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I admit it. I’m an assessment junkie. I’ve taken them all. Some are fun, “Which animal are you?”. Others are valid and reliable tools to be used as part of additional information gathering. Some serve a single purpose. Others can serve multiple purposes, making them essential business tools.

As a reformed assessment junkie, I focus my energy on assessment tools that offer the biggest bang for my buck. And that is why DISC is one of the tools I use most often with my clients. As a Physical Therapist, my evaluations and treatment plans were grounded in scientific research. Looking for reliability and validity in all the tools I use, I found TTI Success Insights. With brain science and tools normed at least every two years, I found a scientific shortcut to understanding myself and others.

The behavioral tendencies evaluated in the DISC profile explain how people influence others and respond to problems and challenges, the pace of the environment, and the rules and procedures set by others.

Here are 4 ways the DISC assessment acts as a shortcut to leadership success.

Emotional Intelligence: Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is a key leadership skill. It speaks to our ability to know who we are at our core, and what that means when interacting with the world around us. The DISC assessment helps us understand ourselves so much better. And that's foundational when it comes to teams as well. When we understand how we behave naturally, we can be strategic about leveraging that behavior. DISC also provides a map for us to interpret how our behavior impacts our interactions with other people. This self-awareness can be even more thoroughly leveraged when we understand how others approach interactions as well.

Emotional Intelligence: Social Awareness

Not only does the DISC assessment give us a map for understanding ourselves, but it also gives us insight into understanding others. If we want to be emotionally intelligent leaders, having more data for interpreting others’ behavior is truly a game changer. When we don’t understand our teams, it can be tempting to “blame” them for mistakes or be upset by certain interactions. Boiled down, DISC can help you as a leader to “blame less and help more.” What employee wouldn’t prefer that? With the information from a DISC assessment, Krumma Jónsdóttir, a Forbes Councils Member, explains that we can “become proactive and mindful, creating the conditions to evolve in [y]our comfort zone and managing situations outside [y]our comfort zone.” It’s this self-management that impacts emotional intelligence.

Communication

Outside of emotional intelligence, the DISC assessment also equips leaders to communicate more effectively. In short, the DISC assessment creates a language around observable behavior. It’s a communication cheat sheet! You could set aside six months for a team to figure out how they want to interact together, or you could take an assessment that gives you language and solutions within minutes. The bottom line is we all want people to understand who we are, and how we're going to do things. DISC does exactly this, which enhances communication and identifies communication gaps so you can prevent misunderstandings and dips in productivity.

Collaboration

The DISC assessment tells us explicitly what each person's quantifiable value is and how they can make the most impact on a team. It’s true, identifying these superpowers and strengths can create tension. After all, it highlights our differences. That being said, DISC validates these differences while offering solutions for overcoming this natural friction. Understanding how and why people operate in the ways that they do will minimize unnecessary conflict while maximizing the team's strengths. Lastly, Terry Segerberg, CEO of Mesa Industries explains that DISC can also reveal collaborative gaps where a team is missing a strength or quality that could be beneficial. This information is key when making hiring decisions.

We use science to improve our patient care and advance technology, but are we willing to use it as a shortcut for getting to know our teams? When we as leaders are able to influence self-awareness, emotional intelligence, communication, and collaboration with minimal time and effort, that sets our team up for long-term success. Consider making the DISC assessment your next investment in your business.

When you consider the criteria for a new hire, how much weight do you give to how they are going to behave? While you likely use behavioral interviewing questions, they are subjective- both for the person answering the question and the person asking the question. Because we all have biases, it is important to add objectivity into the selection process.

Assessing behavioral tendencies doesn’t mean you’re looking for a team of identical robots. That said, if someone’s natural behaviors are aligned with what’s needed for the job, they are more likely to be successful.

Here are three ways you can use the DISC assessment to design a high-performance team.

Understand yourself.

If you don’t know where you are, you won’t know what steps to take or which direction to head in to reach your destination. As a leader and participant in a team, self-awareness is key to designing a team that works well together under your leadership style. As Forbes Council Member, Alex Llorens describes, “leaders with self-knowledge are better equipped to draw from their personal purpose and strengths—while also accepting their setbacks and blindspots—in order to bring more heart, authenticity and even fun to the business.”

DISC gives you tools for understanding your own behavioral tendencies, as well as your team members’. This knowledge allows you to flex and bend to meet others where they are. You don’t need to break with who you are; you simply need to adapt to ensure that your interactions with others create a connection instead of a barrier. This connection is what establishes a successful, People First team.

Understand your team.

Social awareness is having your antenna up to observe communication cues that may reveal other people’s emotional experiences – the motivations behind their behavior. Because you can never know for certain what is informing someone’s behavior, tools like DISC can give you a common language and a starting place for understanding.

