Forming a Team? DiSC® Training Helps You Assign Better Roles
Managers who assemble teams can benefit a lot from DiSC® training.
Staying agile, running a lean organization, or just maintaining efficiency: it’s all about getting the most from each player according to his or her unique strengths.
Knowing about personality styles and how they affect behavior is the first step in that direction.
Thinking styles are important.
There’s mounting evidence that the best-performing teams are the ones put together according to thinking styles rather than “doing styles”. We are used to assigning roles based on what people do: he’s a researcher, he’s the project manager, she’s the leader, she’s the liaison with the vendors, etc. It’s easy to know what people “do” in a workplace- just take a look at their job titles or the work they’ve been assigned in the past.
But assigning team roles according to what people do isn’t enough anymore. The smartest managers now consider how people think, too. In fact, thinking styles are increasingly becoming part of the equation when teams get built. It’s how you build an agile organization- one which out-thinks its competition rather than simply trying to out-produce.
So if the smartest companies are now building teams with thinking styles in mind, how are they doing that? The simple answer is that it demands in-depth knowledge of your team’s personalities.
DiSC® Training helps you define thinking roles.
Evaluating how your team thinks and then assigning roles based on the results may sound overwhelming, but there’s now a simple framework for that. It’s called the DiSC® Personality Assessment. And thankfully, it’s nothing like the old personality tests of yesteryear.
Unlike old “personality tests”, the DiSC® system approaches personality styles from a descriptive point of view. There’s no right or wrong style. We each have our own strengths, and productivity is simply a matter of finding the right mix of people and roles on a team. In other words, letting people thrive according to their unique abilities rather than expecting everyone to be the same will result in a better team.
Understanding our own personality styles is the key to knowing how others think. Whether you’re a manager putting together a team for a specific project or you’re a member of a team working towards a goal, understanding how others think is the greatest aid to communication. You’ll know why, for example, Ed keeps harping on the details, or why Meg doesn’t say a word during the planning stages.
Rather than approaching behavior you don’t understand as a problem, you’ll have the tools to understand where that behavior is coming from. The key to good teamwork is understanding, and DiSC® training gets you there.
