Building Better Teams: PrinciplesYou Team Development Workshop
- Nancy Maher
- Oct 29
- 6 min read
5X increase in high performance when organisations invest in collaboration and teamwork - Microsoft
Self-awareness is an important ingredient that helps teams grow in the right way together. We like to use the PrinciplesYou self-assessment survey to support individual and organisational growth. The PrinciplesYou survey is a character and traits assessment which helps each individual better understand how they think, how they engage with others and how they apply themselves.
In a PrinciplesYou team development workshop, the self-assessment can provide a shared language and a set of insights into personal patterns, strengths, and behaviours. In turn, this helps the team to reflect on how they work together.
Contents
What Is the PrinciplesYou Survey?
The PrinciplesYou self assessment survey was developed and scientifically validated by a team including psychometricians and leading organisational psychology researchers, such as Adam Grant.
It measures traits across three orientations:
Cognitive (how you prefer to think)
Interpersonal (how you engage with others) and
Motivational (how you apply yourself).
The assessment asks respondents to rate themselves on a series of statements, then produces a report showing major traits, sub-facets and archetypes.
💡 The PrinciplesYou survey has a free option as well as a paid team option called PrinciplesUs.
Why Self-Awareness Matters in the Workplace
Self-awareness is the foundation of personal and professional growth.
Surveys such as PrinciplesYou provide insights to pause and reflect upon. While surveys are not an absolute truth about you, they often resonate or even surprise you. These insights help people see behavioural patterns more clearly in day-to-day work.
Insights could be:
I tend to dominate conversations without realising it.
I avoid conflict, so I under-contribute my views.
I thrive when given autonomy, but struggle when direction is vague.
By increasing self-awareness, individuals can become more intentional about how they show up at work and in teams.
They can begin to understand:
How do I show up?
How do I want to show up?
What might I do differently?
When individuals share their assessment results with others, it can open a dialogue about how they operate and whether they might need support or adjustments when collaborating. Even the act of sharing builds transparency, trust and mutual understanding among team members.
How Self-Awareness Helps Teams Work Better Together
Teams are made of individuals, each carrying their own traits, preferences and behaviours. Without discussion and awareness of these differences, collaboration can be inefficient: Miscommunications happen, assumptions go unchallenged, and behaviour clashes emerge.
When team members use a survey like PrinciplesYou and then reflect together, a group can surface differences such as:
I like detailed planning; she prefers to improvise in the moment, or
She is quick to act; I need to reflect longer before deciding.
Self-awareness at the individual level becomes a lever for team awareness. It allows the team to map out mutual expectations and to adjust how they work together to achieve better results.
Why Organisations Should Take Personal Development Seriously
In today's workplace, technical expertise is important, but it is not enough.
Organisations need to ensure leaders and teams are capable of sustainable change, collaboration, and working in more human-centred ways.
The 2025 Global Leadership Development Study by HBR talks about the importance of tools like personality/behaviour assessments (such as those for self-awareness) and that addressing how people work with each other makes good business sense - you’re building what the study calls "collective intelligence", "alignment", "collaboration" and "future-focused learning".
Organisations that invest in leadership development, personal growth, and the building of soft skills (communication, collaboration, emotional intelligence, adaptability) outperform those that don’t.
For example, a Forbes article notes that companies that promote collaborative working were five times as likely to be high-performing.
Soft Skills Matter More Than Ever
Soft skills development is not a “nice to have”.
Collaboration, influencing, emotional intelligence, feedback management, self-management and interpersonal awareness are critical in times of significant change and the pressure to move fast with AI. Tailored personal development increases employee engagement, improves wellbeing, strengthens team and workplace culture, and enhances performance.
By taking personal and professional development seriously, organisations build teams that adapt, learn and collaborate more effectively.
PrinciplesYou Team Development Workshop Approach
An interactive workshop led by an experienced facilitator creates space for honest reflection, shared learning, and meaningful behaviour change that rarely happens through discussion alone.
At Kinkajou, our team workshops are practical, engaging, and people-focused. Each workshop is tailored to your context and participants, and it is led by experienced facilitators who create a safe space for reflection, honest conversation, and real learning.
Kinkajou wanted to work with us, in a partnership, as opposed to trying to fit us to a pre-defined process or template of engagement - UK Higher Education Leader
Rather than stare at a boring PowerPoint presentation, participants explore ideas through dialogue, activities, and shared insights.
Our goal is always the same - to help people increase self-awareness, strengthen collaboration, and turn reflection into action.
Example Two-Hour Workshop
Individual Reflective Questions
What surprised me?
What did I expect to see but didn’t?
What is a key strength I want to lean into?
What is a behaviour I want to adjust?
Breakout Group Reflective Questions
What do we value most in how we work together?
What behaviours support those values?
What behaviours undermine those values?
What do we commit to doing (or doing less of) to increase collaboration and effectiveness?
Workshops Drive Better Learning and Improve Collaboration
Workshops give equal space to individual reflection, peer sharing and collective understanding.
PrinciplesYou survey data is individual, but when surfaced in a safe team context, they help build trust and understanding. People can recognise that "I am not weird in this team; I just operate differently" and "I now see how I can adjust for someone else in the team".
The workshop setting helps individuals feel supported, visible and accountable. The team shares a contract for how they want to work together, grounded in their real-life traits. Over time, this leads to better collaboration, greater empathy among team members, and higher performance.
Why Post-Workshop Activities Are Important
A single workshop can spark awareness and motivation, but on its own it isn’t enough. People leave inspired, but without follow-up, the energy fades and habits return. Real change takes consistency and support.
Workshops should be part of a wider development strategy - one that builds engagement and learning through coaching, feedback, and practice. Leadership development is critical. Leaders set the tone for workplace culture and leaders need support more than ever with the pace of change taking place.
In Summary
In a world of rapid change with AI, where remote work, cross-functional teams, and complex problems are the norm, personal awareness and understanding of team culture matter more than ever. Using the PrinciplesYou survey as part of a workshop is a practical way to help individuals gain insight, and help teams translate that into improved collaboration and impact.
📊 Curious about additional leadership development assessments? Check out our articles on How to measure the impact of leadership coaching
➡️ Get in touch to explore a PrinciplesYou team development workshop for your team.
If you’d like to bring this approach to your organisation, we can help.
As a Principles Solutions Partner, we incorporate the PrinciplesYou survey as part of our leadership development and workplace culture services. Our facilitators not only have years of corporate leadership experience, but they are also EMCC-accredited leadership coaches.
