DataDome Blog

In a slide show recently published by the Harvard Business Review, researchers Lynette Ryals and Iain Davies present some fascinating and eye-opening findings regarding sales effectiveness. Their study based on observation of 800 sales professionals in actual live sales meetings led them to conclude that only 37% of sales professionals were consistently effective in achieving results.

Their findings categorized the study group into eight classifications of behavior patterns: Socializers, Aggressors, Narrators, Focusers, Storytellers, Consultants, Closers, Experts. According to the study only the last three, Experts, Closers and Consultants, were able to deliver consistent results. Together these three groups comprised just 37% of the sample.

Also of interest were some data points that debunked some “common knowledge” assumptions about what makes a good salesperson. Conventional wisdom and sales folklore point to the socializing sales professional and the hard-driving aggressor as the desirable sales personalities, yet in this study these two groups were the bottom performers. The aggressors could occasionally have a big win, but their performance on average was poor, while the socializers would get caught up in the small talk and not keep the sales pitch in focus.

The authors noted that “a disproportionate amount of training is allocated to presentation and rapport skills, as well as the actual sales pitch” and therefore these skills had become commodified across the field.

We, at Data Dome agree that much of the focus of sales training tends to overlook behavioral issues and instead focus on closing skills and process methodologies. However, as this Harvard study indicates, behaviors are more indicative of sales performance. Hiring salespeople is often an error prone process filled with subjective decisions that can bring disappointing results – just ask the sales managers who hired the Aggressors and Socializers in the study. This is one of the reasons why we encourage the use of behavioral and motivator focused tools to identify candidates with high sales potential. Objective assessments eliminate much of the guesswork whether they’re used as a selection aid during the hiring process or as a development aid to diagnose specific behavior and motivator weaknesses that may lower an individual’s sales success potential. These tools can also be valuable in recommending targeted training for awareness and improvement in these areas.

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A recent DISC question from a reader arrived via our Ask the Expert form:

** I know 2 very different managers with exactly the same red score of about 45/100. One is angry and impatient yet lacks ambition, motivation and drive. The other one is highly driven but cool, v. hard to anger. So my question is, based on the fact that DISC has an algorithm, can we infer a high “drive” / motivation score for someone with a medium red score who just doesn’t get angry ? **

Art’s answer:
I want to first take this opportunity to discuss the format of this question before exploring an answer:

We often get questions like this, which are unfortunately vague regarding some of the details needed to provide a precise answer. The reader may not be aware if they have only been exposed to one version of DISC that there are in fact many publishers of DISC assessments – and not all of them present information the same way. This question refers to a specific red score of 45/100, but does not specify which DISC system they are using, nor which DISC category is represented by the color red. Although the some DISC publishers use the colors red, green, blue and yellow they don’t all use that palette – some use brown, red, blue and yellow, and some DISC consultants impose their own color branding on the DISC categories. Thus red may represent I in one company’s assessment report, but it represents D in another. Likewise, some DISC reporting algorithms only able to generate a dozen or so reports based on variations of the behavioral scores of an individual while other DISC systems can assign an individual to one of literally hundreds of report variations. For more information on some of the differences in DISC systems I recommend our article Good DISC vs. Bad DISC.

When submitting a question through our Ask the Expert form it will help if you can provide the following information along with your question:

• The name of the DISC publisher who produced your assessment
• The DISC distributor or consulting company who administered the assessment
• If you are asking about a specific profile please provide the complete score in all four areas as well as Natural and Adapted scores if provided.

Following these guidelines will make it possible to provide more accurate answers to your queries.

Now, on to the answer…
Regardless of the vagueness of the question that was submitted, there is a point that can be made based on information inferred from the narrative provided by the asker:

In the description of the two managers there are a couple of words used that give clues to information that was left out of the question – the words are “angry” describing the first manager and “highly driven” describing the second one. Although there isn’t really enough information here to know for certain, on the surface it appears that both managers have a strong D, but they are expressing that D in different ways.

