Archive for the ‘Team Development’ Category

Using The DiSC Profile to Train and Develop New Hires

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

What Makes Them Vital To Human Resources and Managers?

Use DiSC Profiles to Hit the Hiring TargetThe DiSC Profile remains a very valuable tool when developing training and development programs for newly hired personnel. By using these assessments prior to hiring candidates, organizations are ahead of their competition in understanding how candidates might fit into their culture and how they can cultivate them in the post-hire process of training and development.

While it seems impractical to believe that every person you hire will possess every skill necessary to be successful in their prospective position, you can plan to help these people learn and utilize new skills to help them grow in the future and succeed.

How Can They Affect The Post Candidate Selection Process?

These assessments will assist human resources and managers to develop a customized and focused curriculum of post-hire training for the new employees. By discovering their unique personalities and behavioral styles during the pre-hire process, human resources and senior management can gain a clear understanding of each person’s potential strengths and weaknesses in regard to the business culture and the position for which they are being considered. By analyzing and understanding the results of these assessments, human resources and senior managers, can more easily understand how they can organize and develop more effective groups and teams. When these assessment results are used to evaluate and understand each person’s individual personality and behavioral styles you gain an organizational advantage and your entire business benefits. These assessment results can also assist human resources and senior managers to develop a smooth and carefully thought out approach how to assimilate new hires in their organization.

The Reason Why Effective Training Is Critical?

The development of strong, cohesive teams is critical to organizational success and training is key to that achievement. If human resources and senior management can develop new employees while proactively addressing areas of development they can save significant time and effort because these new hires will get training specifically tailored to their individual needs. One of the most strategic benefits management realizes is the leverage provided by these assessment results when developing specific training programs that are based on the specific needs of those new employees.

What Occurs Following The Initial New Hire Training?

After the initial new employee training has been completed senior management can monitor their progress and make adjustments in the areas that need improvement. They also need to make sure that consistent and continuous improvement is made to secure overall success. It is important that human resources invest time, energy, and most of all money so as not to constrain productivity.

The Way They Impact Other Areas Of Employee Development

These assessments provide both a powerful learning and a vital gateway for human resources and senior management to understand the behavioral styles of all their employees. In the end, understanding behavior will lead to better overall communication. These reports will help individuals to adapt their natural styles so they can more successfully interact with others because behaviors are not easily changed without the right guidance. These reports can be used in a multitude of areas including discovering and valuing others strengths, and helping them find and develop their own strengths. Furthermore, by helping employees develop their strengths and limit their weaknesses, senior managers can help to limit unproductive internal communication and simultaneously reduce conflict.

Finally, using the DiSC Profile in an organization’s workplace will improve the overall productivity levels in all areas of the environment. If human resources and senior management will focus their time and efforts in continuously improving the training and development of all employees, that organization will achieve more success, reduce turnover, and boost overall team satisfaction.

The DiSC Profile Helps Create Successful Teams

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Every company and organization maintains varying opinions and concepts concerning the methods and desired goals pertaining to the creation of organizational teamwork.  If managers and leaders within your organization can get access to effective tools, like The DiSC Profile, their probability of success increases substantially.

Several Unique Suggestions To Cultivate Teamwork

DiSC Profiles Help Build Successful TeamsAt this point, I’m certain most of you will be wanting to know exactly how you accomplish this seemingly monumental undertaking.  Probably the most daunting problem you must deal with is how to comprehend and contend with all of the individual personalities, behavioral tendencies, along with the egos associated with them.  The introduction of a DiSC Profile into any team building program will offer team managers personalized information on each team member.  By analyzing everyone’s DiSC Profile the manager will quickly realize what motivates, demotivates, what they tend to avoid, how they react to stress, their natural behavioral tendencies, and much more.  This is exceptionally beneficial information for the manager given that they might also discover their particular group culture and exactly how they function as a team by grouping the individual DiSC Profiles into a Group DiSC Report.

