Fast, warm, and running two different plans.
A Dominance and Influence pairing is the fastest combination of the four and the one most likely to commit to two incompatible things without noticing. Both are comfortable deciding early, both are energised by momentum, and neither instinctively slows down to check that the thing they each agreed to is the same thing.
- Dominance × Influence
- Both sides get moves
- Measured, not concatenated
The friction is rarely visible in the room. It shows up a week later, when the work reveals that one of them was solving for the outcome and the other was solving for the possibility.
Where it works, where it slips.
Where it works
quick from problem to motion. Dominance supplies the decision and the constraint; Influence supplies the options and brings other people with them. On a project that needs starting, this pair starts it.
Where it slips
Neither of them writes anything down. Both leave a conversation confident and each holds a slightly different version of what was agreed, because Influence was still exploring while Dominance was already committing.
The tell
Meetings that end with everyone energised and nobody able to say what happens on Monday.
What each one concludes about the other.
Dominance reads Influence as
unfocused — generating options long after the decision looked settled, and treating a closed question as still open.
Influence reads Dominance as
dismissive — shutting down a line of thinking that was about to go somewhere, and moving on before the idea had been given a fair run.
Four moves, not four adjectives.
Both sides get something to do. Guidance that only asks one person to change is a verdict rather than advice.
- 01Write the decision in one sentence before either of you leaves the room. It takes thirty seconds and removes most of what goes wrong here.
- 02Dominance: say "still exploring or actually deciding?" It is a cheap question and Influence will answer it accurately.
- 03Influence: label your half-thoughts out loud, so Dominance stops costing them as proposals.
- 04Agree who owns the follow-through before you both move on to the next interesting thing.
Who slows this pair down, if neither of us naturally does?.
This is the general case. Your two colleagues aren't.
Throughline measures the pair rather than concatenating two type descriptions — so the guidance names the specific people, and changes when you change the names.
All ten pairingsTell us what you’re working on.