Why Your Best People Keep Getting in Each Other's Way | Ryan Behrman
The Meridian Point - Episode 168
April 7, 2025
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KUMAR: Good afternoon, everyone. It is afternoon for me here in the US. Today we are joined by Ryan Behrman, owner and CEO of StrongSuits and a principal at Touchthink, based just outside of London. Ryan brings a rare combination of systemic thinking and team development to his work, with deep roots in agile coaching and a background that spans finance, telco, and central government transformations to startup product building. StrongSuits is his flagship tool, a card-based team development system that turns personality assessments into a live social experience where your teammates tell you who you are in real time, rather than a report generated behind a screen. Ryan is here today to challenge how we think about team dynamics, cognitive diversity, and what it actually means to play to your strengths, especially when your greatest strength is the thing most likely to get you into trouble. So without further ado, let me bring Ryan on stage. How are you doing, Ryan? Nice to have you on.
RYAN: Hi, Kumar. It is great to be here. Thanks for having me.
KUMAR: Of course. In the intro I mentioned the tool that starts with a survey and ends with a report. Most companies do that. I do that myself with a lot of my clients, having them take a survey and then diving into the report and what it means. With StrongSuits, you went in a completely different direction, making it a card game that people play together. What was the insight that led you to this way of assessing team dynamics?
RYAN: Great question. And firstly, everything was right in the intro except that I am not actually the founder. That was Dave Corbett. I am now the owner and CEO because Dave has since retired. What attracted me to StrongSuits in the first instance, and there is a whole long origin story to it, but the long and short of it is that I was involved in the world of serious games, Lego Serious Play, Management 3.0, Lean Change, really learning by doing and interacting. I also found how much easier it is to speak to a card or a game rather than call someone into an office and say, "I need to give you some feedback." If it is done in a safe way, with good intros, in a playful but also open and honest way, my experience was always that people do open up and talk about the things that really matter.
The other thing is that StrongSuits is, as we said, a meta-model of human interaction as applied to teams in the workplace. It has many layers. On the one hand it looks at strengths, where each card has a strength in it. It also looks at communication styles, because groups of strengths relate through other models to communication styles. Then each card has an overplayed strength on the reverse, and also an opposite strength. Hence the meta-model, in that it draws on many different models. When you put them all together you could say it is akin to a personality model. If you put all the games and tools together, you get quite a composite view of one's personality.
The difference, as you said, is that you are not sitting in front of a computer on your own, answering a bunch of questions, and then being told "this is who you are." You are playing games, which you can do on your own, and there are ways to debrief with a one-to-one personal coach. However, the greatest benefit comes when the team plays the games together and gives each other real-time feedback. Instead of everyone doing their own assessment asynchronously, which takes a lot of time and often only gets half the team completing it, you are doing it in real time, face to face, getting direct and honest feedback. And because you are live with the team, you have the chance to say, "Could you clarify what you meant by that?" It is in a playful way, but the depth is real.
KUMAR: Some time ago I tried something at a company that I thought was quite revolutionary. I called it speed feedback dating. It was a speed dating format where the team would pair off for five minutes, two and a half minutes per person, giving each other feedback about what they thought their strengths were, then rotating so everyone got a chance. This sounds similar in some ways but also different. The whole team is providing feedback and revealing strengths. Would you agree?
RYAN: Yeah, absolutely. That is actually one of the games we play. Because it is a set of cards, you can use them for any purpose. I remember when I was doing my coaching training, we all sat in a circle and everyone had to say what they appreciate, like, or admire about everyone else. There are different formats. You could walk around a room and hand out cards saying, "I see this strength in you." Then that card might be passed on from that person to the next. It is not about the cards you end up with. It is the feedback you get to give people in real time. That particular game creates a lot of energy and buzz in the room.
As I said, there are many layers. You can go wider with different games. We are thinking of creating a book of a hundred StrongSuits games, because there are almost infinite combinations and permutations. We do have eight flagship games, though, which take you through a sequence to unravel all the major layers.
KUMAR: In the work we do with leadership teams, we take the more traditional route, using a personality assessment and then reviewing the results with the team. The assessment builds personal awareness, and then the team awareness comes when we review together. I wonder about the pros and cons of that approach versus what you are doing. The way you are doing it seems more fun, more engaging, and maybe more useful. I have played a game with the John Maxwell team called the Leadership Game, which is card-based, and it generates a lot of fun. So back to my question, pros and cons of the survey and review approach versus something like StrongSuits.
RYAN: I think we are trying to get the best of both worlds. We have a versatile deck of cards and we try to blend the best of both approaches. Starting out, you usually play the flagship game called Your Winning Hand. It is about choosing strengths you see in yourself, but also having other people say, "Actually, I see more of this strength in you than that one." Everyone ends up with their top five strengths, which is a combination of self-perception and team input, with the chance to get real-time clarification.
