You're a Coactive

Co-authored by Shelby Shepherd and Meeka Malone (Coactive)

Coactive, n.

An Image-Bearer who is driven to embrace a variety of perspectives, skills, and contributions to accomplish important work. She's a peacemaker and is more focused on encouraging and appreciating than on being admired. She is gifted at cultivating strong relationships and treasuring the best in others.

You were created to leverage your strengths as a Coactive for God's Kingdom🔥

1. God created you to see the strengths in the people all around you.
2. God created you to feel inspired to challenge the modern plight of isolated living, and to inspire others to come together for a stronger outcome. He uses your enthusiasm to ignite teamwork in others and rouse them to cooperative action.
3. God created you to be obsessed with the value of relationship.
4. God created you to adeptly imagine what things are like from another person's perspective, and easily perceive their goals and priorities.
5. God created you to feel intensely motivated by the idea that people can join forces in a mission, and through diligent cooperation, develop something greater than them all.
6. God created you to be a peacemaker.
7. God created you to be good at delegating tasks and nurturing balanced teams.
8. God gifted you with extreme patience for people. (This is so valuable.)
9. God created you to feel deeply compelled to bring even the most conflictive relationships into harmony, using every opportunity to promote the unity that Christ prayed for among His people.
10. When your world swirls with people, pressures, and problems, God created you to see opportunities for collaboration.

⚠️Three Coactive Pitfalls (The Evergreen Planning Method is Designed to Help You Avoid These)

Along with our natural strengths come natural gaps and weaknesses of which we need to be aware if we want to move forward in wisdom.

1. Coactives can make the mistake of diagnosing the lack of teamwork as a symptom of poor relationships. This mistake can actually project non-existent relationship problems into existence. Some people thrive when they're given the space they need to internally figure out solutions to problems or accomplish their goals alone. It's also possible that you haven't really listened to fully understand what they need, or you haven't adequately communicated the benefits of a shared vision in a way that helps them acheive their goals, too! Be careful not to overdramatize what could amount to simply having different priorities or a different productivity personality from your loved ones or team members. You can work against the unity you crave by applying too much pressure where it is not helpful and anxiously project relationship problems into existence.
2. Coactives can get caught in the trap of perpetually waiting on others to "get with the program" before getting started themselves. When you're preoccupied by thinking that teamwork has to happen in order to make anything work, you've placed your confidence in the strength of numbers instead of the strength of the Lord. If you always allow others to decide when (or if) an important project will begin, you'll become distracted by what they aren't doing instead of focusing on what you can do. Don't wait for the group to become motivated—find ways to begin serving sacrificially and solving real problems with precision. Once people begin to taste the fruit of a venture (without the pressure of having strings attached), they will often be inspired to join in on the work of developing its fruitfulness further.
3. Coactives can excuse their own inaction by shifting the blame onto others for important work not getting done. If you're not careful, you will become very comfortable with excusing yourself from responsibilities that no one else is enthusiastic about helping you complete. This mindset can be a slippery slope into a pattern of slothfulness. If years go by, this passive mindset will be the undoing of everything that was originally positive about a Coactive's desire to see teamwork happen. Start by serving. Learn what will constitute effective service by exercising your natural gift of listening well. And then creatively apply what you've learned in a way that leverages your own resources and helps others achieve to their goals.

🗝️ The #1 Key to Focus on When Planning As a Coactive

Your key focus: Even though you are driven to inspire teamwork to tackle projects, you have the God-given agency and ability to work alone on certain tasks as well. Be aware that you will need to achieve certain things without waiting on others to get on the same page.

With His sanctifying grace, your Coactive ways are an asset to the Kingdom of God. But only insofar as they are in alignment with responsibilities God has given you to tend. While we cannot know all of the future mysteries of how He will work in the hearts and lives around us, we can know His revealed will for us through the Scriptures—and this is what we're responsible to honor.

