Great Teams Start With A DISC Assessment

Emotional discipline, or self-regulation, can be seen as “personal impulse control.” It’s expressed as much by what you do, as well as what you don’t do. Great leaders recognize the benefits of managing their emotions, and help their team learn how to do the same. Using a DISC Assessment, team leaders can better understand the behavioral styles of themselves and their team, and work to find ways to overcome pesky initial impulses, and create a more emotionally intelligent and harmonious team.

For any event, discussion, or social scenario, each DISC behavioral style can present a different set of “initial impulses” in a person. In many cases, the impulse may be considered positive and beneficial by the person feeling it, yet perceived negatively by others in the group. Since Emotional Intelligence is defined as the ability of individuals to recognize their own and other people’s emotions, having insight to what team members may feel should be a goal of all business professionals.

To understand how DISC scores influence a person’s behaviors, let’s look at the common impulses each behavioral style may have during something as simple as communicating with other team members:

Dominance – People who have a DISC Assessment that indicates high dominance may have an impulse to say exactly what’s on their mind, with little contemplation and too much confidence.

Influencing – “High-I” people have a strong need to be liked, so they may have an impulse to avoid needed conversations and situations if they are worried they could result in a conflict or damage a relationship.

Steadiness – If someone on your team is a “High-S” they may have an impulse to hold back their opinion, or feel like their opinion isn’t as important. They are also likely to take on all the work themselves rather than burden someone else.

Compliance – “High-C” people are known for “calculating” and therefore may have an impulse to NOT communicate. They are usually more comfortable in their office thinking instead of seeking out the opinion of others.

You can see that with a diverse team, communication may be very difficult, even volatile, based solely on behavioral styles. But when you know the DISC profile of each team member, you can adjust your communication style to minimize conflict, and create an atmosphere that encourages impulse-management, thereby giving everyone the opportunity to communicate more effectively.

Additionally, a comprehensive DISC assessment and debriefing will provide you with the key factors that make an employee a good fit in their company role, or help identify how their skills and behavioral styles may be better suited in other positions in the organization.

Communication is just one example of how DISC combined with Emotional Intelligence can be used to create great teams. For additional suggestions, contact Karen to schedule a meeting.