Data Leader Scorecard

You rarely make the wrong decision.
You miss opportunities by spending too much time analyzing options.
“Human beings are highly illogical.”Your Personal Mantra

How you manage others

For you, there’s strength in numbers. Every decision you make is accompanied by a spreadsheet, and you spend hours poring over data before making a call. You expect the same of your team. You see work as a meritocracy where top performers are rewarded, and the people dragging down the team average get cut loose. As such, you prefer to conduct performance reviews with your employees based on metrics and quantifiable goals, and tend to let the data speak for itself.

How you prefer to be managed

Knowledge is power. Because you base all of your decisions on data, your performance depends on having the most complete and up-to-date information. Your ideal boss grants you unfettered access to the ones and zeros at the heart of your organization, because being out of the loop with what’s going on above you increases your risk of making the wrong decision. You prefer a boss who understands the merits of giving you unlimited resources and opportunities for training and development to maximize your potential.

How you can be more effective in operating with leaders of other types

  1. People: Remember that although you tend to rely on the numbers, People-oriented leaders may view that approach as cold and methodical. It’s important to put down the spreadsheets every now and then to allow time for people to give you subjective information to supplement your facts and figures. Making people feel heard will go a long way toward getting buy-in on big decisions.
  2. Thought: Not all answers are as obvious as you’d like them to be. Before jumping to a conclusion based on the numbers, make sure you allow time to let the creative juices flow. Thought-oriented colleagues may surprise you by suggesting a unique approach to something that you hadn’t considered.

Relationships with your employees

You don’t have much patience for people who make decisions based on their instincts. To you, even an educated guess seems lazy. You tend to say yes to people who can back their initiatives with data, and as such, your team is probably made up of people who are handy with a pivot table and always on top of the latest industry trend. You expect your people to be lifelong learners, and you tend to reward ambition with additional training and development opportunities.

Relationship with your boss

Your boss loves you because you easily take emotions out of the equation and make consistently good, logical decisions. Your relationship may be strained by your constant search for the truth or the motive behind organizational decisions, which are sometimes illogical. Interactions with your supervisor are mostly based on exchanging information, and could probably be confined to email (if you weren’t so set on maintaining your inbox at zero).