What does DISC provide?
I have worked with teams from every organization level using the DISC assessment, reports, and tools to create a greater understanding of each other’s working styles and behavioral preferences. What excites me about using DISC with teams is what each individual gets out of it and, as a result, how they can work with others better. It is almost like a veil is lifted off of your team, and you can understand what motivates people to act the way they have been.
Whether you are working with a newly formed team, a long-established and entrenched team, or all the team stages in between, DISC is an assessment tool that provides insights to help you manage your team.
When to use DISC?
For those unfamiliar with the DISC model, having the DISC profiles of your newly formed teams is a handy leadership development tool in the workplace. Having your team share their profiles early in the storming phase of teaming allows a better understanding of each person’s communication style, how they act in a given situation, and how to work together by aligning people with their strengths.
While DISC is often introduced during the formation of teams, it is used as much or more with people at every stage of teaming:
- Individuals - Not just entire teams benefit from taking a DISC test. Individuals who want to understand themselves better can benefit from receiving their DISC profile. When sharing DISC reports with individual colleagues, they nod in agreement and find insight into their learning. The behaviors that are a part of their strengths sing out. Those behaviors that are weaknesses are explained so they can address to understand better ways to grow.
- Agile teams - As teams have become more agile, they require the ability to operate with speed. Role definitions and boundaries are often challenging to define. Use the personality profile to reduce conflict by productively addressing differences in understanding personality types and open blind spots within the team to create a shared experience to relieve personality clashes.
- Long-standing and stuck teams – DISC provides insight into teams that have stood for years that have to integrate people cycling in or out. Leaders who are new to the team, or have been leading them for years, can benefit from learning the DISC profiles of their colleagues. It can serve as a reset when the team culture has stagnated or is stuck performing sub-optimally by surfacing patterns that affect outcomes.
- C-suite to frontline workers – When it comes to team dynamics, one element stays the same, people. While the responsibilities, issues, and stresses are different, they can benefit from a common language. DISC provides this behavioral language between team members at every level, and between people at every level.
Within organizations that have used DISC for a while, it is not uncommon for people working together for the first time to share their DISC profiles so they have a better understanding of how to work with each other. This communication is not meant to be exclusionary, like being a part of a club or clique. Instead, it is a way to operate that allows each person to understand what the other will respond to better.
No matter if you are a business manager, HR leader, or a leader of any stripe, DISC will provide you with insights that help you lead your team. If you require an even deeper insight into your team, pair the DISC report with the T.E.A.M.S. thinking style team role report, the workplace Values report, and the Behavioral Attitudes Index report to discover a full 4-dimensional view of your team. You will find that PeopleKeys 4D Report provides you with insights that will benefit you at work and beyond.
