For executive teams
See how the team behaves under pressure before the next decision exposes it.
Executive teams often look aligned in strategy reviews and fracture in the moment that matters. The missing information is not another preference profile. It is how each leader’s strength changes when cost, ambiguity, and consequence rise.
The decision beneath the decision
Most team assessments describe stable preferences. Crisis does not care about stable preferences. It compresses time, raises cost, changes incentives, and turns useful strengths into shadows: rigidity, abdication, accommodation, grandiosity, or control.
A Team Mode Map shows the pattern before it becomes the postmortem. It gives the group a neutral language for naming what the room reaches for, what it avoids, and which mode the actual decision requires.
How the work proceeds
Diagnose the pattern. Work the decision. Write the code.
- 01
Leaders complete the same five-minute diagnostic individually.
- 02
The aggregate map is reviewed for concentration, missing range, and shadow combinations.
- 03
The team works one live decision and writes a shared code for how it will decide, communicate, and revisit the call.
Typical outputs
Questions before a conversation
What buyers usually need to know.
Is this a personality assessment?
No. Modes are situational responses, not fixed identities. The point is to expand the team’s available range under pressure.
What team size works best?
The core work is strongest with the people who actually own the decision, commonly six to fifteen participants.
Can we start with the diagnostic only?
Yes. Most engagements begin with Diagnose and expand to Convene or Embed if the map reveals a consequential pattern.
Illustrative workshop scenario
When the team disagrees about a customer commitment
Sales wants to renew a major account while delivery expects to miss a milestone. The team uses one shared fact record to examine the commercial cost, the customer’s need to know, and the assumptions behind a revised promise.
The decision record
Name the disclosure standard, the person accountable for verifying the revised milestone, the communication owner and the point at which the decision must be reopened.
A sample working agenda
- Before the session: agree the decision, attendees and handling of confidential material.
- Establish the facts, assumptions, decision authority and deadline.
- Use the team’s self-reported Mode Finder patterns to question habitual responses.
- Compare alternatives, name the cost and write the commitments.
- Assign the first action, review date and conditions for reconsideration.
This fictional example illustrates the work. The agenda and retained documents are agreed when an engagement is scoped.
Chris brings experience leading B:Side Capital and B:Side Fund and teaching entrepreneurship. Read his B:Side CEO letter and view his ASU teaching profile.
Prepare for the conversation
Inquiry
Discuss the decision your team is carrying
A short description is enough. Chris will review it directly before the conversation.