The FIRO-B™ Leadership Report: How You Work in Teams

The FIRO-B Leadership Report combines the results from the Myers-Briggs and the FIRO-B to give us a more complete picture of the person. Many times the leadership role requires us to take actions that might not be our first instinct or pattern. This report is designed to uncover those areas where you might have blind spots.

Anyone in a leadership position will have to work with other people. The report has a section called "Working with Groups and Other Leaders." The first subsection is called "How You Work in a Team." This part is based entirely on your FIRO-B results and not the Myers-Briggs type.

The report details the three behaviors Inclusion, Control, and Affection and how you express these needs with a team. For example, those who score High on Expressed and Wanted Inclusion frequently want to express their opinions, join in discussions, maintain a high profile in the group, acknowledge the strengths of team members, and produce highly visible results.

In contrast, those who score low on Expressed and Wanted Affection often prefer teams where there is no pressure on them to build consensus, offer personal guidance, work intensely for many hours at a time, or have frequent contact with other team members.

What about those cases when a person scores high on Expressed but low on Wanted, or vice versa? Usually, this means the person wants to have the opportunity to express those behaviors but doesn't want to feel pressure to accept those same behaviors from other team members. For example, someone who is high on Expressed Control may want to set the activities and goals for the team. At the same time, if this person were low on Wanted Control, he or she would be less likely to accept the same behavior from others on the team.

Another interesting aspect of this subsection is there are only two possible states: high and low. 0-4 is considered low. 5 and above is high. There are only two possibilities here because we are talking about two conditions: initiating or receiving behavior, so there's no need for medium.

Many people discover there is a gap or difference between what they want from the team and how they want to participate. This information can be quite useful for those struggling with team building or leadership development. The insights from this report make it easier to understand the forces at work and how to create more effective leaders.