Glass walls at home

My first job was for Marconi on a site just outside Chelmsford. Although I cycled to work many people travelled by car and I was fascinated to observe in how many cases the man drove the car to the car park and then got out to go to work. The woman then slid across from the passenger seat to the driver's seat and drove the car away. It seemed amazing to me that if you are prepared to allow your wife to drive your car that you are not also prepared to drive it when you're in it.

I now live in the centre of Birmingham overlooking two locks on a canal. Particularly before the summer school holidays we have lots of leisure traffic on narrow boats operated by grey-haired couples. Operating a lock, let alone a series of locks, is hard work and requires a significant amount of strength. Again, I am surprised to notice how in the large majority of cases it is the wife that does the work while the husband steers the boat.

If we maintain such traditional divisions of labour based upon concepts of power and sex, is it surprising that there continue to be "glass ceilings" at work? As in so many worlds, charity (and change) starts at home.

We have in the UK a new prime minister who in his first year is generally perceived to have been "a disaster"! During the previous decade he was widely considered to be one of the most successful Chancellors of the Exchequer. The personality traits that are blamed for his failure were all known and commented on before his appointment to the new role. Why then was he universally supported in this appointment?

You may be aware of the management concept known as the Peter Principle, in which people are promoted to their level of incompetence. The basis of this principle is that people are promoted to a new job on the evidence of the success in their previous job. However, in many cases, such as the classic promotion of a salesman to a sales manager position, the two jobs require significantly different talents and behaviours.

There is no excuse for such mistakes in the modern world when we are well supported by sophisticated job descriptions and a whole range of personality profiles. One attitude which leads to much of the problem is the assumption that career success requires aiming for other "top" job. To be managing director is deemed to be more important than to be sales director. To be Prime Minister is thought more important than to be Foreign Secretary.

One of my childhood heroes was Alec Issigonis, the designer of the Mini. Issigonis was a brilliant and inventive engineering designer who was prepared to insist on staying within the engineering discipline at an age when most people were moving into management. If Issigonis had allowed himself to follow a traditional career path, he would have been less fulfilled, and the world would be a poorer place.

How often do we hear of teachers who are frustrated by the large amount of paperwork they are required to complete? In the UK we currently have a shortage of people prepared to apply for the head teacher position in some schools. Management and teaching of very different professions.

A major role of executive coaching is to help clients discover who they really are and to achieve congruence between their personality, their talents and the work that they do. Traditionally this might have involved training to give the individual the necessary skills to do the job that they are in or to which they aspire. The outcome of coaching might well be for the client to reconsider their whole career path.

Over the last year I have been a member of the XL Results Foundation which is built around a profiling system developed by Roger Hamilton. This profiling system identifies the job role in which an individual is most likely to be successful. Conveniently, these job roles relate closely to the stages of business development. There are eight main profiles and, although most individuals show a spread over several profiles, the recommendation is to focus on one profile only, probably your strongest. This means that you are able to live your life and contribute most easily within "flow". A major attraction of this profiling system is that, in addition to telling individuals about themselves and showing how members of teams relate to each other, it provides a very powerful recruitment system.

The eight profiles are: Creator, Star, Supporter, Dealmaker, Trader, Accumulator, Lord, Mechanic. I am a 'mechanic', with supporting profiles of creator and lord. The theory tells me that I really need a dealmaker as an absolute minimum within my team and that ideally I need a star and an accumulator too. Now that I know that, and have a means of identifying people, I know what to look for.

The XL Results Foundation is an international network of several hundred thousand entrepreneurs. So if I wish to start or build a business and require entrepreneurial business partners I have immediate access to the right people who already know their personal profiles.

You can find out more and discover your own profile if you visit this website: www.knowyourprofile.com.

Richard Winfield is founder of Brefi Group.

An international facilitator, he coaches and

facilitates directors and boards in transition:

helping them to make progress by

bringing structure and clarity

to their thinking.

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