Want to improve team communication, engagement and relationships?

For people who want to gain more understanding of their personality,  including how they think and act, leadership and communications style and general self-awareness, personality profiling might be the answer.

Personality profiling is also helpful at showing you how you’re wired, enabling you to maximize your core competencies and traits. In addition, profiling works well for teams, enabling us to put strategies in place so that we can interact better together and also understand who to approach for help in areas where we might lack certain attributes ourselves.

What’s your working style?

Personality profiling isn’t new, but in recent years the number of players entering the marketplace has increased. Despite all the various offerings available, I continue to use DISC because I like its simple and straightforward questionnaire style.  It gives a detailed and informative report that tells you everything you need to know about a person, from their inner motivations to their working style. It’s particularly useful for leadership development, management training, team building, coaching and overall communications.

Introduced by Walter Clark in 1940, and based on the theory of William Moulton Marston who invented the lie detector test, the DISC personality profiling tool was designed to measure dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance. Most DISC assessments contain at least 20 questions, where the participant picks a word or phrase that is most like them, and a word or phrase that is least like them for each question.

That’s all very well and good I hear you say, but how does it all work in practice. Well to demonstrate, I wanted to share a real-life example with you.

Building constructive relationships

Lesley (not her real name) approached me last year after we met at an event. She was new to management having been recently promoted. She was worried because one of her new team was quite strong, vocal, disruptive and opinionated and she was struggling to know how to progress and build a constructive relationship with them.

At this point it seemed sensible to involve all the team in a DISC workshop, rather than single out anyone in particular. The workshop was interesting, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and were engaged throughout the process. What was apparent was that Lesley, whilst being self-aware, wasn’t sure about the DISC styles of her team, so didn’t have a good understanding about what was driving their behaviours and why they were communicating in different ways.

Adapt your style

After the session Lesley said. “Obviously before the workshop I knew about my own communicating style but hadn’t really thought about the impact of that on my team, given their own unique personalities. The workshop showed me that I needed to take the time to assess and understand another person’s personality and natural style and work on adapting my communication style to get the best out of all my team members.”

The results

Six months later and I checked in with Lesley to find out how things were going with her previously problematic team member. She was very positive, and happy to report that thanks to the knowledge and insight she gained from the workshop, things had started to transform in the workplace. Personally, she had been adapting her leadership style and knew how to ask for things, or request action, in the right way as she better understood the team member. This has led to more effective and tailored team communications, improved teamwork, a better working relationship, as well as an increase in productivity.

So, if you’d like some help to adapt your natural communication style to improve the way you connect and build relationships please get in touch. I can offer DISC profiling for individuals, as part of a personal development programme, or for teams to help build a happier, more engaged and effective team who work harmoniously together to achieve business growth and success.

If you just want to see what DISC is all about, I’m offering a free workshop entitled “Using DISC personality profiling to improve your communication skills” on 4th October. You can book your place here.