Everything DiSC Activity: Telling Your DiSC Story
Here’s a great activity to build into your Everything DiSC® training sessions to help people share more in-depth details about their DiSC® style. This activity is designed to be used after participants have been introduced to their primary DiSC styles. It’s a great way to keep DiSC alive in your organization!
Handout: Blank sheet of paper with Everything DiSC® Map in the corner. (Completed example below.)
FACILITATION:
SAY: Pure styles are just the beginning of DiSC®. As we have mentioned throughout our session, everyone is made up of all four DiSC styles. One way we see this is through primary and secondary styles. This activity is designed to dig a little deeper into DiSC, and to help you tell your DiSC story.
SAY: Write your name at the top left hand corner of the handout. Next to your name, list your primary and secondary style(s), and make each style into a separate column. Place your dot on the DiSC circle. To help others learn more about you, list real things that others will see you do that reflect your primary and your secondary style. (5-10 minutes)
- Based on your blended style, what differences do you see between your responses from this activity in comparison to the Day in the Life (primary style) activity?
- What are the benefits of understanding DiSC® and learning directly from people how they tend to behave in the workplace?
- How can you use this knowledge to benefit your workplace relationships and your organization?
ASK: Please tape your handout next to the poster that represents your primary style. (Completed example on left.) Take a few minutes now to walk around the room and read all of the handouts to learn more about your coworkers. (10 minutes)
ASK: What did you discover through this activity and your table group discussions?
SAY: I’ll leave these handouts up so you get the opportunity to read everyone’s handout and keep learning about your coworkers.
~What other activities have you used to help people see beyond their primary DiSC style?~
DiSC is not about stereotyping, pigeon-holing, or judging.
• “She’s a D, so you just have to deal with her bluntness.”
• “He’s an i. There’s no way he can work independently to get this done.”
• “He’s an S, so he won’t ever deal with conflict head-on.”
• “She’s a C. If we give her this task, she’ll over-analyze it and it will never get done.”
Photocredit: Chris Beach
Continue reading “DiSC is not about stereotyping, pigeon-holing, or judging.” »
Leadership for All?
I was recently speaking about our book, The 8 Dimensions of Leadership, to a group of Human Resource Professionals in California. My talk, “Becoming a Multidimensional Leader,” focused on three major themes:
1) The personality of the leader (that is, who you are as a person) is a
critical part of the dialog about “what makes a good leader.”
2) Good leaders understand that being an effective leader requires integrating knowledge with a real understanding of emotional, psychological, and interpersonal “default settings” and “blind spots.”
3) Leaders who are rated highly-effective by their subordinates are “multidimensional.” They have learned to be highly flexible in responding to the wide array of demands required by their organization. They can move outside their comfort zone and overcome the psychological barriers that keep some leaders from acting.
In essence, effective leaders are people who have attained a certain level of self-awareness and put that understanding to work as they contribute to helping an organization respond to challenges. Continue reading “Leadership for All?” »
More Everything DiSC Success Stories
Wondering how DiSC can help to transform organizations? Hear how one organization used Everything DiSC to to increase organizational performance and productivity.
The Organizational Challenge
In a large law firm with a staff dedicated to supporting hundreds of lawyers with high expectations, team performance and productivity are key to success.
Since team performance and productivity were suffering, management saw an opportunity for teams to learn how to work better together. Since their team members changed on each project, they needed skills to work better with their
manager, direct reports, and all other team members.
Solution
The Human Resources management team decided to pilot the Everything DiSC® Management program themselves. The half-day session was meant to test two things:
- Would the program be accepted by other work groups?
- Would it give employees a tool to help them work better with others?
If this training met their goals, the next step would be to train another pilot group of managers from various departments. Continue reading “More Everything DiSC Success Stories” »
DiSC Styles and Occupations
One of the advantages of the Everything DiSC® model is that we can place people on a common map. We can also plot groups of people, as averages, and compare them. Below are eight different occupations and how they map on DiSC®.
For me, the two most notable finds are:
1) Each of the occupations are closely associated with a DiSC style that makes sense, given the demands of that occupation.
2) The association between an occupation and a given DiSC style is modest at best.
