Beyond Team Building - How to Use DISC Personality Assessment and Profiling to Drive Team Performance

As the world becomes more connected, complex and fast-moving effective teamwork is crucial. Teams that communicate and collaborate well perform better. Here’s how DISC helps teams perform.

What is a DISC Assessment?

A profiling tool, DISC classifies behavioural patterns into four main groups: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.

Learn more about the four core types here.

The 12 DISC Personality Types

Different combinations of the four core types result in 12 different DISC Styles. Everyone has one of these styles.

Understanding and using these 12 styles helps team members communicate and collaborate more effectively, lifting team performance. Teams can go beyond traditional team building to sustainably enhance their dynamics, improve communication, and lift performance and productivity.

Each team-member's style is identified and explained in their DISC Profile.

The DISC Personality Profile

When each person in a team completes an assessment they receive a comprehensive 20 page profile that defines and describes your behavioural tendencies. Their profile provides clear, practical suggestions for becoming more effective in general and specific suggestions for how to communicate and collaborate more effectively.

Taking the DISC Personality Test

Taking a DISC test is straightforward. It involves receiving an email with a link to a 20-minute online assessment. The world's leading provider - Wiley Everything DISC -  provides an assessment tool and an easy-to-use portal that makes helps users learn about DISC, share and compare profiles, and understand ways to work more effectively.

Learn more or enquire about getting DISC profiles here.

How Does a DISC Profile Help an Individual Team Member?

A DISC profile assessment tells a person how they tend to behave in their work and how strongly they show the tendencies of their style. Their profile offers a range of practical insights into how they could communicate and collaborate more effectively.

Effective Teams - Using DISC Styles Goes Beyond Team Building to High-Performing Teams

When everyone in a team knows their DISC personality style they go beyond team building, developing not only relationships but also performance.

In established teams, people often know each other well and when DISC profiles are shared it's not uncommon to hear well-intended comments like, "That is so you!". What DISC provides mature teams is less about relationship building and more about practical suggestions for better communication and collaboration.

In newer teams, or teams with newer members, DISC accelerates the process of team-members getting to know one another and working out how to work together effectively.

For teams, individual DISC profiles are complemented by team reports, which draw on key elements of the individual reports to provide a picture of how the team as a whole tends to operate. 

Here is more information about ways in which DISC develop teams ...

Awareness and Understanding

The primary feature of DISC is that it provides clear insights about how people like to work. By increasing awareness and understanding of this between members of teams, DISC helps them understand how to better work together.

This knowledge encourages empathy and collaboration, as team members better appreciate the different perspectives and working styles of others.

For instance, a Dominant (D) team member may prefer quick decision-making and action, while a Steady (S) colleague may need more time to process changes and adapt. Understanding these differences helps them to minimise misunderstandings and conflicts creating a more harmonious work environment.

Enhancing Communication

Effective communication is the backbone of successful teams. DISC profiling provides a common language for team members to discuss their preferences and approaches to communication. By knowing each other’s preferred communication styles, team members can tailor their communication accordingly.

For example, Influential (I) types may prefer open and enthusiastic discussions, while Conscientious (C) types might appreciate more structured, data-driven conversations.

Teams that communicate effectively are more likely to share ideas openly, provide constructive feedback, and collaborate seamlessly.

Leveraging Strengths

Diversity offers strengths to a team if it can tap into the benefits of those differences. By identifying team-member's strengths teams can assign roles and responsibilities that align with individual behavioural strengths. For example, a team might designate a Conscientious (C) member to handle data analysis while allowing an Influential (I) member to lead client presentations.

This sort of alignment also enhances team member's job satisfaction. When team members work in roles that suit their strengths, they are more engaged, productive, and motivated.

Fostering a Positive Team Culture

A positive team culture is essential for high performance.

DISC personality profiling enables a culture of acceptance and appreciation by helping team members understand and value each other’s differences. For teams that invest in DISC, the result is a safer, more trusting environment that makes for more cohesive teams. 

Facilitating Team Development

DISC profiling is not just beneficial during the initial stages of team formation; it also plays a critical role in ongoing team development. Organisations can use DISC assessments to evaluate team dynamics periodically, identifying areas for improvement and growth. This ongoing process helps teams remain aligned with their goals and adapt to changing circumstances.

Improving Conflict Resolution

Conflict at work happens. How a team navigates tension and conflict can significantly impact its performance.

DISC profiling equips team members with tools to manage and resolve conflicts more effectively. By understanding the personality types and their typical behaviours involved team members can approach resolution with a fresh perspective and more easily resolve tension or conflict.

Recruitment for a Better Team

Can DISC help with recruitment? Yes, it can. DISC profiles help leaders understand their team environment and in the recruitment process this awareness supports role and team 'fit' considerations when deciding who to hire.

Learn more here about how to use DISC in recruitment.

A Powerful Tool for Leaders to Lift Team Performance

If you are in leadership role DISC is a powerful, pratical tool for improving team communication and collaboration. By using the DISC tool within a team, team leaders can build team cohesion and lift both individual effectiveness and team communication.

DISC is a useful leadership development tool for leaders as individuals. It is an even more valuable as a collective leadership development tool for leadership teams.

Implementing DISC for a Team

DISC is a high-return investment that helps teams develop quickly. There are three steps:

Step 1 - The first step is getting DISC profiles. This is a straightforward online process that takes each person about 20 minutes. Once each person has their profile there are two steps to getting the most out of DISC ...

Step 2 - Introduce DISC. This is best done in an in-person or online workshop. These usually 2-3 hours long and make sure participants understand DISC theory, the DISC model, and their own styles. These workshops are engaging and even fun. Click here if you'd like to enquire about getting DISC profiles or a DISC workshop.

Step 3 - Embed DISC. The goal is using it in normal daily work. For example, by having a team's DISC Map up on the wall people quickly learn the styles of their team-mates and can;t help but bring that awareness to their dealings with each other.

High-performing teams don't happen by accident. Most team development takes time. DISC is a proven way to immediately access individual and team performance improvements ... in an engaging and culture building way.