DiSC® Workshop with Make-A-Wish Philadelphia & Susquehanna Valley
Why do people act the way they do? That is the question most often asked and answered in our DiSC® Personality Discovery Workshop, and the workshop we delivered for Make-A-Wish Philadelphia & Susquehanna Valley recently was no different. Incorporating an understanding of human behavior and personality styles into a company culture can increase the overall effectiveness of the people who make up that organization, enhance the communication between team members, and reduce the potential for conflict.
Rob Jackson, DiSC® certified trainer, had the privilege of working with this group who have various responsibilities including case workers within Make-A-Wish Philadelphia & Susquehanna Valley. Rob has worked with terminally ill children in the past, so it was a pleasure for him to share his expertise and give back by volunteering his time to work with this group to help them be more effective with the kind of work they do to help children.
The underlying message for the DiSC® Personality Discovery workshop is that different isn’t bad, different is just different. During the workshop there were a lot of epiphanies and laughter with the realization of what the different personality types were. Things started to make sense as they were able to see personality styles represented with different people.
Since this is an interactive workshop, they broke into groups by personality styles and answered questions about how to deal with that personality style. They gathered a lot of valuable feedback for each type:
“i” or Influence group realized they need to be organized when they present their ideas be more thorough and include facts.
“S” or Steadiness group saw that they add great value to the organization in keeping things concrete and sharing the relationship side.
“C” or Conscientiousness group learned their value is making things happen when they’re supposed to happen and handling the details related to granting wishes for the kids.
One of the biggest revelations for the team was understanding how their personality brought a lot of value to the overall success of the organization. Sometimes individuals don’t realize that by maximizing the strengths of their personalities they are helping other people with their weaknesses to achieve the organization’s ultimate goal, which in this case is granting wishes for the kids in a very organized and emotionally stable and successful manner.
Additional tie-ins to the value of connecting with others included identifying other personality types to communicate more effectively with the different Make-A-Wish families as well as others in the organization. The team was able to see that each individual has a lot of strengths. When we surround ourselves with people who can help us with our weaknesses, that’s the formula for success. It was a big epiphany and a great moment in the workshop for the team to see why they’ve been successful so far and how they can continue to expand that success if they rely on each other’s strengths and minimize weaknesses.
