Malcolm Gilbertson has built something most creative founders only dream about. Silverback Studios is a Guildford-based branding and creative agency with a team of eight, a loyal client base that includes some of the UK’s best-known names and a culture built around collaboration, trust and doing things properly.
From the outside, it looked like a team that already worked well. From the inside, Malcolm knew there was more to unlock.
He had tried psychometric tools before. Over the years he had put his team through several. Some were useful. Most felt generic, hard to apply and quickly forgotten. He was sceptical but open. So when Kate introduced the Blindspot Business Assessment, he decided to try it.
Silverback Studios runs on what Malcolm calls Troopwork, a genuine commitment to collaboration, honesty and getting the best out of every person in the team. It is not a marketing line. It is how they operate.
But even in a team built on those values, communication has its friction points. Different people give and receive feedback differently. Some work at pace and expect the same. Others need time to process before they can commit. In a fast-moving creative environment, those differences create tension. Not dramatically. Just enough to slow things down, create misunderstanding and occasionally leave things unsaid that needed saying.
Malcolm wanted to understand his team more deeply. Not to fix what was broken. To make what was already good even better. And to give his people a language for how they work so they could use it themselves, long after the sessions with Kate were done.
The Blindspot Business Assessment ran in three stages. Every team member completed the Blindspot assessment online. Kate then delivered individual 1:1 debriefs with each person. The process concluded with a half-day team workshop, bringing the whole group together to explore each other’s profiles and what they meant for how Silverback works.
Malcolm completed his own Founder Profile first. What he found surprised him.
That ripple effect was felt across the team. Each person arrived at their 1:1 debrief with different expectations. Most left describing an experience they had not anticipated.
The bespoke quality came through in how Kate ran the individual sessions. She did not apply a framework and move on. She worked with each person in the context of their specific role, their specific team and their specific challenges. That is what made the insights feel immediately applicable rather than interesting but theoretical.
The simplicity Malcolm mentions is worth naming too. Psychometric tools can be dense, jargon-heavy and hard to remember once the debrief is over. The Blindspot framework is designed to stay with you. Four profiles. Clear language. Something every team member can refer back to months later when a situation calls for it.
Jay’s point captures it precisely. When something challenging happens in the team now, he goes back to the profiles. Not because he was told to. Because the framework is simple enough to use in the moment.
The changes at Silverback were not dramatic announcements or structural overhauls. They were the quieter, more lasting kind.
Across all five team members, the feedback about working with Kate was consistent. Not just about the process. About her specifically.
Claire described the 1:1s as career therapy. Emily noted how clear and thorough Kate was in the way she explained things. Rachel highlighted Kate’s understanding of psychology as what allowed her to genuinely get the best out of each person.
That quality of the individual sessions matters because it is where the deepest work happens. The team workshop is where the shared language is built. But the individual debrief is where people feel seen. And feeling genuinely seen by someone who has no agenda other than helping them understand themselves better is, as Claire put it, invaluable.
The Blindspot Business Assessment is for creative business owners who want their team to understand each other the way they now understand themselves. If you have done your Founder Profile and want to extend that clarity into the people around you, this is where that starts.
Find out more about the Blindspot Business Assessment.
