Deep conversations
A capable team did not need a heavy model. It needed useful language that could travel back into work.
Helping a capable team use SDI as a practical language for everyday collaboration.
A four-hour SDI Core Strengths workshop for a European marketing team inside a global commerce platform.
Lightspeed is a global commerce platform supporting retail, hospitality and other customer-facing businesses with point-of-sale, payments and operational tools.
The context
The team was busy, capable and moving quickly. The useful question was how to make relationship insight practical enough to help people understand each other on Monday morning.
The work
We created the space to think clearly, together.
Clear thinking
Kate used SDI Core Strengths as a practical language for motivation, relationships, team culture and conflict. The session focused on reflection, team conversation and simple habits that could keep the work alive afterwards.
Practical ways forward
Introduced motive-before-behaviour language.
The outcome
Stronger foundations. Clearer direction. Better relationships.
- The team had clearer language for motivation and conflict
- People could understand difference without over-personalising it
- Collaboration habits became easier to discuss
- Insight was connected to practical follow-through
“The useful part was how quickly the language moved from the workshop into the work. It helped people challenge each other without making it personal.”
The impact
Clarity that changed how the work could move.
The aim was not to make everyone fluent in a model. It was to help a busy team understand each other quickly enough for the insight to be useful.
Delve deeper
Related resources for the pattern underneath this work.
01
Models
What is SDI and how does it help teams work better
Most team tools help people describe how they behave. SDI, the Strength Deployment Inventory developed by Tim Overman and now published by Core Strengths, does something more specific: it helps people understand why they behave as they do, what motivates them at a deeper level, and crucially, what happens to their strengths when they feel threatened or when conflict enters the room.
02
Relationships
What is SDI Core Strengths?
A practical guide to SDI Core Strengths, motivation, strengths, overdone strengths, conflict sequences and how relationship intelligence helps teams work better.
03
Practical tools
How to run a team conversation about how we actually work
Most teams have never had an explicit conversation about how they work together. They have had conversations about what they are working on, how the project is going, what the priorities are.