Shortcut the Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes

How understanding character can accelerate communication, recruitment and growth.

There’s an old saying that before you judge someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.

It’s good advice.

Because one of the greatest challenges when working with other people is understanding the world from their perspective.

Why do they communicate like that?

Why do they approach the problem differently?

Why do they see something I don’t?

Why does something that seems obvious to me seem completely unimportant to them?

Over time, we can learn the answers.

But what if we could shortcut the mile?

One of our early Perfect Teams® licensees discovered that understanding character could help them do exactly that.

A GROWING CONSULTANCY HELPING GROWING BUSINESSES

Evoke Management works with ambitious growing businesses, providing part-time financial, strategic and business expertise.

I first encountered Evoke through its founder, Rob Boll, when he was beginning to grow the consultancy from his experience advising fast-growing SMEs.

As Evoke itself expanded, Perfect Teams® became useful in two different ways.

They could use it to help build their own team.

And they could incorporate it into the work they were doing with their clients.

That distinction matters.

Because a methodology becomes much more valuable when you can use it rather than simply sell it.

RECRUITMENT SHOULD START WITH THE TEAM

As Evoke grew, Perfect Teams® became part of its recruitment process.

The objective wasn’t to use character profiling to decide whether somebody should or shouldn’t get a job.

Recruitment decisions are far too important and complex for that.

Instead, the profile provided another piece of information before and during the conversation.

What might this person naturally contribute?

How might they communicate?

How could they complement the existing team?

And, critically:

What’s missing from the team we’re recruiting them into?

That’s a very different starting point from simply asking whether a candidate appears impressive in an interview.

A candidate doesn’t join a vacancy.

They join a team.

So recruitment should consider the capability of the whole team, not simply the characteristics of the individual applicant.

PROMOTION CREATES THE SAME QUESTION

Evoke was also helping clients with succession planning.

And succession creates another version of the same problem.

Someone can be excellent in their current role without automatically being capable of succeeding in the next one.

We’ve already seen this with technical specialists moving into management.

Technical capability isn’t leadership capability.

Promotion changes what is required.

A new leader may need greater communication capability.

More influence.

Better judgement.

Greater awareness of others.

The ability to delegate.

The ability to develop people rather than simply do the work themselves.

Understanding someone’s character doesn’t tell us whether they will become a successful leader.

But it can help us understand their natural tendencies, where they may need to adapt and what complementary capability they may need around them.

CAPABILITY BEFORE RESPONSIBILITY

This is particularly important in succession planning.

Too often organisations do this in the opposite order.

First, somebody receives the promotion.

Then they receive the responsibility.

Then everyone discovers what they weren’t prepared for.

A more capable organisation asks the question earlier:

What will this person need to become capable of before we give them greater responsibility?

That’s development.

And it connects directly with something we’ve already explored:

Responsibility and capability reinforce one another.

But if responsibility races too far ahead of capability, people can become overwhelmed.

Succession planning shouldn’t simply identify who comes next.

It should develop their capability for what comes next.

SOMETIMES THE PROBLEM ISN’T SKILL. IT’S TRANSLATION.

One of Evoke’s clients was a growing digital agency experiencing communication problems between team members.

There was no suggestion that the people lacked intelligence or professional expertise.

The problem was between them.

Different people processed information differently.

Communicated differently.

Focused on different things.

Expected different things from one another.

Perfect Teams® gave them a language through which to discuss those differences.

That conversation mattered.

Because once I understand how you naturally communicate, I can begin adapting how I communicate with you.

And you can do the same with me.

The objective isn’t uniformity.

It’s translation.

COMMUNICATION IS A CAPABILITY

This is an important distinction.

We often treat communication as though it were simply the transmission of information.

I said it.

I emailed it.

I put it in the presentation.

Therefore I’ve communicated.

But communication requires somebody else to receive and understand what we’ve sent.

As we saw with the compliance officer in an earlier article:

Communication isn’t what you send. It’s what the other person can receive.

That requires capability.

The capability to recognise difference.

The capability to adapt.

The capability to listen.

The capability to ask:

What are they seeing that I’m not?

SHORTCUTTING THE MILE

That’s where the old metaphor becomes useful.

We may never literally experience the world through somebody else’s eyes.

But character gives us clues.

It helps us understand why another person might naturally focus on relationships when we’re focused on results.

Why they want detail when we want action.

Why they see risk where we see opportunity.

Why they need time to think when we want a decision.

That doesn’t mean one person is right and the other wrong.

It means they’re different.

And understanding difference can shorten the distance between them.

Character helps us shortcut the mile in someone else’s shoes.

DIFFERENCE CAN BECOME CAPABILITY

That is ultimately what matters.

Difference on its own doesn’t automatically make a team better.

It can create misunderstanding, frustration and conflict.

But understood difference can become complementary capability.

One person sees what another misses.

One person’s strength compensates for another’s blind spot.

Different people contribute different things to the whole.

The progression becomes:

Difference → Understanding → Adaptation → Communication → Interdependence

That’s where character becomes useful.

AND THERE CAN BE A COMMERCIAL RETURN

Evoke reported significant improvements in communication and productivity at the digital agency.

Alongside the wider process and organisational work Evoke was undertaking, the agency subsequently saw revenue improve by around 25%.

We should be careful about causation here.

It would be wrong to attribute that entire increase to Perfect Teams® when Evoke was also improving the organisation’s internal processes.

But that’s precisely the point.

Perfect Teams® wasn’t operating in isolation.

It became part of a broader intervention designed to make the organisation more capable.

Better processes.

Better communication.

Better understanding.

Better use of people.

Together, those things can improve organisational performance.

A TOOL SHOULD MAKE THE PRACTITIONER MORE CAPABLE

Evoke’s experience also reinforced something we saw with our first international licensee.

Perfect Teams® wasn’t intended to replace a consultant’s existing expertise.

It added another capability to it.

A financial consultant could use it.

A strategy consultant could use it.

An organisational development practitioner could use it.

A coach could use it.

The methodology provided another way of seeing what’s happening between people.

And another way of starting conversations that might otherwise take much longer to reach.

PERFECT TEAMS® SHORTENS THE DISTANCE

That, looking back, is what I find most interesting about this early case study.

We originally talked about Perfect Teams® helping people understand one another without having to walk the proverbial mile in their shoes.

Today I’d express it slightly differently.

Understanding character shortens the distance between people.

It doesn’t remove difference.

It makes difference easier to understand.

And when people understand difference, they can begin using it.

That’s how character becomes capability.

That’s how independent people become interdependent.

And that’s how a collection of individuals begins becoming a team.

Personality Divides. Character Unites.

You can’t download capability.™

Could Perfect Teams® add another capability to your consultancy?

If you work with leaders, teams or organisations and want to explore incorporating Perfect Teams® into your own practice, take a look at the Perfect Teams® Licensee Journey.

Explore the Licensee Journey →

Originally published 17 May 2022. Updated August 2026.