The “Right” and “Wrong” Way to Utilize DISC and Other Assessments

DISC is a behavioral/communication measuring tool that can be a great catalyst for developing personal and professional awareness in self and interaction with others.  It can give leaders, managers, and teams excellent insights into how to evoke more effective communication, develop emotional intelligence, assign people with job duties, generate rapport with clients, benefit sales conversations, reduce conflict, and increase understanding and connection.

DISC, along with Job Benchmarking, Motivators, Competencies Skills, EQ, and other surveys, can help H.R. staff and companies hire the “right people for the right jobs,” dramatically increasing job effectiveness and reducing the costs associated with a “miss-hire.” Assessments can assist in developing career paths that align with people’s natural styles, and provide guidance in creating a training path to develop new areas to stretch and strengthen a leader/employee.  

“Right Way”:

Some key components that are imperative for a positive and beneficial experience in utilizing DISC and other assessment tools the “right way” are:

• Understanding and determining your/the organization’s reasons and desired results from using assessment tools;
• Vetting the assessment company and assessments themselves to ensure that the company and surveys meet rigorous and perpetual standards of excellence in research, analysis, validity, adverse impact studies, case studies, scientific and detailed support for their assessments;
• Using a trained professional in the debriefing, reviewing, and application of the results with continuity in training, coaching and/or consulting for leadership/management development,
  team building, hiring, communication, etc.; and
• Understanding that they are “assessments,” which may be defined as a judgment, idea or opinion about something (or someone), and are very well utilized as part of the total hiring decision.

“Wrong Way”:

Here are some examples of how DISC and other assessment tools can be used the “wrong way”:

• Selecting a DISC/assessment tool based on lower price and/or with little or no investigation as to the validity of the instruments;
• Not asking for an adverse impact study (that holds up in a court of law); a valid adverse impact study shows that the assessments closely follow guidelines of the EEOC, stipulating that organizations use reasonable efforts to remove biases in their hiring process. Valid, vetted pre-employment assessment surveys, that do not discriminate in age, race, gender, culture, and other factors, should actually minimize liability risks by making the selection process fairer and more objective (rather than just using interviews which can be more subjective). Prospective employees have won lawsuits regarding misuse of pre-employment surveys when the hiring organization was unable to produce a valid adverse impact study from the assessment company;
• Spending money (and time) on employees taking assessments and then minimally or not fully applying the results to new learning, awareness, creating new habits in communication effectiveness, building the team, developing the leader/manager, etc.;
• Using invalid, incomplete DISC/assessment tools can do more harm than good because the results are not trustworthy;
• Having unqualified debriefing or little/no reviewing of the reports, resulting in misapplication, using “styles” as excuses in behaviors, pigeonholing people as “a type” and thus mislabeling as incapable of doing or being something outside their “type;” pinning people against each other rather than aligning, balancing, and encouraging the benefit of all types of staff to the organization.

To recap, in order to derive the full merit of these potentially insightful, highly valuable tools:

• Request a DISC assessment experience for yourself with a trained professional who can explain the results in detail and demonstrate the validity of their tools. Request and review white papers, ongoing research, adverse impact study, as provided by the assessment company;
• Work with the trained coach/consultant/trainer to discuss the desired outcomes in using the assessment tools and to formulate a plan for their application – leadership/management development, 360 reviews, team building, sales/customer service goals, public speaking/presentation skills, hiring, organizational culture review, workplace stress assessments-wellness initiatives; and
• Periodically reassess that your current assessment tools are still meeting your needs, validity standards, and being applied to their fullest benefit.

These measures will ensure that the investment that you and your organization put into the assessment tools in money, time, and people-resources will be returning an excellent value toward accomplishing your goals, maintaining the company’s mission/culture, and increasing your bottom-line by contributing to quality and care in delivering your products/services to your clients.

The Nature of Leadership

What is the Nature of your Leadership Style? Is it like a tornado – wreaking change through immediate and unpredictable force? Is it like the moon’s effect on the tides – profound, with regular predictability? Is it subtle, like a gentle breeze – stirring leaves with a calm, unseen influence?

Leadership is not just something that happens in an office, or within a corporation or organization. One of the definitions of leadership is an act or instance of leading, guidance, direction. It can also mean control, influence, command, and effectiveness. And whether or not we are aware of it, each of us is the leader of our own life. We also co-create our life with those seen and unseen forces around us. Too often we go through life leading by default, rather than purposefully leading.