That is just the starting point. Then we have another layer that asks whether there are opposite strengths in the team, like big picture versus detail. Generally you will find one person who is more big picture and another who is more detail-oriented, and you get to see where that cognitive diversity can benefit the team. Opposite strengths are often sources of conflict, but they are also sources of real creative tension. That is where real creativity comes from when you can use the best of those opposites.
Then you can move into the mapping terrain, where you force-rank the cards against each other and end up mapping your communication styles. At that level you could do all of this on your own and have everything mapped, which we do have an app for. But when you combine the individual work with the real-time team experience, you get both how the system sees you, not just how you see yourself, and the opportunity to clarify that in real time. You can also take away the maps and descriptions of your communication styles and strengths to debrief later, either as a team or with a one-to-one coach.
KUMAR: I love that. It seems like a good combination of engaging activity and something that draws out people who might otherwise be quiet, perhaps because they lack psychological safety on the team, and helps level the playing field for them.
RYAN: That is the other thing that is maybe not typical to most personality assessments. StrongSuits is very strengths-based, drawing on multiple strengths frameworks. The first game is just about looking at strengths, so you are giving appreciation. We introduce it by saying there is no better strength than any other, which lessens judgment right from the start. Everyone ends up with five strengths, so if someone says "I see this strength in you more than that one," it does not mean you do not have that other strength. You are building psychological safety in layers by first appreciating what you see in others, and then moving to, "Does that strength ever get in your way?" That is when you turn the card upside down to the overplayed strength. Every strength at some point will become overplayed. The person who is very determined will at some point become pushy. The person overplaying kindness might find it difficult to say no. But once you have already acknowledged a strength in someone, telling them it can sometimes be overplayed is a gradual and safe progression.
KUMAR: I am curious about that moment when someone hears from five different teammates that they see the same strength in them, something that person never thought anyone noticed. What does that do to the team's dynamic? And why does the standard assessment not create that same effect?
RYAN: I think people like to be valued and appreciated. If it is done face to face, or face to interface online where you can see and hear the person, it just means more. I am sure you are aware of that from your own experience, Kumar. It is a really nice feeling. It means more than if you just see it aggregated in a tool, though of course that is valuable too. But you do not tend to cry when you read an email. When four or five teammates reinforce the same thing, the tears are more likely to come. There is just something different about receiving that recognition live from the people you work with every day.
KUMAR: I agree completely. I want to shift a little. You made a bold call this year, shutting down Systemic Agility, your YouTube channel, your meetup group, all of it, just to focus on StrongSuits. That is a big bet. What does that kind of disruption feel like from the inside, and how will you know it was the right move?
RYAN: The future will tell. But firstly, I am in a full-time gig now, which makes a big difference. Before that, I was running Systemic Agility as a training and coaching business. As you know, with the whole agile landscape taking a big dive, that was not sustainable as a main business anymore. At the same time, I inherited StrongSuits from Dave when he retired, unbeknown to me that it would happen so quickly and fall in my lap. I was very grateful for it, but the timing was such that one thing was going down while StrongSuits was coming up, and I had just taken on a full-time gig.
I was running Systemic Agility, a meetup group, and a YouTube channel all at once. At some point it just became a question of focus. People say burn your boats and go all in. The internal move was a difficult one, because when you have built something up and it is quite successful, and then the market shifts, it is tough to let it go. But at some point it just clicked, and I realized the only way to go all in on StrongSuits was to let everything else go. Obviously I still have my consulting work, but everything else now goes into StrongSuits.
KUMAR: I can relate to that. I debate it myself because I am relatively unfocused and have a lot of interests. But StrongSuits seems like a really powerful tool. In our prior conversation, you mentioned thinking about training an AI agent to run the single-player version as a coaching tool. Where would the AI version fall short, and where might it actually be better than a human coach?
RYAN: It is something I am still learning and discovering. We built a single-player app and during testing rounds I was meeting people one to one. The initial idea was to watch how they interacted with the app, but it turned out to be a coaching conversation. Normally people would go through the app self-paced and then debrief at the end, but what actually happened was they would ask questions along the way.
That is what got me thinking. I do not need to be there for the whole assessment itself, but there was still value in certain prompts I was offering. For example, when someone was deliberating over two cards, rather than giving all the instructions upfront, which overwhelms people, I would wait a few minutes and then offer something like, "Have you thought about turning the card upside down to look at the overplayed strength? That might give you more insight." There were many moments like that, and I thought those prompts could be automated to a degree, triggered by what the person is doing on screen.
I know the coaching world is using AI more and more. My thinking was that for the parts I know are going to happen, like a certain prompt a few minutes in, or a nudge when there has not been much activity, those could be automated based on where the person is in the game and how they are interacting.
KUMAR: I have been experimenting with AI in my practice too. I use it in my coaching and facilitation classes to help me evaluate how attendees are teaching and coaching in simulation activities, based on rubrics I have developed. It has been very useful, though like anything, you have to take it with a grain of salt. The AI only knows what it knows, and it can produce things that just will not work. Be careful how you use it.
