The Heat scan is a new performance management instrument that optimises the cooperation between you and the people who are crucial for your success. This online instrument focuses specifically on mutual cooperation. Based on an online questionnaire, people get the opportunity to provide feedback about each other’s observed behaviour. The Heat scan is executed for pairs of colleagues that work together and is suitable for people who work in pairs in companies, organisations, networks, individual units and institutions (profit and non-profit).

The advantage of the Heat scan is that a pleasant atmosphere is created for mentioning the positive aspects and for resolving any bottlenecks. Once you have completed the Heat scan as a pair, you both receive a Heat scan report with each other’s results. This ensures a more positive working atmosphere, in which successful and efficient cooperation is built on structurally. Above all, it is also possible to share and discuss the results with HR or a team manager.

The Heat scan is suitable for pairs of colleagues that work together in companies, organisations, networks, individual units and institutions (profit and non-profit). This could be:

• two colleagues within the same team;
• two colleagues each from a different department;
• two colleagues in a network (structurally or temporarily);
• an employee and an employer/manager;
• an employee and a customer (or supplier);
• or a manager with his/her supervisory director.

For participating in a Heat scan, it is essential that the employees already work together. This is the only way they can truly assess each other’s behaviour. If you are all in a single team and you want everyone to take a Heat scan with each other, then all the possible pairs need to take a Heat scan and complete the questions about each other.
Say, for example, there are four of you in a single team, then you need six Heat scans for everyone to have heat scanned each other. Calculate how many Heat scans are possible within a single team ».

For whom is the Heat scan less appropriate?
When you do not really have much tangible interaction with another person. If, for example, you are in a team with someone, but do not really work together, the Heat scan is not an appropriate instrument. The Heat scan is also less suitable if you have not yet worked together for a sufficient length of time. This being several weeks.

The pair follow 4 steps together in the Heat scan. Below you will find a short description of the step-by-step process of the Heat scan.

1. Getting started with the Heat scan
Two people that work together complete the same online questionnaire independently of each other. The questions that are dealt with concern the different aspects of the professional cooperation and are based on system theory. Because the questionnaire can only be completed online, it is possible to complete the questionnaire independently from each other. Whenever you want to. Answering the questions takes on average between 6 and 15 minutes.

2. Report and preparation for the dialogue
Once both the questionnaires have been completed, both participants receive the Heat scan report. The Heat scan matches the answers, reveals what is going well and what could use improvement and provides advice on how best to prepare for the dialogue.

3. Discussing the results
In a one-on-one conversation you discuss the results of the Heat scan and what action you are going to undertake together to improve the cooperation. Because you both receive a copy of the Heat scan report, it becomes clear which points require more attention.

4. Follow-up
It is important to reassess after a while to what extent you have managed to implement the intended points for improvement. It is a recurring process in which you review whether certain points require more attention. This guarantees that you are up-to-date on one another’s perception and you continue to work structurally on the cooperation.

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Good cooperation runs smoothly and feels effortless. It gives you energy, enjoyment and delivers a more versatile result. Every organisation is made up of countless relationships. The quality of these relationships is decisive for the success or the output.

Consider the relationships that are essential for your success. If you were to mark them, what score would you give them? And what score would other people give you?

Professional cooperation
What makes professional cooperation different from cooperation in general? The ability to view our own behaviour and that of others from a distance, to be able to reflect on this and then to adjust our behaviour to harmonise with this. This makes demands of our attitude, knowledge and skills.

It is not conceptually complicated and you can practise this and perfect it. You can experience and deploy this immediately every day. It is important that you know which elements you need to discuss with the other person so that you can fine-tune your cooperation quickly and effectively.

Heat scan: an online cooperation test
The Heat scan provides you and the other person with insight into the status of your cooperation in professional terms and the opportunities for perfecting it. It has never been as simple to obtain a clear picture of professional cooperation. It is also exciting, surprising and provides focus.

If the cooperation is not running smoothly, it will not resolve itself, as a manager you have to intervene. The Heat scan has proved itself to be a quick and effective tool for improving cooperation.

How to approach this as a manager
1. Equip your people with the instrument and let them get to work with it
2. Receive the Heat scan report and, follwoing that, the plan of action for the two employees
3. Enquire about the result

How to begin
Determine who is to be heat scanned. Agree this with those involved. The pair receive a link to the questionnaire. You and they receive the report by email. The pair keep you informed of their step-by-step plan and the progression.

Confidentiality and privacy
The report will be sent as a PDF by email to the orderer and two employees who work together.

Order the Heat scan online »

You require 1 Heat scan package for each pair of employees. This only concerns pairs of employees within a team that really have a lot to do with each other. The calculation below assumes a situation in which everyone works with each other.

Calculate the Heat Scans are possible within a team »
Determine who is to be heat scanned. Agree this with those involved. The pair receive a link to the questionnaire. You and they receive the report by email. The pair keep you informed of their step-by-step plan and the progression.