Everything DiSC Success Stories
Wondering how DiSC can help to transform organizations? Here’s how one organization used Everything DiSC to increase savings in time, energy, money, and improve efficiency on both individual and company levels.
The Organizational Challenge
Five sales teams in an agricultural cooperative from five different divisions had little training in the service skills arena—training has historically been on product knowledge. Even with little formal sales training, they’ve done remarkably well, particularly in the past two years. But after several years of personnel and leadership change and two years of record-high sales, they became concerned about maintaining their position in the market.
Many of the recent changes shifted the sales focus from a consultative sale to transactional sale. They were concerned about maintaining their current customer-base while continuing to expand the business. In addition, the five sales teams were too focused on their own divisions, not considering their role as a part of the larger company team. The teams needed to build awareness of how they could assist and complement each other in their sales endeavors.
Solution
The Everything DiSC Sales Profile was given to all salespeople, to help them understand their own personal selling-style. They were led through the activities in the Everything DiSC Sales Facilitation Kit, which included practicing adapting their natural selling style to the needs of customers who have a variety of buying styles.
Everything DiSC: What happened to the Classical Patterns?
This is the final installment of a seven-week series on the different ways that the DiSC® model can be measured and represented. We’re placing a particular emphasis on contrasting the new Everything DiSC® circular model with the DiSC Classic graph model, and examining the benefits of this new approach. This week’s focus is on the difference in the assessment measurement and participant experience when taking the two assessments.
Although the Everything DiSC profiles do not technically refer to a Classical Pattern, (like in DiSC Classic profiles) Everything DiSC profiles allow facilitators to glean the same information from a quick glance at the Everything DiSC circle.
Continue reading “Everything DiSC: What happened to the Classical Patterns?” »
The Assessment Experience: DiSC Classic vs. Everything DiSC
In the DiSC Classic assessment, participants are shown 28 boxes that contain four words each. In each box, they are asked to choose one that is most like them and one that is least like them (ipsative/forced-choice scale). Consequently, participants review a total of 112 words.
Example of Ipsative/Forced-Choice scale used in DiSC Classic assessments:
One of the original reasons for using the forced-choice measurement methodology is because Continue reading “The Assessment Experience: DiSC Classic vs. Everything DiSC” »
Collaboration Does Not Equal Consensus
In their article “Are You A Collaborative Leader?” (Harvard Business Review, July 2011) Herminia Ibarra and Morten Hansen define Collaborative Leadership as the “capacity to engage people and groups outside one’s formal control and inspire them to work toward common goals – despite difference in convictions, cultural values and operating norms.”
These authors differentiate a “Consensus-based” leadership style where all parties in a small group have equal authority, from the Collaborative style where the people leading the collaborative effort have clear authority to make final decisions. Their point is that Collaborative Leaders retain a strong role in directing teams. They maintain organizational agility by forming and disbanding teams as opportunities come and go. Collaborative leaders also pay close attention to the composition of the team and don’t hesitate to keep the team fresh by adding or changing players.
Using Everything DiSC for a Variety of Organizational Needs
This is the fifth installment of a seven-week series on the different ways that the DiSC® model can be measured and represented. We’re placing a particular emphasis on contrasting the new Everything DiSC® circular model with the DiSC Classic graph model, and examining the benefits of this new approach.
Today, we’ll look at the application potential of the new Everything DiSC circular model to different organizational needs.
DiSC has proven to be very powerful in giving people a language to discuss their differences. The model helps people not only understand those differences, but value them. In a more sophisticated marketplace, however, companies often want to take DiSC even farther. Organizations routinely use DiSC to train salespeople, managers, customer service agents, leaders, etc.
With the circular DiSC map, we are able to create an application layer for the DiSC model that helps participants
see the immediate relevance of DiSC to their field, such as sales or management. For instance, the DiSC circle to the right is taken from the Everything DiSC Sales Profile. The words around the circle describe the priorities of customers or salespeople with the different DiSC styles.
So, if we have a salesperson who tends toward the S style, he probably places a priority on appearing sincere, building trusting relationships, and providing dependable service. Continue reading “Using Everything DiSC for a Variety of Organizational Needs” »
