Next Level Communication: Deloitte Business Chemistry

Everyone is familiar with the adage, ”Communication is key.” And it’s true! Active and intentional communication is essential to the success of any business, relationship, or team.

A quarterback must communicate the play with his team in order to score. A manager must communicate expectations with their employees so that goals can be achieved. These are the basics of communication, and most people are able to do this successfully—but what about doing more?

Jim Costey, a Specialist Master and certified Busines Chemistry facilitator with Deloitte Services, works to help co-workers communicate on a new level, one that is rooted in understanding how both oneself and others operate and communicate so that productivity and communication excel. He recently did this training with City Year Staff and AmeriCorps members as part of Deloitte’s Learning and Development Program Sponsorship with City Year.

|  Learn more about City Year’s national partnership with Deloitte and others.

Learning & Development with Deloitte 

Deloitte is City Year San Antonio’s Learning & Development Program Sponsor for the 2021 – 2022 academic school year. While this is their first year as a program sponsor, Deloitte has been a long-standing partner. Jim, an expert in organization/workforce transformation and leadership development, has conducted hours of training for our AmeriCorps members over the years. The programming offered by Deloitte has consistently had a positive impact on our staff and our AmeriCorps members (ACM) and their future.   

According to Deloitte, its Business Chemistry was developed based on extensive research and analytics, plus years of proven success in the field, and provides a simple yet powerful way to identify meaningful differences between people’s working styles. 

Business Chemistry with corps members 

Jim took the ACMs and Team Leaders through the Business Chemistry process and saw the positive effects it was having. The corps members were excited about what they were learning about how to engage with others and were surprised with what they were learning about themselves.

“If you have a corps member who’s engaging a student that’s having some challenges and they’re not engaging them in a way that is natural for that student to understand, they may never get it. But if they modify their approach to that student just slightly to speak with them more to their comfort zone– more to their natural tendencies– then they’re going to be much more effective in reaching that student. It’s the same with engaging with the faculty members with the administration and those around them.” Jim said.

Implementing the whole City Year team

The growth in the corps was positive and had the potential to really help them be successful in their engagement with students, but Deloitte still felt they were missing a key element of the City Year team.

“The corps members aren’t successful without the staff and the staff aren’t successful without the corps. That’s why we thought we should introduce [Business Chemistry] to everybody at once and get everybody trying to apply that science in their engagements with each other” Jim said.

Jim points out that Business Chemistry helps people exhibit empathy for others in the workplace, which can lead to more powerful work relationships. Its focus is on interaction rather than introspection – learn about yourself but more importantly learn about others’ preferences.

Now having gone through the process with the whole City Year corps and staff, Business Chemistry training has provided our ACMs the tools they need to communicate and meet student needs, and it equipped the staff to engage better as a team. This understanding of each other created a deeper sense of care for each other and built stronger and more vibrant relationships.

To learn more about Deloitte and its Business Chemistry, visit them online.  

Find out how to become a program sponsor

Jim Costey is a specialist master and consultant with Deloitte. He is a coach, mentor, leader, with an extensive background in the fields of Human Capital Management, Program Management, Change Management, and Organizational Design and Development.  Jim is a Certified Human Behavior Consultant, Leadership Coach, Teacher, and Speaker. He serves as a facilitator of Business Chemistry for Deloitte, helping organizations find solutions.