The Heat scan is extremely suitable for deployment in combination with or complementary to other instruments that strengthen the professional performance of an individual or team.

Differences between the Heat scan and Team Role Management (Interplace).
In Team Role Management (also known as the Belbin method) the team members are tested individually to establish their so-called team role.

With tools like Interplace, this team role is established through self-perception and the perception of a number of people who know you.

Based on your authentic team role, you gain a better understanding of your strengths for cooperating in a team. You can also compile complementary teams based on the team roles.

It is a method based on insights into your personality. Are you for example a natural when it comes to researching sources, then you are more suited for laying external contacts and retrieving information from the world outside. Is your dominant team role that of a group worker, you devote more attention and expend more energy on maintaining a good atmosphere within the team.

The Heat scan is not a personality test, but directly targets the daily cooperation between you and the person with whom you work. You always complete the Heat scan with that specific person. The results are unique for each pair. You do not necessarily have to be in the same team to be able to perform a Heat scan. It can also be with your customer, supplier or people with whom you work in a network situation.

Where Belbin provides more insight into underlying psychological causes of cooperative problems, the Heat scan offers a fast, tangible solution for improved cooperation between two specific colleagues.

With Belbin, a common intervention is the smarter compilation and recompilation of teams. The Heat scan assumes that you are to continue working with your colleague and provides tangible insights into the cooperation together with a step-by-step plan for structurally improving the cooperation.

Answering the questions in the Heat scan usually takes 6-10 minutes. A team role assessment usually requires a greater time investment. And, in contrast to Belbin, an expert is not required to explain the results. Colleagues can get straight to work with the results.

Difference between the Heat scan and MBTI
As is the case with Belbin, the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) is also based on exploring your own unchanging personality.

Insights into your personality can provide insights into the way that you can improve the way in which you cooperate with others. Problems in the cooperation are explained on the basis of different personalities. Extrovert can clash with introvert.
Through gaining a better understanding of yourself and the other, you can improve your cooperation.

The Heat scan concentrates less on causes, and more on solutions and assumes that working together is an art in itself, one that you can learn through insight and practice. The instrument is not based on a theory about differences in personality, but on a model for successful cooperation between each possible pair. It analyses the points where matters are running smoothly and where things go wrong, it proposes tangible steps for improving the cooperation.

In the case of MBTI, it is not necessary for you to engage in a dialogue with colleagues. The Heat scan is exemplary in creating the right atmosphere for a dialogue for improving the cooperation.

And, in contrast to MBTI, an expert is not required to explain the results. Colleagues can get straight to work with the results.

The Heat scan is deeply rooted in system theory. This discipline maintains that you can only understand people if you understand their behaviour in regard to each other. In every group in which we find ourselves, mutual relationships are very quickly unconsciously determined and recorded.
If you have ever experienced a secondary-school reunion, you will know how powerful this invisible mechanism is. 20 years on, exactly the same relationships appear to still exist.

Can you do anything about this as an individual? Let us examine the smallest subsystem in an organisation in which interaction exists, being two people. An organisation comprises many cooperating pairs. I work within my team with A and I work with B from another team. And, in turn, A and B also work with others. If, as an organisation, you are able to show people the influence they have on the interaction within these subsystem, you will succeed in making the entire organisation as a system more aware, so that they can cooperate more professionally and as such boost the success of the organisation in achieving its objectives.

According to the system theory, each subgroup continually steers its behaviour on the basis of feedback. The problem here is that the feedback is more or less unconscious. We receive verbal and non-verbal signals about which behaviour is desirable and which behaviour does not square with the norm. Gregory Bateson, one of the founders of system psychology, once said: „people cannot, not communicate‟. Everything that you do, remaining silent too, communicates something to the other. The problem with most people is that communication about the communication is not evident. In other words, people do not know HOW they should speak about what they feel, or because there is a taboo about discussing the relationship. We are hard-wired to operate within a group, but we are not equipped for improving the group process through feedback.

This is why we developed the Heat scan. The Heat scan allows people to share stories that concern their mutual cooperation. According to Bateson, relationships lie at the heart of life and we need a language in order to understand each other. Telling each other your story is the straight course to forming relationships.

What is unique about the Heat scan is that it is both an assessment instrument and a work instrument. Through utilizing it, you change your relationship with the other that is essential for your success. Through the clarification of the similarities and differences in perception of the relationship, and through indicating what each person considers to be important in the working relationship, you raise the relationship to a higher level. Through becoming aware of the mountain of unconscious signals that you are giving off, you can continue or fine-tune them. The Heat scan has been developed as an instrument to release people from the unconscious signals that they continually emit to each other. And the signals influence the working relationship. Most commonly in small, seemingly innocent ways, sometimes in a disruptive manner.

To explain it in terms of system theory: the Heat scan has been designed to introduce feedback to the system, through which the performance of the system improves.

