and leadership performance^{2 3}, as well as commercial success at the organizational level.⁴ Our high-performing people seemed to have an extra dose of this important quality, which translated into great chemistry with their clients, colleagues, and teams.

So our hypothesis about empathy was all fine and good, but now we were up against a daunting challenge. We were an organization of well over a hundred thousand people, and growing. If we wanted to scale the success of our high-empathy stars, we'd need to rely on something more than just natural empathic ability. But it wasn't immediately clear what we should do next. After all our digging, we wondered if our investigation had reached a dead end. But it turns out the answer, dear readers, was elementary.

Diamonds are a Firm's Best Friend

Sadly I've forgotten much of what I learned in my college science courses, but my con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: The Power of Chemistry
• Chapter 2: The Lay of the Land
• Business Chemistry Core
• Business Chemistry Electives
• Business Chemistry Applications
• About the Authors (or When a Pioneer and a Guardian Work Together)
• Appendix: Details of the Business Chemistry System
• Acknowledgments
• Photo Credits
• End User License Agreement