Fuelling innovation through Verbal Behavioural Intelligence

Kevin Johnson, CEO, and Matt McIntyre, Executive Consultant at OnTrack International

Verbal Behavioural Intelligence (VBI) is a framework for analysing how people communicate verbally in the workplace. It identifies what they do well and how they can improve.

There are many ways that VBI can help individuals and businesses. One of the most valuable opportunities it can offer in today’s workplace is driving innovation.

At a time of significant and rapid change, the ability to innovate has never been more critical for businesses. To be truly innovative requires a capacity to engage others effectively. Great innovators also need a particular skill set to turn a brilliant creative idea into something commercially viable and successful.

So, how can VBI help?

Most people are familiar with psychometric tools commonly used by businesses to help individuals understand their behavioural styles, preferences and predispositions.

Developed by OnTrack International, VBI can work alongside and build on the behavioural understanding that traditional psychometric tools provide by giving people the insight and skills needed to become better, more effective communicators. So, in addition to identifying them, VBI helps people expand their predominant verbal behavioural styles.

Through detailed observations of individuals in typical work situations such as board meetings, team meetings or group discussions, organisations can use VBI to analyse and decode what their people need to work on to become more engaging and develop more productive relationships.

VBI has practical applications for the increasingly valuable goal of fuelling an innovative mindset in individuals and businesses.

What makes a good innovator?

The ability to engage is at the core of a capacity to innovate. The greatest innovators of our time demonstrate five qualities, all of which create successful engagement and spark innovation – this is ‘The Innovator’s DNA’, as identifiedby Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen and Jeff Dyer in a Harvard Business Report study. They are:

• Associating: the ability to make connections to unrelated fields and topics, to challenge thinking and discover solutions
• Questioning: high-level questioning skills to provoke more valuable answers
• Observing: being aware of changing needs and seeing the uncommon among the common
• Experimenting: an understanding that failure is the key to learning
• Networking: the skills to meet people who can offer a new angle

Using VBI, it is possible to identify which of these qualities an individual is pre-disposed towards and which are missing. By spotting the gaps, and organisation can help foster the attributes that lead to greater innovation.

Building a team to turn creativity into commercial success

Effective innovators require a great idea and the ability to turn that idea into a commercial success.

While VBI can help identify what an individual needs to develop to improve their communication skills and, therefore, their capacity to engage and innovate, it can also help identify skills gaps in the business.

Our society can often portray innovation as a slightly mystical talent belonging to a ‘lone wolf’ genius. In reality, successful innovation is a team effort. Few people will completely master every skill needed to have a great idea and then make it commercially viable and successful.

Applying the VBI framework to individual team members and then combining and comparing this information against the overarching business goals will uncover the areas where new talent might need to be bought in or highlight the departments where organisations can develop existing talent.

It is also essential to challenge the idea that a capacity for innovation is only relevant for business leaders or high-level strategy.

Some of today’s most successful businesses are so because they are operationally excellent. At every level of the organisation, people are encouraged to challenge how they deliver services and look for new, more effective ways to undertake them.

For this to happen, business leaders must engage with people across the organisation effectively and model the importance of innovation in all roles.

Innovating towards a shared goal

Great businesses recognise that there is a vast amount of valuable expertise within every team member.

VBI can unlock this potential by helping companies prioritise engagement to encourage everyone to grow, contribute their individual skills, and innovate together towards a shared goal.