(The last team article ("Team Chemistry in Highly-Effective Teams") advocated a four step process for improving team effectiveness which includes using the DiSC® Personal Profile System® for improving communication, reducing conflict and enhancing team performance.)
In the hands of a skilled facilitator, the DiSC® Personal Profile System® (PPS) can be used to help team members understand their own behavior, learn how and when to adapt their behavior, improve communication, promote appreciation of differences, enhance individual and team performance and reduce conflict. Effective communication is the life-blood of any business. But, does the behavior that makes individuals successful in their jobs provide the same degree of success in a team? The answer is frequently and sometimes surprisingly, no. On the other hand, successful people often adapt their behavior to the situation, so team members might want to take the PPS with their job as the focus and take it again with the team as the focus to see to what extent shifts occur and whether they are appropriate.
If individual behavioral styles continue to create issues for the team, a Role Behavior AnalysisTM (RBA) can be performed to define behavioral expectations for two roles: a person's job and the role on the team.
There is often a good fit between the PPS and the RBA for a person's job. It makes sense that a person who performs well in their job exhibits behaviors in that job that would make them successful.
Because they're successful, their behavioral style effectively gets reinforced over time. If it becomes their natural behavioral style, they may carry over certain behaviors into their team work which can be a source of conflict for other team members.
Let's look at an example of this. In this example, Mark has responsibility for the production line in a division of a major corporation. When we compare the ideal role behavior regardless of the person in the role (i.e., RBA) with Mark's PPS for this role, we can see there's a pretty good fit (see graph to the right). As we can see, his very high Dominance dimension of behavior is useful to his role as manager of the production line. There's a bit of a gap in his Influence dimension, but some practitioners don't consider this as important when it occurs in the lower three segments.
An outside facilitator can work with the team to define the ideal role behavior for a team member based on the team's purpose and goals. Once this is done, comparisons can be made for each team member to show how their PPS compares to the ideal team behavioral style produced in the RBA.
In the case of Mark's role on the division's Management Team, the comparison graph might appear as the one on the right. As we can see in this second graph, Mark's very high D dimension of behavior is not as useful to his role as member of the management team. If Mark agrees with the analysis, he can begin developing new behaviors in the Influence and Conscientiousness dimensions and redirect some of his behaviors in the Dominance dimension for his work on the management team. This should reduce some conflict and improve effectiveness as Mark contributes in a manner that fits better with what's required of the team. The Role Behavior AnalysisTM instrument describes in more detail specific behaviors that apply to each dimension and where a gap may exist. Mark can then prioritize the behaviors he'd like to work on initially and develop an action plan that might also include coaching, mentoring or training. This doesn't mean that Mark has to change who he is, it just means he can learn to stretch a bit to be more effective on the team.
In cases where conflict and stress persist and other team members see behavior differently than the teammate him- or herself, a 360° behavioral style (DiSC) assessment can be performed and graphed with other people's perceptions about the teammate's behavior.
In this example, Anne's DiSC profile appears to be ID (her 'I' is in segment 7 and her 'D' is in segment 5), but only Person 5 in the sample perceives her that way. Person 4 perceives her as DI which is a close cousin, but the other 3 people perceive her as DC, D, and I respectively. The InterPersonal Profile describes in more detail specific behaviors that apply to each dimension and shows where gaps may exist. Anne can then explore the reasons for the gaps and develop action plans for dealing with any issues.
How do you introduce this topic to your team?
It's certainly easier if you have the power. You could go through the Role Behavior AnalysisTM instrument with the team to identify useful team behaviors based on what the goals of the team are or bring in a skilled facilitator for this portion. Should you single out individuals for corrective action in a team setting? Not within the team setting unless you're willing to go through it first. To build a truly effective team, it is very important to build trust based on mutual respect. I alluded to this in last month's article with the statement "Co-workers need to cooperate, communicate honestly and should share knowledge and skills with each other in order to attain mutually agreed-upon goals." Since trust building is a big topic and such a difficult one in a competitive, political workplace, I'll leave that for the March article.
Another instrument that's useful for defining team roles, particularly for aiding teams that need to be highly-innovative, is the Innovate with C.A.R.E. Profile®. This self-directed learning instrument helps individuals identify their most natural team role and helps build awareness of other roles to help team members value the contributions of others. The five C.A.R.E. roles include: Creator, Advancer, Refiner, Executor, and Facilitator. Creators generate fresh ideas and original concepts. Advancers recognize new ideas and develop ways to promote and move them forward. Refiners challenge concepts and ideas. Executors lay the groundwork for implementation. By following a relay process, from C to A to R to E with Facilitators making sure the handoffs occur at the right time, teams can match individual strengths with team roles, encourage team innovation and problem-solving, reduce project cycle time, increase productivity, foster trust, build mutual support, and reduce team stress and conflict.
Other instruments that can help team members include: people reading, coping and stress, diversity, leadership, learning, listening, time management, transition, unspoken work expectations, etc. For more information, visit www.russpratt.com.
In this article we showed that when behavioral styles appear to create conflict and stress, a trained facilitator or a leader can employ Role Behavior AnalysisTM, compare it to various DiSC® Personal Profile System® profiles, and provide coaching to change some behavior and reduce stress. During the coaching process, it may be beneficial for improving interpersonal communication and building relationships by having other people supply their perceptions in the InterPersonal Profile. And, in cases where innovation needs to be improved, the Innovate with C.A.R.E. Profile® can be used to clarify roles, simplify processes, and help maximize individual contributions. In future articles, we'll examine how to measure team trust, the effectiveness of team communication, constructive conflict, commitment, holding each other accountable, coping with stress (if you can't reduce it), and the importance of developing shared leadership.
To request an free, in-depth sample DiSC® profile, send a request via e-mail to russ@russpratt.com. For more information or to order a product or service, call 978-635-0603.