FRINGE

Six roles. Observed, not asked.

FRINGE is our behavioural framework — six forms of agency in a team decision, derived from what people actually do under pressure rather than what they say about themselves. Every player leaves with two of them.

Came for the team read, but want the lighter one too? Anyone in the room can also take home a Designation — who you were to be around, on a card.

The framework

Six forms of agency.

Not personality types. Six distinct ways of moving a group decision forward — each a strength, none ranked above another.

F Flip Reframes the problem

You turn the question on its head.

R Relay Connects the team

You make sure the right voice reaches the right ear.

I Ignite Goes first

You start what nobody else will.

N Nail Lands the decision

You turn talk into action.

G Grip Asks the hard question

You hold the problem still until the team sees it clearly.

E Edge Challenges consensus

You say the thing the room is avoiding.

The identity

Two roles, in order.

Each player gets a primary role — the loudest signal — and a secondary. The ordered pair is the identity: a Flip/Edge is a different person from an Edge/Flip. Six primaries by five secondaries makes thirty named characters.

The profile reads the strength of each behaviour off the session — how strongly each role came through, not how good you are at it. No role outranks another and there's no pass or fail; your primary is simply where the signal was loudest, your secondary where it was next.

And it's situational, not permanent. A different team and a different pressure can read you differently — which is rather the point.

Primary Secondary

Every role is a strength, so every pair is too — the blind spot is only ever the risk of overplaying it. Each of the thirty pairs has a name:

Flip / EdgeThe Disruptor Flip / RelayThe Translator Ignite / NailThe Sprinter Nail / EdgeThe Override Grip / FlipThe Deep Reframe Edge / RelayThe Constructive Challenger
The difference

Observed, not asked.

Belbin, MBTI, CliftonStrengths and DISC all ask you to describe yourself, then hand the description back. FRINGE never asks. It reads the role off the decision as it happens.

The signal comes from the room itself: talk-time and the timing of speech from a microphone, who the team actually followed from choice and persuasion tracking, and vocal energy and heart rate at the decision moments. A profile is assigned only when the behaviour is there to support it — a primary across at least three decisions, a secondary across two. The gap between who you think you are and how you showed up is where the insight lives.

The incumbents

Belbin · MBTI · CliftonStrengths · DISC

MethodA questionnaire
WhenBefore the room, at a desk
What it capturesWho you think you are
Travels with you?Yes — read as a fixed trait

FRINGE

Read off the decision

MethodReal-time observation of behaviour
WhenDuring the decision, under pressure
What it capturesWho you were when it counted
Travels with you?No — situational to this team, this day
The premium output

What a manager actually buys.

Individual reads are the takeaway players talk about. The team composition view is the product L&D pays for — and it never names a single person.

Coverage

Which of the six roles showed up when the team was deciding under pressure. The shape of how this group actually moves.

Doubling

Where two people played the same role. Not a fault — a pattern worth seeing. Two Ignites compete for the opening; two Grips can overthink the same question.

The Gap

The role nobody played. The insight that sticks: the voice missing when it mattered. It doesn't tell anyone they're deficient — it tells the team what to listen for next time.
The artefact

A sample read.

This is the individual card — delivered privately, on cream stock. The team only ever sees the composition; the individual read is yours.

A single cream profile card resting on a dark walnut surface in low light.
FRINGE Profile — Sample td·fr-2026-0427-a

Flip / Edge

The Disruptor

You don't just challenge what the team is doing — you flip the entire premise. Where a pure Edge says "that's wrong," you say "the question itself is wrong." High-impact and high-risk: when you're right, you save the team from a beautifully executed wrong answer. When you're wrong, you've burned time the group can't get back.

Influence, last session: your team followed your lead on three of four decisions. Individual results are never shared with an employer or the group without your say-so.

Bring it to your team

Bring FRINGE to your team.

FRINGE lives inside the corporate day — the ninety minutes, the debrief, and the composition report a week later. Start there, and the rest follows.

See the corporate day Email the host

Licensing or partnership interest in the FRINGE methodology? partnerships@threedoors.co.uk. The consumer sibling is DESIGNATION — same room, a different mirror.