Team DISC

 

I've devoted a number of articles to the DISC model, examining how this can help us in understanding our personal operating style.  I also looked at how the DISC model provides insights into the preferred operating styles of others.  This puts us in a position to recognise and value diversity, and also to create ways of working effectively with others.  If you haven’t read them it would be worth skipping back and checking them out, as they provide the background for this article.  Previously we viewed the model largely on a one-to-one basis, but in this article I’m looking at our DISC insights in a team context.

When we create a personal DISC profile it gives us a bar chart comprised of the four DISC quadrants, and this illustrates the strength of each of the operating styles in our profile.  We can complete a similar process for our teams, and then use the outcomes and insights in a particular way.

Let’s start with building the team profile.  To do this each team member needs to have created their own DISC profile, or at least to have identified their two strongest quadrants.  It’s these quadrants that we use to create the team profile.  We take the strongest quadrant for each team member and plot them on our chart with a solid line box.  We then take their second strongest quadrant and plot them with a dotted line box of half the size (see below).

 

This effectively gives us a bar chart for our team.  It’s an overview of the combined preferred operating styles of all our team members.  Once we have this we can break it down, analyse it, and then use it to strengthen and support our team.

Stage one is to evaluate what this profile tells us about our team.  It’s not an exact science, but looking at our team profile, what are the likely Strengths and Weaknesses of our team?  For instance, in our example profile the blue operating style is not strongly represented.  This might mean the team fails to plan comprehensively, has loose operating structures and lacks attention to detail.

Once we have an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of a team, we can do something about it.  Our aim is to build on the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses.  We do this by establishing Ground Rules and Operating Procedures.  Again, working with our example, if structure and process is a potential weakness then we will want to devote time at the start of a project or process to establish a structure that will provide a backbone for our team, and create accountability systems that will prevent work from slipping.  When we can effectively predict challenges and obstacles, then we can develop approaches to tackle them, and even prevent them.

I appreciate this is just a small taster, but if the DSC model looks like it could be useful for your team, please get in touch and I can share some more information.

 

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