Recruitment Is All About Understanding People.

Contents

• Getting the right person in the right job at the right time is the key to your future success.
• DISC profiling is absolutely key to building team harmony and to managing powerful teams.
• So - what is DISC profiling and what value does it offer from a recruitment perspective?
•  All people will perform to their optimum when allowed to work in their natural DISC personality style.
  

Getting the right person in the right job at the right time is the key to your future success.

DISC profiling is a key recruitment tool in getting the mix of people right because the right person is only the right person if the team surrounding them is right! People working in their zone of comfort (not the same thing as within their comfort zone) perform better.

One of the most interesting aspects of HR and recruitment is that every single employee you introduce to your team will change the nature of the team and influence your organisational culture – more than you realise.

High performing teams are invariably accepting of each other’s strengths and weaknesses because they have built co-reliances: much like a family unit.

DISC profiling is absolutely key to building team harmony and to managing powerful teams.

Our personalities are innate – we are born with specific personality traits, however, when placed in certain environments, the outwardly showing combination of those traits will morph in a chameleon-like fashion.

For example - the dominating opinionated type in the team - will generally become submissive when in the presence of someone with a recognised higher level of expertise, and the chatting sociable type will focus when deadlines are upon them.

So - what is DISC profiling and what value does it offer from a recruitment perspective?

DISC profiling is all about understanding what personality blends you have in your team and how they will interface with their job and with others.
The four aspects of DISC personalities are:

• Dominance – these are the people that get things done. To others in the team they are often observed as impatient and rude, but they just want to finish jobs and they don’t appreciate being held up. The D people like to be in charge, but don’t like being slowed down. They often don’t make the best team leaders but are often put in leadership roles because of their drive and presence. They value results and achievements. A team of Dominants would get things done but it would possibly be a stressful environment to work in.
• Influence – these are your chatterers. They always have something to say and they are usually friends with almost everyone at surface level. They value personal connections, have a need to feel accepted and tend to dislike details. A team full of Influencers would be fun, but not very productive. Influencers are often found telling you what you want to hear rather than what they really think.
• Steadiness – these are your easy going, easy to get along with, helpful types. They like to help people, are calm in times of high stress – but they don’t like change very much and are likely to be the one slowing down changes in protocol. The S types make good instructors for induction of new people in the business – they are thorough and systems oriented. Your S’s can step into a leadership role, but they are not change-leaders.
• Compliance – these are the ones who need all of the details to be answered and attended to – in a specific order. They gravitate toward certain roles and dislike shades of grey. High Ds find their habits very annoying but rely on the accuracy. Compliance people are generally patient – perhaps, fortunately.

All of us has each of these traits to different percentages but we generally have two main types emerge to various degrees – depending on who we are surrounded by and what we are charged with. It is fascinating to observe how we adapt based on our environment.

All people will perform to their optimum when allowed to work in their natural DISC personality style.

To make the most of this, you need to view your employees as a DISC team both in how you build the team and in how you manage and communicate with them. When recruiting with DISC profiling in mind, you can easily predict how the team dynamics may shift in introducing a particular type of personality – your goal always being to balance across the DISC wheel to bring a balanced team who are positively influencing each other.

Managing for performance and inspiring people is as much managing the way you communicate with individuals based on their working styles as anything else. In fact, understanding how to manage personalities is arguably much more important than anything else in HR!

It’s definitely about the skills and the attitude, but managing a team successfully is a multi-dimensional puzzle. DISC profiling is an excellent predictor of team behaviour.