13 October 2019

Have you ever been in a room or meeting and thought “Why does this person just not get it? I can’t believe they think that way”? It can happen, you find yourself absolutely baffled by how some people operate. They’re saying and doing things that are sooooo not how you would be behaving. “Who do they think they are? Why are they doing that? On what planet are they on?”

When we establish the differences in the behaviours in our people and teams we can start to build a resilience and tolerance for people who are ‘different’ to us. If there’s someone on the opposite end of the spectrum in behaviours there may be clashes…. 

If there were too many Dominant behaviours and we would be at war all the time, everyone would be trying to lead. Too many Influential behaviours and work would be so social that the tasks would suffer. Too many Stable behaviours and there would be no change… ever. Too many Compliant behaviours and nothing would get done because they just couldn’t risk making the ‘wrong’ decisions. It is by understanding ourselves and our differences that we can then put new practical behaviours in place to leverage from these differences.

Let’s look at an example: Your boss is short tempered, fast paced and seems to not care so much about the people side of things? Cool. There’s a place for some of his behaviours and he can also change his own behaviours with some coaching to turn his short temperedness into something more resourceful BUT let’s look at what WE can do here because in the end the only behaviours we can change are our own.

How we can adapt our behaviours around this type of boss:

• Help him/her win, results are important to them
• Do not try to over power them
• Speak directly about the solutions, not the problems
• No fluffing about with long winded emails and small talk
• Focus on the tasks at hand
• Try not to be too emotional
• Stick to facts, not opinions
• Dot points when emailing. Be straight to the point
• Be fast paced; make an effort to speed up around them
• Maintain eye contact in a non threatening way
• Pick up the tempo in your voice

How amazing will it be when this boss does his/her DISC Workshop and they realise how to adapt and interact with others in ways which serve the people in their team?

When everyone in the team is aware of their own style and each other’s we can meet in the middle with our adapted behaviours. We now have an understanding of ‘the why’ behind how each person behaves. When the whole team understands and adapts it makes adapting super easy to implement. This creates better rapport, communication and collaboration which leads to a higher performing team.

When every member in a team does the DISC Bevahioural Analysis Questionnaire each individual receives a copy of their report and a copy of the teams report to see where each individual sits on the DISC Scale. When we have this information in front of us after learning about DISC we can start to make some real changes.

Learn more about behaviours in my book. Buy my Book Here.