Whenever addressing team discord that develops it is imperative to identify individuals with strong personalities and viewpoints that compete for dominance within each and every team and discover how to effectively interact with these individuals.  Competition and discord within almost all teams might also adversely impact individuals as they make an attempt to impose their particular personal agendas on the team.   Considering that we have now identified and reviewed the obstacles to creating teamwork we should discuss what we are able to do to influence effective teamwork within an organizational work environment.

Creating Effective Team Performance In Every Organization

The very last thing a company needs and desires is individuals that will not gel with others as a cohesive unit. All organizations ultimately make an attempt to retain the services of individuals that will effectively perform the duties that are required of their position or role as well as contribute to the corporate mission. Unfortunately at times those individuals fail to perform their vital responsibilities and the team suffers in addition to every single member of the team.

Teamwork is very important because within organizations, all departments and divisions are interrelated and a smooth coordination between every aspect of an organization is critical to its success.  Promoting teamwork is an important responsibility of all levels of management and leadership because doing so will help strengthen total workplace productivity and efficiency.  It’s not easy to cultivate cohesive teams because the needs and wants of individuals within those teams are often in conflict with one another.  However, if a concentrated attempt is undertaken to bring those competing forces together and understood it can easily transpire.

Just What Impacts Individual Performance?

It cannot be overemphasized for leaders and managers to clearly define and communicate the organizational goals and objectives that need to be attained and the factor that individual performance represents.  The contribution of each and every team member in setting goals and their accountabilities in achieving the defined goals can certainly motivate all of them.  Deliver the maximum amount of information, project goals, along with the resulting deadlines that you can to each and every individual while including all of them in that course of action.  Finally, it cannot be over emphasized, that leaders and managers should make it crystal clear that each and every member of the team is accountable to play an important part in the successful outcome.  These uncomplicated factors will inspire all to be vigilant in delivering their steady best efforts for the team to be ultimately successful.

The Role Of Leadership

Team Direction using a DiSC ProfileWithout effective, conscientious, diligent leadership you will risk having individuals lose focus, go off in different directions, thus leading to the team coming apart.  Uncover those individual team members with leadership characteristics and delegate them with responsibilities as team managers to observe as well as motivate their team mates.  Select these individuals very carefully and only pick those who will lead by example and be viewed by the others as role models to be emulated by their fellow team mates.  Designating a leader that will inherently lead others to accomplish a common goal will be a fundamental component of achieving a high functioning team.

Clear Goals Create Clear Communication

There is absolutely no place for doubt and uncertainty within your team because it is vitally important that each and every team member clearly understands their own individual roles within your team and how they each can achieve success.  As the leader you must plan and execute individual meetings to evaluate their particular progress toward achieving their goals and correct them if they stray from that goal.  Encourage them to prioritize their work activities.  Frequently communicate to each and every individual how achieving their individual goals will affect their fellow team mates and their job evaluation.  Check to ensure that doubts are not developing and they do not feel that there are any barriers developing to hinder their success.  Communication breakdowns are one of the key factors that will lead to team ineffectiveness developing.  Ensure that each team member has a clear understanding of the organization’s mission and vision and the part they individually play in achieving those stated goals.  Have an open door policy so each individual feels comfortable giving feedback when they experience challenges.  Finally, rinse and repeat, to keep everyone on track.

Some Activities To Help The Teambuilding Effort

Keep it informal, fun, and engaging in order to create an accommodating environment of camaraderie among all the team members.  The mere fact of the group discussing the results of their individual DiSC Profile will promote understanding, deliver insights, and lead to that effective teamwork that you are seeking.  Develop and deploy activities and games that promote interaction and sharing that is quite different from their particular normal workplace.  These types of things help promote communication, understanding, and appreciation toward all the team members.  Furthermore, taking some time away from the workplace environment for casual activities like barbecues, lunches, etc. will also promote your team building process mainly because it gives all individuals the opportunity to interact with each other in a very different light and form those important personal bonds required for strong cohesive teams.

One closing thought; don’t forget to develop attractive recognition and rewards programs so everyone has an opportunity to feel appreciated for what they do.  The DiSC Profile can also help with this because it will give you clues as to how individuals like to be recognized.  This will likely go a long way to creating an environment of belonging and a sense of acknowledgment for everyone’s efforts.  The effect of those small things goes a long way to motivate the whole team and create a unified feeling of success.

