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2 Lessons 15 minutes completion time

What you'll learn:

This course will cover the strengths and caution areas associated with Exploring Teams, explain how this and other Team Types are determined, and demonstrate how Strategy Types can impact an Exploring Team.

Introducing the Exploring Team


An Exploring Team is one of the nine Team Types identified by The Predictive Index.

Exploring Teams are outgoing, cooperative, and eager to work together. They have an active desire to learn and try new things. With an eye on the big picture, they share ideas—and resources—freely and informally. Innovation is the goal. People stand by their views but are willing to listen to others. This allows for constructive conflict, which can help you pressure-test or produce new ideas.

Natural Strengths
  • Ambitious and eager to drive forward
  • Quick to make connections
  • Excited about new challenges
Blind Spots
  • Sped and innovation may come at the cost of quality
  • Big-picture focus can leave details glossed over
  • Can quickly abandon ideas that don’t work out initially

“I’m a Product Manager leading an Exploring Team. As a risk-taking Maverick, it suits me to focus on speed and innovation. As a leader it is energizing to work with a team of like-minded individuals. But it’s also been eye opening to compare our team with our Balancing Strategy. Our strategy has elements that align with our team but we’re also tasked with many initiatives that require more process and precision. Knowing who on the team is best to lead through those goals helps us stretch as a team and provides leadership opportunities for members who are best suited to tackle these challenges.”

— Laura Morrison

The science of an Exploring Team

A Team Type is a collection of individuals’ behavioral patterns, as plotted within the Team Discovery tool. Team Discovery aggregates each individual’s PI Behavioral Assessment results. Then, using PI’s proprietary calculations, the tool plots each team member against a four-quadrant map. This lets you visualize the degree to which each person falls in one quadrant versus another. For a team whose members primarily fall within the Innovation and Agility quadrant, you will often result in an Exploring Team.

But it’s not this placement alone that determines the Team Type. As mentioned, we have to consider how strongly individuals fall within each quadrant, so there are cases where you might get results that don’t seem as obvious, even if a large portion of the members fall within one quadrant. To better understand how these individuals are plotted, check out the video below.

How individuals are plotted in teams.mp4

Your business is not something you want to leave up to chance. To ensure a well-oiled machine, you need to understand how it runs and how to tune it. That means considering the behavioral traits of each new team member and how their traits can complement or balance the team they’re joining.

The Innovation & Agility quadrant

An Exploring Team is most commonly associated with this quadrant, but a team can have individuals from any quadrant.

  • Focus on pursuing new innovations
  • Prefer to act quickly
  • Communicate by talking things through

Getting the best out of your team

With each team, there are strengths you want to lean on, as well as caution areas you should account for. Based on what you’ve learned about Exploring Teams, use the interactive below to determine some actions to get the most from your team.

You shouldn’t just rely on your Team Type to achieve success. Although it’s important, there is also another factor to consider, and that’s your Team Strategy.

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