DIDominance / Influence
The Captain
Charges ahead and brings the crowd.
Decisive and magnetic in the same body. They set direction and recruit believers as they go, which makes them natural leaders of new things. The gap between what they've promised and what exists is where you earn your salary.
Strengths
- Rallies people around a goal fast
- Comfortable deciding in public
- Sells change upward and downward equally well
- Turns setbacks into rallying speeches
- Spots talent and courts it
Blind spots
- Overpromises when the room is warm
- Charm papers over conflict that needed resolving
- Bored by maintenance work
- Listens for agreement more than for information
Communicating with them
Do
- Match their energy first, then land the facts
- Give them the stage and the deadline together
- Confirm decisions in writing after the enthusiasm cools
- Bring them the audience-facing problems
Don't
- Correct them in front of their audience
- Kill an idea without offering it a next stage
- Treat a verbal yes as a plan
- Bury them in process documents
Motivators
- A stage and a mission
- A visible scoreboard
- New territory to open
- Being trusted with big bets
- Public credit
Demotivators
- Back-office grind
- Default skepticism about their vision
- Ambiguity about who gets credit
- Long approval chains
Feedback that lands
- Start from their ambition: 'this matters because you're aiming at X'
- Be direct about the gap between promise and delivery
- Get commitments concrete: numbers and dates
- Follow up in writing
Stress signals
- Talks more, listens less
- Launches something new to escape something stalled
- Charisma turns into pressure on dissenters
Delegation
Give them launches and turnarounds; keep them off long maintenance. Attach a detail-strong partner to everything they run, and frame the pairing as force multiplication, not oversight.
First 90 days
- Point them at something to launch or announce
- Set promise discipline early: agree what needs your sign-off before they commit externally
- Introduce the whole team. They'll map the relationships within a week
- At week eight, compare what they started against what they finished
1:1 questions
- What have you promised this month?
- What's stalled that you're avoiding?
- Who isn't on board, and does it matter?
- What needs finishing before you start the next thing?
Managing someone who leads with Dominance? The directional guides cover that pairing from your own style. Wondering which archetype your newest hire is?
Send them the assessment