Architect
«Could you send me the documentation?»
Wants to understand before committing, and treats your enthusiasm as noise until proven otherwise. With them the relationship follows the evidence rather than preceding it. If they ask for a document, it isn't a stalling tactic: it's how they decide.
How you recognise them
- They ask how it works before they ask what it costs.
- They take notes, and read them back in the next meeting.
- They answer emails a day later, and answer point by point.
- Their questions are specific and checkable, not rhetorical.
How to open
«I'd suggest twenty minutes in three parts: the problem as we see it, how we tackle it, where the method doesn't work. Then your questions.»
«I sent you two pages yesterday with the method and its stated limits. If you've read them, I'd start from the points that convinced you least.»
The proof they weigh most
A comparable case, measured and put in writing, with the detail of how it was achieved. What isn't written isn't verifiable to them. Stating a limit of the product earns more credit with an Architect than any argument in its favour: it's the evidence that the rest wasn't sweetened.
The vocabulary
- «the data shows…»
- «it's documented in the attachment…»
- «the trade-off is this…»
- «this is where the method doesn't work, and the reason is…»
- «I'll send you the references and the sources»
- superlatives: «revolutionary», «game-changing»
- time pressure: «only this week»
- extended informal openings
- roadmap promises without dates
- «trust me», in any formulation
The classic trap
Reading their slowness as disinterest and turning up the pressure. With an Architect pressure produces the opposite: it adds a risk to the decision, and the decision stops. What speeds them up is taking work off them — sending the document they would otherwise have had to ask you for, with the objections in it too.
If you're one too
Two Architects go deeper until it's too late: every meeting produces another legitimate question and neither of them proposes deciding. If that's your pair, you're the one who has to put the decision criterion on the table — what has to be true for a yes — instead of answering the next question.
And then there are the Regulators
The archetype sets the course, not the volume. Two people of the same archetype with opposite Security prepare differently: one wants guarantees and ways out, the other tolerates uncertainty when the opportunity is good. The same goes for Openness and Method. They're the three sliders that turn four categories into a prescription for one person.
How the TANDEM method worksThe other three archetypes
- Pilot
«Let's get to the point.»
- Promoter
«Let me tell you something.»
- Builder
«How would my team experience this?»
An archetype is a hypothesis about communication style, not a judgement on the person and not a diagnosis. It exists for someone who has to prepare a conversation, and it should be dropped the moment the conversation says it was wrong.