RYAN: Absolutely.
KUMAR: You have had quite the career working across industries where you are never dealing with one organization. You are dealing with overlapping systems of people, process, and technology. What does systems thinking tell you about what typically goes wrong when large organizations try to rationalize separate, entrenched systems into one?
RYAN: A lot of my work has been in large government programs, banking, and telco, which are often multi-organizational and multi-stakeholder in every sense. I think it ultimately comes down to communication. It is actually amazing that anything gets done at all without genuinely looking at how communication, alignment, coordination, and synchronization work, within teams, across teams, across departments, across companies, and between individuals. A lot of these large technology programs are thrown together and contracts are signed and it is all systems go, without any of that groundwork.
StrongSuits operates at one level of that, helping people understand their natural communication style and how they communicate as a team. It works well in one-to-one settings, in individual teams, and for interpersonal challenges and conflicts. Often the challenges in a team or any system come down to one or two individuals that people keep bumping up against. StrongSuits can highlight that, surfacing which communication styles feel most challenging and where opposite strengths are getting in the way.
That is one level. The other work I do through the agile world is about combining lines of communication, flow of communication, and getting the right people in the right meetings in the right way at the right time. I would not say StrongSuits solves all of that. It is more about the intersubjective space, the between-people space, and that is what it deals with very well. The rest requires good methods, processes, and tools.
KUMAR: I recently published an article about the flow of information in an organization and how, if you can figure out where the flow is constrained and unblock it, that can be a huge source of freeing up the latent energy your organization already has. It seems like StrongSuits could be a way to uncover where that flow of information is blocked, in a more engaging way because you are getting that information directly from the people doing the work.
Which leads me to the next question. Leaders are probably using tools like this because they are trying to understand the why. Why are things not working? Why is information not flowing? Why are only thirty-two percent of people engaged? That statistic shows up everywhere. What should leaders be asking that they are not yet asking?
RYAN: I think the first question is simply, "How can we communicate better?" That connects to your article. Where is communication not flowing? And then, how can we build self-awareness for interpersonal communication? That is a big part of it.
I also think about the environment. Kurt Lewin said behavior is a function of the person and their environment. StrongSuits tries to bring in both to a degree, though it is more focused on the person and interpersonal communication and self-awareness. It also brings in the systemic lens because you are getting feedback from all people. You can also take it to a departmental or organizational level, and see what kinds of people you are hiring, where the gaps are, and where your biases are in terms of who you are rewarding and who you are not.
But it goes much wider than that. Other tools I have used in the past, like Lean Change and others, are always looking at the system, at how to make the environment and conditions in which people work better. That is not just about being nice to people or giving them perks. It is about how we do not get in people's way. How can we allow people to do the best thing they can do, in the best way, every day? How can they show up with their best strengths to the table, while the systems, processes, tools, reward systems, and structures are built in a way that enables them to be the best they can be?
KUMAR: And that is really the title of this interview. What can we do to prevent our best people from getting in each other's way? They are probably not doing it intentionally. They probably do not even know what they are doing is causing friction. And how do we remove that friction?
RYAN: I love that.
KUMAR: So how do people try out StrongSuits? Is it something you use an app for? Do you need training to use the tool set?
RYAN: The first and best way is always to just buy a deck of cards and start playing. You can get a physical deck at strongsuits.com, or a virtual deck, which gives you cards in PDF format optimized for online use. There is also a Miro board included, so you can just import it into Miro and play a game out of the box. A Mural version is coming as well.
The full multiplayer app is not yet available. We started with the single-player version, which you can access now, though as I said, that is not where the major benefit comes. The real benefit is from teams playing together.
If you want to get more involved, and you find that playing the game is starting to reveal things, you can get a free manual online along with the basic out-of-the-box games. If you want to go further into personality styles, communication styles, and conflict, we have certified facilitator training available in person over two days or spread out online. That makes you a certified StrongSuits facilitator with a facilitator manual and access to the community.
There is also a further level called a licensed partner, where you can train other people in StrongSuits and have the full licensing options to sell and resell it.
KUMAR: Wonderful. I am definitely going to check it out. I am interested in trying it with some of the teams I work with. How do people get a hold of you, Ryan? Is LinkedIn the best place?
RYAN: Yes, LinkedIn is the best place for me personally. You can also reach me or any of the licensed partners through strongsuits.com.
KUMAR: Anything I have not asked you that you would like to share with the audience?
RYAN: No, I think it has been a great conversation. I could always go on, but there is nothing I can think of that was not addressed. So, yeah.
KUMAR: Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show. For those of you still here, check out strongsuits.com. It seems like a really valuable tool to help teams assess themselves and improve their communication. Teams are the lifeblood of an organization, and anything that helps them communicate better and build and share value with the rest of the organization can only be a good thing. I am personally looking forward to trying it out, and I hope you are too. Thanks again for joining us, Ryan, and we will see everyone on our next show.
RYAN: Thanks, Kumar. Thanks, everyone.
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