High-performance teams don’t happen because you hired a bunch of A-players. The magic shows up when people understand the shared objective and have a system that lets them work together without friction. Once those two pieces lock in, everything else compounds. The trick is getting there fast.
This is my go-to method.
Everyone wants “A-players.” I get it. I’ve built teams inside fast-moving B2B startups for years, and yes, talent matters. But here’s the truth most leaders learn the hard way:
A group of strong individuals does not automatically turn into a strong team.
A high-performance team is engineered.
You need clarity, shared norms, smooth communication, and a common language for how to work together.
Psychometric tests get a bad reputation because people assume they’re about labeling or categorizing. I don’t use them that way, and honestly, good operators shouldn’t.
Here’s the deeper value:
These quizzes create a shared language.
Not a personality label.
Not a box to put someone in.
A language your team can use to avoid misunderstandings, reduce friction, and communicate clearly.
A result is just a tiny fraction of who someone is.
What matters is that everyone now has a shorthand for how they show up and what helps them thrive.
This is why my teams adopt the same vocabulary early on. It speeds everything up.
This is the exact playbook I’ve used across multiple companies and teams. It works in-person, remote, hybrid — pick your flavor.
Every time I take over a new team, this is step one.
I even wrote about this on LinkedIn here.
I also do a refresher before off-sites. You can run the quiz async or as pre-work before meeting onsite. The real win is that it gives the upcoming conversations structure and shared vocabulary.
These are the ones I keep coming back to:
Catchy color types, very sticky in teams. Learn more here.
Helps people lean into what energizes them.
Classic leadership development tool. Link here.
Use the Kairos Meeting Personalities Quiz. In just three minutes, it is specifically designed to help teams collaborate better. Based on meeting science and real leadership behavior, the quiz reveals simple ways to improve your week with less effort. You get clear, practical insights you can apply immediately, without changing tools or adding more meetings.
I’ll use the Kairos quiz as the running example below.
Send your team this message in Slack or Teams:
Hi team — quick pre-work for our upcoming collaboration session:
Please complete this short Kairos Meeting Personalities Quiz: https://kairos-s4b4vhrr.scoreapp.com/
It takes ~5 minutes.
Keep your results handy.
We’ll use the language from the quiz to make our team norms clearer and collaboration smoother.
Deadline: [4–7 days from now]
Insider Note: Four to seven days is the sweet spot. Shorter than that and half the team will scramble. Longer than that and people forget.
Ask your team directly:
Are we comfortable sharing our profiles with each other?
This sets psychological safety and determines how deep the conversation can go. Most teams agree, but consent matters.
I prefer doing this live — in a room or on video — because conversations land differently when people can react and reflect together.
You can prep it using Kairos if this is the first time you’re doing it or need an extra facilitation boost.
Here’s one of my preferred flows:
The entire session takes under an hour and pays dividends for months.
[Do not skip this step. Do not skip this step. Do not skip this step.]
For the next six weeks, I add one standing item to our weekly meeting:
“How did you use our personality insights this week?”
Everyone answers at least once.
This is where the adoption happens. If you skip this part, the quiz becomes trivia instead of a collaboration tool.
If your team doesn’t have a weekly meeting, you can run this async in Kairos or Slack. The point is deliberate practice.
If you want a simple starting point, use the free Kairos Meeting Personalities Quiz and run the 55-minute agenda above. You’ll be shocked at how quickly it improves communication and reduces friction.
When teams stop guessing how to work together and start using a shared language, everything accelerates.
If you want help designing the agenda or running the session through Kairos, reach out anytime.