The GSI is an excellent tool for helping teams and groups solve problems more effectively. It’s particularly valuable for team development initiatives, such as:

  • measuring and monitoring team performance

  • creating a team environment that encourages innovation and idea-sharing

  • sharpening team members’ analytical skills

  • developing consensus-based decision making

  • achieving synergy and higher quality and acceptance of group decisions

  • delivered virtually or face-to-face

Group Styles Inventory™

Research and development by Robert A. Cooke, Ph.D. and J. Clayton Lafferty, Ph.D.

The Group Styles Inventory (GSI) is the only research-based tool that provides a valid and reliable measure of how people in groups interact with each other and work as a team to solve problems. Extensively researched and internationally proven, this assessment provides group members with a ‘safe’ way to talk about their behavior and how it affects the group's performance. Through highlighting styles of interactions that are helping or hindering their teamwork, it empowers them to change the way they approach problems and interact with each other — leading to better cooperation, communication and consensus, more innovative thinking, and higher quality solutions.

How it works

The GSI is designed for both temporary and permanent groups that are responsible for solving problems and making decisions. It can be completed by team members after they have solved a problem (to identify the behaviors that facilitated or inhibited their performance) or mid-way through solving a problem (to identify and practice more effective ways of interacting with one another and approaching the problem). The use of the GSI involves three major steps:

  • Assessment

    Individual group members respond to 72 statements describing the styles exhibited by the group while solving a problem plus a few questions focusing on team effectiveness, solution acceptance, solution quality, and team synergy.

  • Analysis

    The team members score their own surveys and profile their individual results on the Human Synergistics Circumplex to provide a picture of their own perceptions of the group and its styles.

  • Action

    The descriptions of members are combined to generate an aggregated profile displaying the group’s styles and a bar chart summarizing their collective assessments of performance.

Make the GSI part of your drive for change

As experienced Accredited Practitioners we can help you to use the GSI and implement the change you seek. If you would like to know more about the Group Styles Inventory™, please get in touch and we will be happy to assist you.

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