I hope you all enjoyed the Labor Day Weekend. I know we call it the unofficial end of summer, but I personally am not ready for what comes next! For those that don’t know, I live in Michigan - our winters are sometimes 8 months long!
At the end of a recently completed team building session, there were four completely different presentations. I was a bit curious as to how they presented the data, so I looked into it a bit more. Having completed DISC profiles on everyone on the team, I looked at who was leading those groups and found coincidentally, each of the four groups was lead by one of the DISC Personality profiles.
For those that would rather listen to the Podcast version CLICK HERE
Ignore the wording on these presentations below; just look at the output of the four different styles.
For those of you not familiar with DISC Personality Assessments, there are 41 different styles, although we all have one dominant characteristic, those being:
D - Decisive, Direct
I - Inspiring, People-oriented
S - Stable, Systematic
C - Compliant, Analytical
There is much more to each personality style than the two items above. I list only those for you to have a taste of DISC. At KPG, we start every client off with this assessment. But it’s not why you think. We do not go through evaluations to put people in different positions. Nor do we do this to determine if they are qualified. The purpose is to identify how they process tasks and, as importantly, how they communicate.
In the above picture, we had four distinct personalities. While observing them, each group went about the task using different methods. In the end, the output (not shown here) was virtually the same, but the reasoning behind their recommendations was different.
Many companies use personality assessments to identify the best candidate for a position. For example, they may look for I’s only salespeople and C’s to be engineers. But that pigeonholes the organization. Personality does not identify if a person can do the job; it only identifies how they will do it.
My first interview after college was for a sales job, and I failed the personality test. The company was looking for more submissive, stable, and systematic salespeople because the job had a very formal process. Those who know me understand that I am not quite submissive, believing it is better to ask for forgiveness instead of pleading for permission. The manager that I interviewed with told me that he took a chance on me and my sales career began. Not going into too much of the story, my sales were higher than everyone else, promoted into management faster than anyone, and I ended up pretty good at that job.
It’s essential you know what style your team members have. Why? So that you can understand how they will go about the task at hand. In the workshop example, all four teams came to the same conclusion but offered insights that the other teams didn’t. When you put all the ideas together, it made for a better final product.
When you assign a project to someone, especially in a professional environment, they must know what you expect. What results are you looking for, and when do you want the projected completed? Let them use their creativity and personality to design their workflow. For example, assume you give the same task to four different team members on a Monday and tell them it’s due on Friday at noon. Person #1 turned it in on Tuesday, #2 on Wednesday, #3 on Thursday, and #4 on Friday; all four were of the same quality. Who is the better employee?
Most of us gravitate to Person #1 because they quickly got it done. Therefore, they must be the hardest worker, right? It’s normal; we all do it. We may even ask the others why they aren’t done with their projects on Wednesday.
I’ve written several times about People, Process, and Product. Although we are talking about processing tasks, this falls into the PEOPLE category. Knowing how your team works is key to success and improved communication.
What can you do to start understanding your team better? First, have Kole Performance Group run a DISC workshop for your entire team. Learn what makes them tick and how to combine their strengths to improve your organization. It’s hard work today, but it will lead to a better tomorrow.
If you want to learn a little bit more about DISC, take a look at this 1-minute video. Or call us at; (734) 515-0221.
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