Much Teambuilding Success!

When Would You Use The Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile?

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Team Dimensions 2.0 ProfileTo Build Effective Focused Teams

Successful team members don’t do the same thing at the same time. They do the right thing at the right time.  The Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile helps individuals work from their strengths by identifying their most natural team role, while giving them added appreciation for the contributions of others.

Discover the Right Roles for the Right People for Team Development

The Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile identifies the following five team roles:

  • Creators generate new ideas and fresh concepts.
  • Advancers communicate new ideas and carry them forward.
  • Refiners analyze ideas for flaws or revise projects systematically.
  • Executors deliver concrete results and seek successful implementations.
  • Flexers have an equal preference for most or all of the roles and can often adapt their styles to fit the team’s needs.

“Z PROCESS” Keeps Teams Moving in the Right Direction

The Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile maps the flow of assigning roles, completing tasks, and handing off tasks to other team members through the “Z Process.”

In this relay process, tasks are passed from Creators to Advancers, from Advancers to Refiners, and from Refiners to Executors. Flexers fill in the gaps to keep the process moving forward.

To Capitalize on Individual Strengths for Total Team Performance

As organizations rely more on teams to innovate, problem-solve, produce, and compete at the speed of change, understanding and capitalizing on individual approaches to group processes is key to creating high-performance teams. Use the Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile to:

  • Match individual strengths with team roles
  • Build team unity
  • Foster innovation
  • Shorten project cycle time
  • Reduce conflict

How Does The Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile Work? – Part II

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

The crossed hands of teamwork.In addition to the four approaches there are Four Basic Roles identified in the Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile:

  • Creator – The Conceptual and Spontaneous Approaches combine to form the Creator role.  The Creator generates fresh, original, out-of-the-box concepts and ideas in ways that defy generally accepted structures or rules.  The Creator perceives “the big picture.”
  • Advancer – The Spontaneous and Normative Approaches combine to form the Advancer role.  The Advancer recognizes ideas and new directions in the early stages and develops ways to promote them.  The Advancer uses insightful planning based on past experiences and proven methods to advance ideas towards implementation.
  • Refiner – The Conceptual and Methodical Approaches combine to form the Refiner role.  The Refiner challenges concepts, often playing the devil’s advocate.  Using a methodical process to analyze things in an orderly manner, the Refiner will detect flaws, identify potential problems, and suggest alternative solutions.
  • Executor – The Methodical and Normative Approaches combine to form the Executor role.  The Executor lays the groundwork for implementation, ensuring that the process moves forward in an orderly manner to achieve high-quality results.

A fifth role, the Flexer, appears when an individual uses a combination of all four innovative approaches.

  • Flexer – The Flexer monitors the contributions of all team members and steps in to fill gaps in the team during the various stages of the process.

This information helps team development and the creation of a stronger and more cohesive team.

How Does The Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile Work? – Part I

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Rowing Shows TeamworkThe Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile identifies four distinct approaches to thinking and behavioral styles among people involved in a team process.  It is used for team development.  The four approaches are:

  • Conceptual Approach – People who take a Conceptual Approach like to come up with new ideas.  They’re good at exploring alternatives and discussing concepts when presented with a problem or an opportunity.
  • Spontaneous Approach – People who take the Spontaneous Approach want freedom from constraint.  They tend to move from one subject to another, focusing on many things at once and sometimes showing impatience.
  • Normative Approach – People who take a Normative Approach prefer to put ideas in a familiar context.  They tend to let their past experience guide them, and they like to see the consequences before they act.
  • Methodical Approach – People who take a Methodical Approach prefer order and rationality.  When presented with a problem or opportunity, they tend to follow a step-by-step process, examining the details and carefully considering things before acting.

Typically, people tend to use two or more Approaches when working on a team.  The integration of approaches defines the roles of team members.  This information helps team development and the creation of a stronger and more cohesive team.

Part II of this post will discuss the identification of the Four Basic Roles shown in the results of the Team Dimensions 2.0 Profile.