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What is a Bolstering Team?

Introducing the Bolstering Team


A Bolstering Team is one of the nine Team Types identified by The Predictive Index.

Bolstering Teams are supportive of each other’s ideas, and like to brainstorm together in the name of innovation. They always cheer each other on, communicate informally, and enjoy robust discussions. They’re proactive in helping each other and sharing information. Since they address conflict head-on, relationships—and trust—grow stronger over time.

Natural Strengths
  • Focused on employee engagement
  • Resolves conflict comfortably
  • Shares knowledge as a group
Caution Areas
  • Getting everyone on board may slow the team down.
  • May struggle to balance all stakeholder needs.
  • Tends to de-prioritize process and efficiency.

The science of a Bolstering Team

A Team Type is a collection of individuals’ behavioral patterns, as plotted within the Team Discovery tool. Team Discovery aggregates each individual’s PI Behavioral Assessment results. Then, using PI’s proprietary calculations, the tool plots each team member against a four-quadrant map. This lets you visualize the degree to which each person falls in one quadrant versus another. For a team whose members primarily fall within Innovation and Agility and Teamwork and Employee Experience quadrants, you will often result in a Bolstering Team.

But it’s not this placement alone that determines the Team Type. As mentioned, we have to consider how strongly individuals fall within each quadrant, so there are cases where you might get results that don’t seem as obvious, even if a large portion of the members fall within one quadrant. To better understand how these individuals are plotted, check out the video below.

How individuals are plotted in teams.mp4

Your business is not something you want to leave up to chance. To ensure a well-oiled machine, you need to understand how it runs and how to tune it. That means considering the behavioral traits of each new team member and how their traits can complement or balance the team they’re joining.

The Innovation & Agility quadrant

A Bolstering Team is associated with two quadrants, one of them being Innovation & Agility, but a team can have individuals from any quadrant.

The Teamwork & Employee Experience quadrant

This is the second quadrant that Bolstering Teams are most commonly associated with.

  • Focus on pursuing new innovations
  • Prefer to act quickly
  • Communicate by talking things through
  • Focus on collaboration and relationship building
  • Prefer to support others to grow and develop
  • Resolve conflict by focusing on the people involved

Getting the best out of your team

With each team, there are strengths you want to lean on, as well as caution areas you should account for. Based on what you’ve learned about Bolstering Teams, use the interactive below to determine some actions to get the most from your team.

You shouldn’t just rely on your Team Type to achieve success. Although it’s important, there is also another factor to consider, and that’s your Team Strategy.

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