If you are using a DISC publisher that can only provide a few possible reporting variations, you are going to get an over-generalized report. It will be stretched over too wide a variety of DISC combinations. For instance, there is a big difference between a very high D with a low C – someone with the force of a runaway train with no tracks (or rules) to guide that force – and a very high D with a high C – a far more controlled individual who is deliberate and less likely to show anger, etc.). Likewise, a very high D with a low S is far less patient and much quicker to anger than a high D with a high S who tends to suppress anger (until it comes to an explosive head). So, a DISC interpretation with fewer report variations is not going to give you as detailed an analysis as one whose algorithms produce many report variations, in fact the fewer the reports a system provides the higher likelihood of inaccurate results.

The other factor that is important to consider when two people share similar scores in one or more areas, but exhibit divergent behaviors, is what I call “Awareness & Attitude”. Is the high D aware of how they come across, and what is their attitude towards adjusting or adapting? Emotional intelligence profiles among other approaches address this factor, and it is very important in analyzing how we apply ourselves behaviorally. For example, consider the difference between a high D that wants everyone to change for them (a “my way or the highway” person) vs. a high D that realizes how counterproductive their high D can be in a team setting, and is willing to adapt/adjust to other styles to be more collaborative and less dictatorial.

A DISC report in itself reveals behavioral tendencies, not necessarily how one is applying those tendencies. And the more intense their tendencies are, the more important it is to understand their “Awareness and Attitude”.

What’s your question?

Data Dome’s resident expert is our founder, Art Schoeck. A member of TTI’s prestigious International Faculty, Art often receives questions through our Ask the Expert form. We try to answer questions here on this blog that are representative of common questions regarding DISC and other assessment tools.

Do you have a question about DISC? If so please submit it via the Ask the Expert form. Although it may not be possible to answer every question individually, we use the “Ask the Expert” category of this blog to answer the DISC-related questions most important to our readers.

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A reader from the healthcare arena recently used our Ask the Expert form to ask:

** What does it mean if you have a Naturally high S, but your Adapted S is significantly lower? **

Art’s answer:

If you are seeing a DISC report with a Natural S that is high and an Adapted S that is much lower then you are actually seeing one of the most common behavioral adjustments in corporate America today. In the DISC spectrum the S reflects our preferences for different paces. When the S factor drops to a strong degree, it typically means the pace you’re encountering is greatly increased, that the variety of the work you are doing has increased (juggling lots of assignments at one time), or possibly your priorities are changing rapidly.

A person with a high Natural S likes to know what to expect – they are more comfortable knowing what’s going to happen well in advance. But if you are responding to the environment with a low Adapted S then it sounds like you might not be able to predict what you’ll be working on from one moment to the next, or have so many things on your plate, you may not be getting the closure you like. I often recommend those making this adjustment either get a bigger staff or do their best to prioritize their projects and takes some things off their plate. This isn’t always easy, particularly in today’s job climate where so many people are being asked to shoulder larger burdens and compensate for the missing productivity of people who have been let go, but not replaced, due to economic constraints. However, forcing someone to sustain an Adapted style that is drastically different from their Natural style can cause severe stress and loss of morale, especially if the person in question is pushed into this state frequently and for long periods of time. Frustration and resentment can increase in these situations.

It is also important to remember that the issue isn’t as much the direction of change, as it is the magnitude of change and the amount of time spent in the Adapted state. We often see executives with lower Natural S scores, who become frustrated and restless if they find themselves in a situation that causes them to have a higher Adapted S. Often an executive in this situation will make a move and quit the position as soon as they are able to because boredom is generally the least tolerable adapted state.

What’s your question?

Data Dome’s resident expert is our founder, Art Schoeck. A member of TTI’s prestigious International Faculty, Art often receives questions through our Ask the Expert form. We try to answer questions here on this blog that are representative of common questions regarding DISC and other assessment tools.

