Businesses spend thousands of dollars on corporate training days, team-building events and strategies that will help their employees build and develop interpersonal skills that aid their career progression. Imagine if there was an iPhone app that could do all of this for less than five bucks? Well, Mirror | Mirror aims to do just that and more, with its simple and effective comparative model that allows users to compare themselves with colleagues, giving business-orientated people an alternative way of looking at their working relationships to help them grow.
The app itself is remarkably well laid out, with an easy-to-use interface and a very quick and bright functionality. The ‘About’ section is a detailed précis of what the app’s aims and uses are, which is very useful; a lot of business apps just let you go straight in without telling you how to actually use it, leaving you to work it out for yourself. Mirror | Mirror even offers an interactive tour that takes you through the app’s functions, optimizing the whole experience for you.
Essentially, Mirror | Mirror is a reflection tool for a businessperson, something that they can use to hold themselves up to other colleagues and peers or even future projections of themselves (i.e. where they want to be in 12 months time). For example, by entering your details and the details of a colleague into the profile category, you can then answer questions about the colleague based on a sliding strength scale of 1-5 in either direction. So, the first question could be ‘What Are You In Business?’ and the answers will be from 1-5 in ‘Relationship-Orientated’ to ‘Task-Orientated’. As you move your hand over the slider, the explanation of each number will pop up, allowing you a more in depth insight into your choice, such as, “You spend time on living and getting to know rather than focusing on the performance and completion of task” for a ‘Relationship-Orientated’ number.
Once you have completed your desired amount of profiles (you can have up to 10) you can then rank the orientations in order of importance, with concepts like ‘Motivation To Work’ and ‘Leadership Style’ perhaps more towards the top, above ‘Intuitive/Rational Approach’ and ‘Order of Tasks’. Then, using the Mirror Us Chart, you can see who compares well against who; if you want to set up a multi-tasked project with an intuitive element to it, you can see which two workers would be best paired for the job, or who would shine working on it alone.
You can then email a chart comparing two profiles directly from the app to your own email address or another colleagues, making it easier to discuss moving forward with the data that you have gathered. This app could make long, drawn out company motivation seminars a thing of the past…what are we waiting for?!
Pros
- Bright, simple and intuitive layout that anyone could use within a few minutes.
- Innovative idea to compare people with varying skill sets, with the potential to suggest some interesting and unique comparisons and results.
- A perfect aid for a team leader who wants to motivate their team by optimizing its members key strengths.
- You can even get your team members to complete the charts for each other, giving you an insight into who thinks what of each other.
Cons
- You can only add ten profiles, which may limit your comparisons if you have a big team; however, you can always replace profiles once they have been used.
Summary
Mirror | Mirror is a very useful tool for anyone who wants to further themselves in business through utilizing and optimizing their relationships with other people. Since business is all about building and strengthening such relationships, then the skills and comparisons that Mirror | Mirror gives you are essential. You can use the app to further the progress of team building, planning who to assign appropriate projects to or even use it to build your own ‘business mind’.
Great app for businesses; I downloaded it and I’ve really seen an improvement in client and staff relationships – well worth the 5 bucks!
Very useful little app, good functionality and interesting concept – 5/5 from me!
I really liked this app; it provides businesses with the opportunity to get a deeper insight into the relationships between their staff which is essential to any growing business. A bit steep at $4.99, but if you think of how useful it is in the long run, the cost is practically nothing!