DISC quadrants and Teams

DISC is one of the more popular personality traits assessment tool, thats been used to have a peripheral understanding of your Team members centered on behavioral traits. Over the 9 years of having conducted training sessions that are centered on Teams, I have found this tool to be useful when used with coherent learning outcomes in mind.

Get to know your team members, you don’t have to walk the journey blindfolded

Background on DISC personality assessment tool; this is a traits based assessment tool whose development will be attributed to William Marston, an imminent psychologist from Harvard, who received his Phd in 1921. The DISC model, provides an easy to use and understand traits based qualification tool that will allow you to understand the people you work with in the 4 determining quadrants. Primarily:

Dominant – People high in this trait are direct and assertive, they think independently, ambitious and usually take a quick and active approach toward solving problems.
Interpersonal – People who are attuned to others in social settings, and people centric. Usually extroverted, their primary means of getting things done is through people.
Steady – People who are persistent and steady taking measured stable approach towards life. Usually quite accommodating and undemanding.
Conscientious – People who are interested in precision and accuracy. They want structure and they focus intensely on facts

Thats just a brief overview above that describes the terms used in DISC. When individuals want to come together as a team, having just activities drive the experience will bring about a bit of bonding and it remains at best there. Having a tool, be it DISC or other assessment tools that are available will provide you with a platform to know how your colleagues take on work tasks, their temperaments, styles of communicating and their behavioral disposition at work. I have found executives to directors, wanting to know this and hiring us to develop programs that will allow individual to share this willingly in our workshops.

In our team building or strategy mapping sessions participants are usually curious because they want to know about themselves. More so, they usually want to know the behavioral traits of their colleagues too. When sessions are facilitated well, individuals will start to share their behavioral traits with team members on their own accord. Thats when team building and trust happens. Here you want to relate to your colleagues centered on meeting the common challenges you have in the office. Use of DISC is akin to seeing a reflection in the mirror. In this instance your behavioral traits. It has to go deeper. As a facilitator if you are able to map behavioral traits, with core responsibilities, strengths and the common purpose of your team, … this where the essence of using a tool like DISC comes alive with the DISC team building or strategy planning sessions. Participants need to be assured that this tool is non threatening and there are no adverse traits that are indicated. DISC accentuates the best in you and all 4 traits have produced awesome folks. Moreover we carry all 4 traits at varying levels preferring one more then the other. However, your profile does not limit you in anyway and skills sets in the other quadrants can be learnt and acquired.

Having conducted such sessions with corporate teams in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong, we have helped corporate executives and civil servants leverage on getting to know their team members better. Appreciating the strengths individuals bring and accentuating the value of having diverse traits described in DISC. DISC is an easy to use tool, when well facilitated with coherent learning outcomes, it will help teams better manage the differences and work towards a common goal.

Lately I have even spotted patterns in behavioral traits seen in the Civil Service, Financial Institutions based here and Gen Y’s entering the workforce. Do get in touch with us, if you want to find out more and we can share our anecdotal data at your office if you are based here in Singapore or Malaysia. You can drop us an e-mail at office@teamworkbound.com. We will be more then happy to share with you the data we have, based on professions and DISC types. Hopefully it will give you a heads up on strategizing the talent base you need and perhaps the skill sets your current team needs to acquire.