Do you have a question about DISC? If so please submit it via the Ask the Expert form. Although it may not be possible to answer every question individually, we use the “Ask the Expert” category of this blog to answer the DISC-related questions most important to our readers.

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In his upcoming book on DISC practice, The World According to DISC, Arthur G. Schoeck, founder and CEO of Data Dome, Inc., offers answers to the question, “Are all DISC tools created equal?”

All DISC behavioral assessments and related tools have their roots in the work of Dr. William Moulton Marston and therefore share a common foundation. Most DISC systems in use today are provided by a handful of companies, DISC publishers, whose businesses cultivate certified DISC experts who then resell the assessment tools to corporations for use in consultative work on various people problems faced by organizations. Despite the shared origin and similarities of business models it is an uneven field in regards to quality of assessments and reports as well as training and certification of practitioners. In short, although all DISC shares common roots and principles, no, not all DISC is created equal.

The Basics
To understand what makes some tools better than others, let’s review some basics. DISC is based on four behavioral factors: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. A person may score high or low in each of these four areas. The high scores tend to get the most attention, but good DISC practice recognizes that an intense low score is just as indicative of behavioral traits as is an equally intense high score.

Understanding Intensity and Precision
What DISC tools measure the intensity of each of the four behaviors and then correlate the results with a corresponding report. Some DISC systems provide for more gradations in the intensity in each category, some provide a larger number of report variations – and the range of this number of reports is surprisingly broad: some DISC publishers provide tools capable of generating as few as 12 reports, while one offers tools that match behaviors to hundreds of possible profile reports.

Even Great Tools Need Skillful Operators
People typically exhibit greater intensity in one of the four DISC areas, however it is a mistake to ignore the measures in the other three categories. It is also a mistake to oversimplify the process: Using a refined DISC system with hundreds of report variations still requires the facilitator to be skilled in properly debriefing and interviewing the participant to assure accuracy in the information provided. Even a good DISC system will yield mediocre results if the DISC practitioner is simply taking the report at face value without verifying accuracy with the participant.

Simplification and Vagueness
There are incentives for DISC publishers to pursue systems that involve a smaller number of different reports. Less variations to manage means training is easier, but simplification brings vagueness. Using a tool that can only categorize to a dozen or so reports encourages vagueness similar to a newspaper horoscope – it may provide answers that on the surface seem satisfactory, but in the end don’t hold up well in terms of providing practical, actionable insights.

Establishing Context for Better Results
DISC training to be effective must stress objectivity in its application. In many cases simply identifying the DISC profile of a given subject is not enough; measuring and understanding the behavioral context that predicts success for a given role or application is also needed. Too often a manager’s personal biases (or a consultant’s) will color the decision and favor either behavioral attributes which are similar to their own, or conform to some (false) idealized profile, which may have little to do with the actual behavioral patterns needed to succeed in a specific job.

Going Natural, or the Importance of Adapted Behavior
Natural behavior can be thought of as an individual’s default style, whereas Adapted behavior is the behavior they exhibit in response to the environment or workplace. Some DISC publishers offer reports that merge this information into a single approximate diagram. Others ignore the difference altogether and simply present a single graph, yet large shifts between a person’s Natural and Adapted behavior styles can indicate stresses, energy drain and anxiety caused by something in the work situation. Since the Natural style typically changes little over time and the Adapted style is very responsive to situational changes these are often important clues to diagnosing problems and recommending solutions. Bad DISC systems offer broad brush reports that appear less complex because merged data means fewer diagrams, but these fail to provide effective actionable data.

For the full Good DISC vs. Bad DISC article and a list of questions you should ask before selecting a DISC provider, visit
http://datadome.com/res_wp_gooddiscbaddisc.php

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Every manager has done it at least once in their career – interviewed that polished, refined, impressive “Lexus” of a candidate only to find out later that when it comes time to do the actual job the candidate suddenly starts performing like a Yugo, the car that Car Talk called “worst car of the millennium”.