"He also that had received two talents came and said, 'Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.' His lord said unto him, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.'" — Matthew 25:22-23

Coactive, you have been given unique talents to invest as an individual made in the Image of God. Your willingness to work with others is important, but there are specific things He's calling you to do as an individual, too.

So when you sit down with your planner, your mind exploding with all the ways you wish others would get on board with what really matters, you will do well to find the next-right-steps that you can personally take to advance the work He's called to your attention forward.

🫱🏼🫲🏽 Tips On Working with Others

Perhaps you've been called idealistic when relationships seem to be going haywire but you're still feeling eager to figure out how restore unity. When people are struggling to see things from each other's point of view, don't let go of your Coactive hope.

Being a natural at recognizing others' strengths and desiring unity is a gift from God that you shouldn't feel ashamed of. He wants you to humbly lean into it, regardless of how others choose to feel about it, so that you can invest your Coactive talents for His Kingdom.

Resentments will relax, and in the meantime, you were created to patiently encourage people to see the work God is doing in others. You are shining a warm light in such a cold and polarized world.

Plant the seeds of peace with the expectation that God is faithful to bring a harvest. Don't get frustrated with others for being too zoomed in to their own point of view or for dismissing the need for cooperation.

Validate their life-giving priorities and patiently illuminate where there is overlap between their goals and those of the ones they oppose. When you listen well, and affirm the worthy contributions of each, you can become instrumental in building bridges that people will one day be ready to cross.

As you apply the Evergreen Planning Method, you may find that your drive to inspire collaboration needs to be balanced with your personal capacity for bringing about change. Daily planning will help you to see every opportunity to exercise your own agency to move the work forward, even when others are not cooperating.

Keep speaking words of life, confident in the zealous work of our Prince of Peace. You may not see all of the fruit in your lifetime, but in time, the results will be worth all of the hard work and faithfulness that it took to keep your hand on the Coactive's plow.

🕯️ As a Coactive, You Bear God’s Image

Your ability to adapt, collaborate, and uplift others is a beautiful reflection of the God who invites His people into His work through relationship and unity.

You reflect His nature when you show up with flexibility and discernment.

You bear His image when you intuitively sense what’s needed and offer your support with grace.

You mirror His servant-hearted love when you bring people together and help shared visions become reality.

You may not be driven to dominate the spotlight, but your presence is what helps things actually work. You have a rare gift: you can hold the big picture in one hand and the needs of the moment in the other. You see what others miss, fill in the gaps without fanfare, and bring peace where there's pressure.

The same God who works through the Body of Christ—with each member playing a vital role—created you to be a vital connector. Your quiet faithfulness, relational intelligence, and humble service reflect His glory in quiet, powerful ways.

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Did we miss something?

You’re a multifaceted, whole person. The test is just a starting point to help you reflect, but it may not capture every nuance of your personality. Especially as a Coactive, we recommend you look at the other productivity personalities to see if you have a wing (you probably do!) It's also good to recognize that all of these traits are healthy reflections of God's Image, and we should seek to grow in well-rounded maturity. You can dive deeper into the other productivity personalities below.

• Visionary - Driven to think about or plan the future with great imagination, intuition, and intelligence. Creative, more focused on the bigger picture than the granular details, and gifted at motivating others to jump in and help bring a vision to life.
• Task-Crusher - Driven to think practically and accomplish things. Resourceful, more focused on diligent execution of real tasks than on theory, and gifted at seeing a plan through to its completion.
• Strategist - Driven to think tactically and design repeatable systems. Prudent, more focused on the sustainability of an enterprise than on new innovations, and is gifted at keeping things organized while mitigating risk.
• Coactive - Driven to embrace a variety of perspectives, skills, and contributions to accomplish important work. A peacemaker and more focused on encouraging and appreciating than on being admired. Gifted at cultivating strong relationships and treasuring the best in others.

You can also go back to the quiz here.

Inspiration for these personality categories came from the work of Les McKeown as detailed in The Synergist, an awesome book on team dynamics.