Background:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson »
nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Watzlawick »
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Fisher_academic »

1. For what type of work situations is the Heat scan appropriate?
   The Heat scan is appropriate for pairs of colleagues who work together in pairs in companies, organisations, networks, individual units and institutions (profit and non-profit).
   
   
2. If I answer the question before the other person, can the other person see my answers?
   No, only once you have both answered the questions, will you each receive a copy of the Heat scan report.
   
   
3. Can I do a Heat scan with multiple people from a team?
   This is possible. For each pair you need 1 Heat scan package. If you are in a single team and you want everyone to do a Heat scan with all the other team members, all the possible pairs must complete a Heat scan. Say for instance: you are in a team with 3 others, so in total there are 4 of you. This requires 6 Heat scans. Then all the possible pairs will have completed questionnaires about each other. Please note: continue to ask yourself if you are really cooperating with the other person. After all, you have to assess each other's behaviour.
   Calculate how many Heat scans are possible within a single team »
   
4. Will the person with whom I am doing a Heat scan also receive a copy of the Heat scan report?
   Yes. The person, with whom you do the Heat scan, also receives a Heat scan report. You will be able to read the results of both your input in this report. This reveals what is going well and what could use improvement and provides advice on how best to prepare for the dialogue with the person with whom you have just completed a Heat scan.
   
   
5. Will my manager and/or HR also see my Heat scan report?
   If the orderer instructs Heat scan that others, in addition to the pair, are to receive a copy, the names will be shown to both the participants before they commence answering the questions. A participant can still decide whether or not they wish to participate in the Heat scan at that moment. It is clear that this must be agreed in advance with the participants.
   
   
6. Who else can benefit from the Heat scan apart from direct colleagues?
   The Heat scan is suitable for all sorts of pairs who work together in various configurations of organisations, positions and departments. We have outlined a number of examples for you below. Please remember that it is important that the pair in question actually work together on a regular basis:
   
   
   • two colleagues within the same team;
   • two colleagues each from different departments;
   • two colleagues in a network (structurally or temporarily);
   • an employee and an employer/manager;
   • an employee and a customer (or supplier);
   • or a manager with his/her supervisory director.
   
   
7. For whom is the Heat scan less appropriate?
   When you do not really have much tangible interaction with another person. If, for example, you are in a team with someone, but do not really work together, the Heat scan is not an appropriate instrument.
   
   
8. Is it possible to call on external supervision during the Heat scan process?
   Definitely, it is possible to receive external supervision when undertaking Heat scanning. The benefit of this supervision is that a professional can accelerate the participants in the completion of the Heat scan. Supervision can also include an analysis of the Heat scan reports, a report at team level, supervision of the dialogues as a result of the Heat scan report, a workshop for managers/participants.
   
   Take a look at the rates for the Heat scan packages with and without external supervision.
   
   
9. For how many people is 1 Heat scan package intended?
   For each pair 1 Heat scan package is required.
   
   
10. What is the connection between system theory and Heat scanning?
    The Heat scan is deeply rooted in system theory. This discipline maintains that you can only understand people if you understand their behaviour in regard to each other. In every group in which we find ourselves, mutual relationships are very quickly unconsciously determined and recorded. If you have ever experienced a secondary-school reunion, you will know how powerful this mechanism is. 20 years on, exactly the same relationships appear to still exist.
    
    
11. In what kind of situations would you request a Heat scan?
    In general, a Heat scan is intended for optimising the cooperation between two people who are crucial for your success. This online instrument focuses primarily on the mutual cooperation. For example, you could have the feeling that the cooperation between you and a colleague, supplier or customer is not running smoothly, or simply that you want to know which points deserve extra attention to improve the efficiency of the cooperation. For all cases where you would like to know how you could improve the cooperation, you could request a Heat scan.
    
    
12. What aspects are dealt with in the Heat scan?
    The Heat scan deals with important aspects of the cooperation, including:
    
    1. Emotion. To what extent can you share your emotions with the other.
    2. Feedback. Discover your strong points and less strong points in your cooperation. Learn how to provide good feedback.
    3. Respect. Test the presence of respect between you and your colleague, manager or customer.
    4. Trust. Ascertain the degree of trust between you and your colleague, manager or customer.
    5. Listening. Create a pleasant atmosphere to facilitate listening to each other and discussing matters.
    
    
    
13. Can I take the Heat scan at home?
    Yes. The Heat scan is flexible so that, independently of each other, you can complete the online questionnaire, wherever you are. The same applies for the person with whom you have requested the Heat scan.
    
    The results of the Heat scan report are discussed together, but this can also take place in a location that you both find pleasant.
    
    
14. How is privacy safeguarded?
    Heat scan has unequivocal principles in the area of privacy. We respect the privacy of our visitors and we adhere to the statutory regulations regarding privacy, determined by the Dutch Data Protection Authority in the Guidelines on the Publication of Personal Data on the Internet.