The DiSC Profile is a very powerful tool used in organizations globally. It assesses people for their underlying personality styles. In addition, the social styles model presents a methodology for understanding the feedback from the DiSC Profile. The key elements that make up personality and motivators can be used to manage effective interpersonal relationships, manage people and understand how to plan for and manage change through people in any organization.
Here are three ways to help successfully
align your people with the change process:
1. The DiSC Profile, People, and Managing the Change Spectrum: Background
What is the DiSC Profile, and regarding change, what do the results tell us? The DiSC Profile helps us understand personality styles, our own and others. In addition, the DiSC Profile provides the key to understanding the all-important motivators underlying each personality style. This helps us understand people on a much more profound and complex level.
Using the DiSC Profile can be a powerful tool to carefully assess people on key change competencies carefully. Not all people embrace change with the same level of enthusiasm. A percentage of the population will dread the prospect of change, while others cynically deny that change will actually ever happen. We can use the results of the DiSC Profile to understand where employees fall across the change spectrum:
- Some people love change.
- Some people tolerate change.
- Some people deny, ignore or dislike change and may try to stop it.
By understanding how the employee population will either positively or negatively impact the change process, we can predict the potential success or failure of change initiatives. We can anticipate the barriers to expect and, therefore, the hurdles to overcome during the change initiative. Ignore these issues, and you increase the probability of delay and/or change failure.
2. The DiSC Profile, Predictors, and Planning the Change Journey
The DiSC Profile is readily available and widely used globally, having been highly validated over the past 45 years. The profile results do not pass judgment on people. Instead, it looks at people for their natural personality inclinations and preferences. It also charts how people react in everyday and stressful situations. A critically important data point is understanding how a person may shift from normal to stressful situations. Why? The very nature of the change process causes emotional pressure or stress reactions in many people.
What information will the DiSC Profile provide? It will identify employee motivation issues around key change competencies necessary to move organizations into the unfamiliar and unchartered territory that is embedded in the change process. The DiSC Profile results can focus on change competencies such as critical thinking, problem solving, adaptability, and being proactive. At the task level, DiSC can also help predict and forecast who will flourish at familiar tasks and those that will embrace bold and imaginative tasks. For more information, we are sharing our latest presentation on the utilization of the DiSC assessment.
3. Expectation Outcomes When Incorporating the DiSC Profile into your Change Planning Process:
When planning the change process, develop a richer, multidimensional picture of employees and how they view change. Remember the adage, “We love change, as long as someone else does it!”That simple statement speaks volumes. Regarding change, develop a deep understanding of each person’s motivators, limitations, and challenges. Then, plan accordingly.
Be realistic about what you can expect from each individual dealing with the change process. Just because some people will immediately embrace change doesn’t mean everyone will. You can count on that! As a manager, you can move everyone to the same place on the change trajectory. However, you will need to provide different paths for different people.
At Phoenix Strategic Performance (PSP), we view change as part of everyday work life. Everyone is responsible for change. We evaluate change at the macro organizational level, and drill down into the organization to see how each individual accepts, denies, or ignores change. Using DiSC as an additional overlay, we can then determine if everyone is aligned with the change process at the micro-level. We can predict when a change initiative will be successful or will likely fail. Download our latest presentation to learn more.
For a more thorough understanding of our methodology for effectively managing change, we invite you to download our DiSC presentation, or you can set up a 30-minute consultation to begin your journey to successfully managing the change process throughout every layer of your organization.