Nature seems, to us, to be conducted without purpose, random, unpredictable. However, we can’t begin to understand the vastness of the inner workings of Nature and how this entire planet works together. The higher level of leadership that is going on around us is unfathomable to us. If you watch any Nature program, you will be awed by the precision, balance, effectiveness, direction, and teamwork of animals, birds, insects, fish, plants, trees. And they do it all without “words.”  And yet humans with all our technology, languages, methodologies, techniques, leadership books, governments, organizations – have a tough time with what Nature seems to do effortlessly.

Per Jonas Salk, “if all insects on Earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.” What does that tell you about the virtues of our leadership as compared with Nature’s?

Exceptional leadership is something each of us should aspire to be and do on purpose in our daily lives. Take a look at your leadership style:

Choose to Receive Your Good

Who are you without your struggle?  If you are so used to struggling, unhappiness, emotional suffering, scarcity, lack, less-than, and you want to create ease, happiness, enthusiasm, joy, abundance, self-worth – start in small ways to enable a greater and greater capacity to hold happiness – to open and receive your good.

How practiced are you in receiving?  When “my” dog showed up out of the North Carolina woods, he was tired, starving, ribs showing, ears cut up from running through briars, scared, and yet he was ready to soak up the food, water, affection, play, and love showered on him by a bunch of strangers!  What a lesson to witness in being open to receive goodness.

In coaching conversations with clients, it is interesting to hear how much we identify with the past, clinging to the familiarity of what we do not want.  We often have a lot of resistance to practicing the new way of being that we imagine.  Replacing the old is not as far off as we might think.  “Positive” thoughts have much more oomph than “negative” thoughts.  Think about this – one small flame from a candle can light an entire huge dark room allowing you to see everything; however, it is impossible to bring a small amount of darkness into a bright room and make it dark!

I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being. ~ Hafiz

The Illusion of Scarcity

I was walking on the beach one day when a very loud squawking overhead grabbed my attention.  I looked up to see a small bird with a fish dangling from its mouth, being chased by a flock of seagulls.  The chase continued on and on for some time – with the bird being pursued engaging in some amazingly quick flight patterns to outmaneuver the other birds.  I thought why doesn’t the bird just eat the fish, thereby ending the chase?  Is the bird so focused on frenetic flying that it can’t enjoy the catch?  More importantly I pondered – in the time the other birds spent chasing, they could have devoted that energy into finding their own meal.  How often do we want someone else to do the work for us?  How frequently do we long for what someone else has and expend more time and energy into being jealous and wanting to take it away from them – when there is a whole world of goodies – abundance everywhere, available for each of us if we recognize it?  Technically, there is plenty of everything for everyone, particularly because not everybody wants and needs the same thing.  Too often we want to ride on the coattails of someone else’s talent, someone else’s money, their friends, their accomplishments – when we have talents and abilities of our own to uncover, discover, and put into action.

Lessons from my Flower Garden

I have become aware of a feeling that I experience at various and sometimes odd moments in my life – a feeling that may best be described as sweetness.  It may occur when I’m doing something simple or I’m having a moment of appreciation.  A subtle yet powerful feeling of active contentment, being in the now, yet somehow filled with hope that the future I long to create is being created, is working, is forthcoming.  I would like to experience this feeling a lot more frequently.  When I am in a brief moment of this sweetness, I feel trust, faith, and a distinctive knowing that I have the ability to create my soul’s desires, and I feel assured that it is actually happening.  All this is a very fleeting moment of sweetness.

On the Right Road

After meeting with an acquaintance in Loveland CO, she suggested I take a different road back to Boulder, and said I would see signs for getting onto the highway. I drove for some time, and started to wonder if I had missed the turnoff.  I didn’t see a sign.  Maybe there wasn’t a sign? Without a GPS or a map in the car, I turned around and drove back quite a ways.  I took another road briefly – and knew that wasn’t correct since I was driving toward the mountains, and they should have been on my right.  I called a friend and discovered I had not traveled far enough.  I drove back onto the first road, and realized the sign for the highway was just a little past where I had turned around.   

I thought about the significance of this and wondered how many times have I done this in my life?  How many times have I turned around, doubting that I was on the right road?