Behavioral tendencies evaluated in the DISC profile explain how someone:

• Responds to problems and challenges

• Influences others to their point of view

• Responds to the pace of the environment

• Responds to rules and procedures set by others

By understanding the behavior of your current team, you can better assess what gaps need to be filled by a new candidate, and what type of candidate will mesh well. Instead of listing a generic job description and the minimum job requirements, focus on the organization’s values and culture. You want to attract people whose behaviors reflect your company’s values and support the culture you’ve worked so hard to design.

Diversify your hires.

Some behavioral styles are better suited for certain roles than others. A decisive and venturesome person will be more successful as a leader than as a back office person focused on process work. Likewise, a solitary, fact-loving person will probably enjoy bookkeeping more than an outgoing, people-oriented person would. Job matching provides clarity on what styles will match each role.

Individual roles will likely have a common primary style. In a leadership team, diversity of behavioral styles adds value. Leaders with a high sense of urgency are balanced by people wanting to make sure there is enough information to make a decision. Leaders focused on the task are balanced by those focused on the people aspect of the decision.

Selection should be an objective process. TTI Success Insights says, “Job matching is the science of carefully defining superior performance for each position and then using objective

criteria to determine who is selected.” To that end, your hiring model needs to look at four critical areas where the candidate and the job need to match:

1. Technical skills and knowledge

2. How they behave

3. Why they do what they do

4. Soft skills

Let’s be clear: no candidate will exactly match all four components, but job matching allows you to examine the candidate from the context of the “ideal,” identify the gaps, and make a thoughtful decision. If someone lacks a technical skill, you evaluate if it’s a must-have or something the person can be trained on later.

Skills and systems can be taught, but behavior is much more set in stone. By using the DISC assessment tool to understand yourself, understand those around you, and diversify your hires, you can more efficiently and effectively design a high-performance team.

Self-awareness is a key leadership skill, one that most leaders overlook and most employees focus on intently.

We know self-awareness is essential for growth. If you don’t know where you are, you won’t know what steps to take to reach your goals. But more importantly, a lack of self-awareness impacts our emotional intelligence which directly affects our ability to regulate our behavior. This self-regulation is essential to effective leadership and sets the tone for our teams.

Why Emotional Intelligence Matters to Leadership

The Oxford Dictionary defines emotional intelligence (EQ ) as “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.” In short, it’s the ability to recognize, understand, and effectively manage our emotions so we can facilitate high levels of collaboration and productivity. In both cases, self-awareness is the foundation.

Unlike behavioral tendencies and inherent motivations, which are for the most part fixed, EQ is a skill, a competency of leadership, and like all skills, it can be improved if you work on it. EQ is also recognized as one of the key drivers of performance success; a recent Udemy report showed that 88% of employees value emotional intelligence in leaders.

When skilled at regulating emotional responses, you can stay clear-headed in challenging situations. This calm and clarity in thinking allow you to make better decisions despite what is happening around you.

How to Cultivate Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence. Simply put, it’s our ability to understand what we are experiencing (elation, sadness, anger), what triggers it, and what the impact is. Identifying and tracking triggers helps us notice when we are having a strong response, and understand what triggered the emotion.

You can master self-awareness in two steps:

1. Track situations that elicit strong emotions. Pay close attention to your emotions. Notice when you have intense feelings of joy or frustration in response to specific events or a response that was or wasn’t helpful in a particular situation.

2. Identify the trigger. It’s tempting to attribute an emotion to something on the surface, but the trigger often stems from something deeper. You can’t respond appropriately if you don’t understand what is happening and why, so dig into the emotion to find the root cause.

How to Self- Regulate

Once you understand what triggers you and why, you can focus on the act of self-regulation. Managing your reactions allows you to stay in control and do the work that needs to get done instead of being held hostage by what you’re experiencing internally.

Here are 3 steps for developing self-regulation skills:

1. Seek feedback. Initially, it may be difficult to recognize when you are having a strong reaction. Sometimes, your colleagues notice your reactions even if you don’t. For example, you might not feel your face grimace, but they will see it. Seek their feedback on how you respond to triggers.

2. Find a better way. Once you understand your responses, resolve to give a better response next time.

3. Practice. There are many methods to manage your reactions. Experiment to find the one that works for you.

Self-regulation extends beyond emotions. Understanding your own behavioral tendencies, as well as your team members’, allows you to flex and bend to meet others where they are. When you set an emotionally intelligent tone for your team, you empower everyone to cultivate their own emotional intelligence and self-regulation, which over time dramatically improves workplace culture and performance.