Team Building with DISC
DISC helps participants find out more about themselves, it also helps them learn about their team mates. DISC also help participants learn how to work with and communicate with their team mates, and also in the area of job specialisation and career planning.
In short, DISC helps us in the following areas:
1. Better understand our own strengths and weaknesses for personal growth
2. Better understand the strengths and weaknesses of our team members
3. Learn how to communicate, motivate and influence different team members
4. Learn how to allocate different tasks to different team members
DISC Behaviour Profile
DISC behaviour profile is one of the oldest form of behavioural profiling instrument that is widely used by corporations around the world today, in the areas of recruitment, job placement, team building and conflict resolution. In our experience, it is easy to understand, apply, remember and also highly accurate. The DISC behaviour profile is a self-assessment tool, meaning it is a person’s own perception of himself, making it undisputedly accurate to the subject and it serves as a tool to help understanding of personalities of team members.
Dr. Willaim Marston
DISC was first introduced by Dr. William Moulten Marston in 1926 when he wrote a book called, “Emotions of Normal People”. Inside his book, he explained that there are 4 main personality traits in the world today, namely, “Dominance”, “Influence”, “Steadiness” & “Compliance”.
Dr. Marston is a Psychologist was an expert in human behaviour who was ahead of his time. He was an activist for women’s rights and he believed that deep down inside them, people wanted to see women in power. Thus he created the comic series, “Wonder Woman”, under the pen name “Charles Marston”, which became a hit with readers.
His deep passion for human behaviour also led him to invent the early lie detector, which later evolved to become the polygraph machine.
Though certain behavioural traits are direct opposites, it does not mean that a person can only posses one of them and not the other, it just means that he behaves differently in different circumstances.
DISC Profiling Instrument
The DISC profiling instrument that we use are original 32-paged DISC booklets from USA, from the world’s largest publisher of DISC materials. Dr. Sandy Kulkin and his team has translated the booklets into 10 languages. It has been applied in team development, training, career development, consulting, conflict management and recruitment (as well as other management areas) all over the world.
Dominance
People with the ‘D’ trait are usually described as dominant, decisive & direct. They are task focused people who make quick decision and usually have good intuition. They have high-ego strength, are self-starters and risk takers, though they can sometimes be demanding to themselves and their team mates. They are usually the natural leaders in a team.
The ’D’ person is the one that you can dump on a deserted island and visit him one year later to find a bungalow with a farm and probably a swimming pool built from scratch, or you may find that he has already found his way back to his own home. They are determined and tenacious workers that have the ability to get the job done.
‘D’ people are also natural leaders who have the ability to push their team to extraordinary levels. These are the people that will initiate changes and introduce new activities to boost team performance.
Influence
The ‘I’ trait person is one who is influencing, interested in people and interactive. I people love to communicate, they are good motivators, encouraging, usually humorous and interesting to talk to and they are the life of the party. In a team, they are often play the role of a motivational leader.
‘I’ personality people loves to make new friends, they are the “social butterfly” that have hundreds, if not thousands, of phone numbers stored in their handphones and are hoping from party to party. Sometimes you will find ‘I’ people walking around the carpark looking for their car as they are also known to be careless with details, as they are usually distracted with conversation or other more interesting thoughts.
The ‘I’ leader is the motivational leader who is positive, creative and fun to work with. The ‘I’ person will say,
teambuilding? Sounds fun, let’s do it!”.
Steadiness
The ‘S’ people are typically steady, stable & secure. ‘S’ people are also extremely loyal, often staying in an antagonistic environment for a long time. They are also patient, good listeners, excellent team players and are able good with relations. You will hardly find an ‘S’ person screaming and shouting at anybody, they will usually give in rather than argue, however, ‘S’ people are also reputed to hold grudges.
The ‘S’ leader is one that is patient, understanding and are often able to gain the trust of the team. The ‘S’ person will be the ones that will suggest including families for dinner after the team building session, some of them may be reluctant to go for team building sessions as they may resist any unfamiliar situation.
Compliance
As the name suggests, ‘C’ people are correct, controlled and compliant. If there is a rule to follow, they will be the first to follow. If there are no rules, they will make one for you. ‘C’ people are perfectionists, systematic and usually religiously clean and neat. The ‘C’ people are easy to spot in the office, just take a walk around the office and look for the neat and clean tables and people with exceptionally neat handwriting. In any team, ‘C’ people are the quality control people who will check everything twice to ensure the highest possible standards.
The ‘C’ leader is meticulous, fair and strives for perfection. The ‘C’ leader is able to teach, lead and guide team members by hand holding them until they are able to perform at an almost perfect standard.
Free DISC workshop (not applicable for corporate groups)
We conduct free DISC workshops for unemployed and students at a subsidised rate of $25 per person (usually $100 per person for corporate or training clients). If you are interested to find out more about our free DISC training please contact us with the link on the right.
