A former colleague once said to me: “I’m not a completer-finisher, I’m afraid”. I heard an echo of it the other day when I heard someone else described as “not a completer-finisher”. Well, I’m not naturally a completer-finisher either, but I’ve managed to learn some completer-finisher skills and I’m impatient with those who use such labels as excuses.

The various “team wheel” approaches available – including Belbin, Myers-Briggs, Margerison-McCann and maybe others I don’t know – are useful tools that help us all to understand the complex variety our colleagues present to us, and use that variety to help us to do things better.

I’ve often said that every group tackling a new challenge needs a bloke in a leather jacket in the team who’ll come at the problem from a fresh angle and open up new opportunities. These various team wheels take my informal language and offer a structured tool (and a tool which includes the female equivalent of “a bloke in a leather jacket” of course!).

But it doesn’t work if people are allowed to believe (or kid themselves) that these behaviours are fixed for all time. I’m naturally an ideas man - keen to learn, pass on what I know and to solve problems – but I can’t run my business, or do the other things I do, unless I dot some ‘i’s and cross some ‘t’s. I hate chasing people but it has to be done sometimes. From being ticked off for lack of attention to detail when I was young, I now find myself doing the same to others! I have changed. I can’t change my personality, but I know what I’m good at and I’ve learned to get much better at the rest. Knowing the difference between these two is crucial to good people management.