Communicating effectively and establishing trust with your colleagues is the best way to nurture growth within your company. Still, it’s important to remember that interoffice communication involves more than just words, and there are tools available to help you master this nonverbal aspect of communication. One such tool is a DISC assessment.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to learn the most effective way to communicate with your coworkers based on their personality and experiences? Some kind of Rosetta Stone to help connect with colleagues? Well, a DISC assessment is as close as you’ll get.
This tool helps people better understand themselves and their colleagues so they can learn how to best communicate with each other and feel like they’re speaking as close to a common language as possible. Explore a case study of the leading business communication skills coaching tool that ensures nothing gets lost in translation:
What is a DISC Assessment?
A DISC test is a behavioral-assessment that maps personalities across four core behaviors:
- Dominance
- Influencing
- Steadiness
- Conscientious
This tool isn’t a way to gauge intelligence or aptitude. Instead, this test measures how people respond to challenges and work with others and their unique values and motivators.
“When building trust, people want to know that you are sincere in acknowledging them. Recognize people in a way that is meaningful to that person. A one-size-fits-all approach is a one-size-fits-NONE,” – Stacey Mckibben, CEO at Consilio
What is the Purpose of a DISC Assessment?
A DISC assessment helps maximize talent, create teams with compatible skills and traits, resolve conflict, and teach profiling skills to fit a customer’s buying style. Benefits include:
- Improving working relationships and performance
- Minimizing infighting while maximizing collaboration
- Honing sales and communication skills
- Creating a better work environment
“A DISC test empowers you to go beyond The Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated to create a flexible, high-performance team by applying The Platinum Rule: Treat others how they want to be treated,” Stacey M. elaborates.
A Case Study of Using a DISC Assessment
Meet Ms. M, a COO who needed help refining her hiring process and worried her hiring team was falling victim to unconscious biases.
After taking the DISC assessment, the hiring team understood their personality styles and could identify when they had a bias toward someone of the same or an opposing style. The hiring manager discovered he fell in the D-style quadrant. But what does this mean?
Well, first and foremost, different personality types have different strengths and traits.
D-style individuals are more aggressive, confident, outspoken, decisive, and individualistic and focus on tasks, things, and accomplishments. S-style people, however, are more easygoing and likely to be “team players” and focus on people and feelings.
These personalities are often opposites, which can cause friction and create biases. In the past, the hiring manager perceived this easygoing nature as a weakness. Learning this about themselves, the hiring manager stepped back and developed more self-awareness.
The next time a person came in for an interview who exhibited S-style traits, they were able to recognize this to better control how they responded, which resulted in building a stronger, more diverse team by giving everyone a fair chance.
“The DISC test helped us better understand our communication styles and how others differ. It has been a valuable and insightful tool we’ve incorporated into the interview process that has helped us make huge gains on our leadership goals this year,” Ms. M, the COO, said.
Setting Up DISC Assessments and Business Communication Skill Coaching to Create Success
This story only scratches the surface of how you can use this interoffice communication tool. Whether you are looking for sales communication tools or good ol’ fashioned executive coaching, all roads start here.
Effective business, no matter the industry, is about people, and reading people is an entirely different language.
A DISC test is like a Rosetta Stone that deciphers what can sometimes feel like an alien language. This test bridges gaps and forms connections to create high-performing, more efficient teams and makes people fluent in the universal languages of people and business.
At Consilio, we can help your business get set up for the DISC assessment, interpret the results, and improve your team’s performance through business skill communication coaching and leadership training. Ready to create success on purpose? Schedule a consultation to start, and take a free, shortened version on our website.
