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How a fun quiz about birds became insightful

What 200 responses taught us about work style, collaboration, and assumptions

By Billie-Mae Kennedy

View profile

How a fun quiz about birds became insightful

What 200 responses taught us about work style, collaboration, and assumptions

By Billie-Mae Kennedy

View profile

Billie-Mae Kennedy
Principal Consultant

Billie-Mae brings together strategy, design and leadership to create systems that work better for people. With deep experience leading multidisciplinary teams across government, healthcare and social services, she helps organisations navigate complexity and deliver meaningful reform.

Her work spans disability, domestic and family violence, aged care, education, clean energy and more—always with a focus on equity, impact and integrity. Billie-Mae is passionate about creating the conditions for teams to thrive and services that make a difference.

Connect with

Call 02 6189 4943[email protected]

At Avian we do a lot of thinking about how we work together. Our work requires us to zoom in and out, shift between strategic and exploratory, adapt to what the work needs. Every team requires a mix of approaches. But we also notice, like anyone who pays attention, that people have tendencies. Ways of working that come more naturally.

We’re also massive nerds. We love research. We love thinking about thinking. We love asking questions about how people tick and then actually trying to answer them.

So we made a quiz.

And 200 people have taken it, so we went through the data to see what patterns emerged.

But wait: Have you found your bird yet? Take the quiz!

Find Your Bird measures two things: how you approach work, and how you collaborate.

Approach is about how you tackle problems.

  • Do you plan your way in, get oriented, move methodically?
  • Or jump in and figure it out as you go?

Collaboration is about how you work with others.

  • Do you prefer working independently, figuring things out on your own?
  • Or do you want others around you, thinking and building together?

But first – why are we sorting people into birds?

 

 

 

Great question!

In only 10 questions, we wanted to find out if we could map people onto meaningful dimensions of how they work — and whether those dimensions would actually tell us something useful.

The quiz maps you onto a quadrant:

  • Vertical axis (work style): Fearless innovator at the top, proven operator at the bottom
  • Horizontal axis (collaboration): Clear-sighted navigator on the left, collaborative partner on the right

Where you land determines your bird:

  • Kookaburra: Practical, people-oriented, steady. Good at reading a room and getting things done.
  • Bowerbird: Creative and energised by collaboration. Loves experimenting and building ideas with others.
  • Wood Duck: Thoughtful and adaptable. Takes their time, reads situations well, doesn’t rush.
  • Wedge-tailed Eagle: Big-picture thinker who works independently. Sees patterns others miss and backs themselves.

A chart showing the results of the quiz: 56% got Kookaburra. Then Bowerbird (24%), Wood Duck (12%), and Wedge-tailed Eagle (8%).

Most people in our network are Kookaburras 

56% got Kookaburra. Then Bowerbird at 24%, Wood Duck at 12%, Wedge-tailed Eagle at 8%.

This probably says more about our network than the population. We shared the quiz mostly through LinkedIn, and the people we connect with likely skew Kookaburra: adaptable and people oriented improvisers – a.k.a. human-centred designers!

The real question might be: where are all the Eagles? Independent and exploratory is a combination people admire; and qualities that all teams need. Is this genuinely rare, or a reflection of our network?

Scatter plot of respondent's approach scores v collaboration scores showing large blob (correlation =0.08)

There’s no correlation between work style and collaboration style

This one surprised us.

We assumed there’d be some relationship between the two axes. Maybe people who prefer structure also prefer working alone. Maybe the collaborative types would be the improvisers. It felt like these things should cluster. They don’t.

The correlation between Approach and Collaboration is 0.08. Basically zero. For context: height and weight correlate at about 0.5, IQ and income at about 0.3. Our two dimensions? 0.08. Did we accidentally create a valid psychometric test?

Knowing how someone approaches work tells you almost nothing about how they like to collaborate. The planner who loves spreadsheets is just as likely to thrive in a team as to prefer working solo. The creative who wings it could need constant collaboration, or could be a hermit.

We know what energises us

The question “Which part of the work gives you the biggest buzz?” asks people to place themselves between “starting something new” and “seeing things through.”

Most questions have about 20-30% fence-sitters. On this one, people had opinions.

51% went to the extremes. Only 13% picked the middle. And of course, most of us are drawn to novelty over delivery!

Bar chart showing responses to "What gives you the biggest buzz?" Starting something new at 35%, middle at 13%, and Seeing things through at 34%. The middle bar is much smaller than the extremes.

But we’re less sure about how we read the room

The question “How do you interpret what’s going on around you?” asks people to choose between “I look for facts and data” and “I listen for tone and context.”

Of the ten questions in the quiz, this was the hardest for people to choose a side, with most opting for the middle ground.

Bar chart showing responses to "What gives you the biggest buzz?" Starting something new at 35%, middle at 13%, and Seeing things through at 34%. The middle bar is much smaller than the extremes.

The takeaway

We made a quiz to sort people into birds. The data taught us something we didn’t expect: how you approach work and how you work with people are genuinely separate questions. This is worth remembering next time you’re building a team or onboarding someone new.

Haven’t found your bird yet?

Take the quiz and let us know what you think 🦆

We’re here to help—and always happy to chat.

Email us