Most of us will agree that understanding each other is important, but many can't really describe what you need to understand.  Many will cite relationship styles, decision making styles, leadership styles and communication tendencies as key issues.  In fact there are quite a number of additional issues that can cause conflict and misunderstanding if not accurately understood. In fact, the worst scenarios occur when people think they understand and they don't (incorrect assumptions).

Tempo is an attribute that relates to a need  or tendency for(or lack of a need) for speed and activity. Likewise, it is related to multitasking and a tendency, if strong here, to "have to have" many things going on at once to feel right about things.   If you are a high tempo person ,  you will have a tendency to love activity and typically  a need to have a lot of balls in the air simultaneously. If your tendency is low, you will tend to be methodical,  tending to focus on one thing at a time.  It doesn't necessarily relate to your energy level but may relate to the perception of others of your energy level.

In the past, I would not have suspected this to be a significant issue underlying the quality of  inter-relationships among team members but I've had enough experiences to suggest otherwise.  In the course of doing numerous team building events and management engagements, I've stumbled into a number of situations where the primary source of conflict (and avoidance behavior) was due, from what we observed, to a difference in tempo.

In these cases, long term animosity, avoidance behavior and frequent conflict was erupting between 2 executives on a management team. In one case, they had worked as the two key executives in a company for 20 years with the behavior for nearly the entire time.   The typical scenario involved behaviors that included avoiding working together when they could,  frequent disagreements more over style than substance and behind the scenes put-downs of the other person. In each case, this had large repercussions  that cost the company a lot of money and customers.  In each of  these cases, one was high on tempo and the other low . Of course, they were also, in each case, different on a number of other key traits.

 So why isolate tempo?   In each case, when they were confronted by the differences and discussed it, the realization of the difference in tempos caused considerable emotion,  initiated a discovery process between the two to understand more and then resulted in almost a cathartic emotional experience.  It created a true sense of good feeling and a feeling of loss in not having understood this before. And, at least for a period of time, a genuine working relationship.

What we've learned is that, like many other traits, understanding your own need for speed or focus and those of the members of your team,  helps promote a more effective work environment and reduces conflict and misunderstanding.