How do these hiring mistakes happen? How can a candidate look so good, so right for the role, and yet end up being such a poor match? Well certainly, every hiring situation is unique, however there are trends and research that can help us understand the weaknesses of the interview process and some of the common pitfalls of communication biases.

As we pointed out in our earlier post Hiring for Cultural Fit – Look Beyond the Résumé statistical studies have shown that “decisions based on interviews alone are accurate only 14% of the time. That means we have the chance to be wrong 86% of the time in the hiring of top performing individuals.” Michigan State University Study, John Hunter and Rhonda Hunter, “Validity and Utility of Alternative Predictors of Job Performance”, Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 96, No. 1, 1984, p. 90 (links to pdf)

In other words the interview process alone only gets the hiring recommendation right one out of seven times – not a great average. Without the use of other hiring tools to derive objective data it can be easy to be dazzled by a strong surface presentation – a confident manner, neat professional appearance, firm handshake, eye contact, etc. However are these attributes truly predictive of success for the job at hand? Most people feel comfortable with people with whom they share similar behavioral profiles, they also tend to see certain profiles as aspirational – a candidate who shares a similar behavioral style or projects one that the hiring manager believes themselves to be will have an advantage in the interview process similar to the salesperson who is able to establish instant rapport with a prospect who natural feels more comfortable and trusting of someone whose behavior patterns mimic their own. This can also be true of projected attributes for a given role. For example, an executive candidate may project the demeanor of leadership along with the refined, polished manner and eloquence expected of a leader, but may not necessarily have the behavioral style suited to the demands of that particular organization – the surface “paint job” may impress the board, but a slick “luxury car” appearance won’t help you if what your organization needs is a leader who performs with the behavioral metaphor of a tough, hard-driving off-road vehicle, or a practical, economically-minded mini-van.

The hiring manager’s own effective behaviors, or projected behavioral assumptions for the role, may not be the effective behaviors needed for success in the position being applied for: As an example a department leader who is both a people person and very decisive may need to fill a slot for an analytical role that requires high compliance and a comfort with working in an environment with low people interaction. Although a candidate that shares the high people orientation and decisiveness (and perhaps an equivalent aesthetic sensibility) may seem like an appealing hire, once placed in the performance environment the very attributes that made the candidate seem familiar, attractive and credible would become impediments to optimal performance. The disparity would inevitably lead to some form of disruption whether it be stress/anxiety on the part of the hire, poor performance of job duties, or some other team disruption caused by the mismatched assignment.

The use of objective tools can be indispensable in identifying the aptitude of a candidate for a given role. However, pairing this approach with identifying not just a functional job profile, but a behavioral profile for success will allow the interview process to have an effective “check and balance.” There are tools specifically designed to streamline the process of creating a behavior-based job profile so that you can make sure the candidate selected is closely matched for behavioral alignment, and therefore job success. Using assessment tools to both understand the behaviors needed for the position and the behaviors displayed by the candidate can help you choose a new employee who has what you need “under the hood” no matter whether the exterior looks like a Lexus or a Yugo or anything in between.

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(but not necessarily easy to manage them)

As discussed in our previous articles, “Sales Hiring Mistakes” and “Sales: What Makes a Great Salesperson (for You)?“, businesses that can sell well tend to do well – so it is not surprising that there is a lot of interest in making the sales process more predictable. Yet try as they might, salespeople and sales managers are often puzzled as to why some deals seem to go like clockwork while others feel like endless uphill struggles. They blame the market, they blame the people, they look to the 80/20 rule and see that 20% of the people bring in 80% of the profit, but can’t determine how to reliably duplicate the effective ones.

Communication is often the cause at the root of sales successes and failures. The fact is it is generally easier to sell to someone who shares the same communication preferences, that has a similar behavioral style, as you do. Comfortable communication is an important factor in establishing the trust and credibility needed to create a sale. By default we all tend to approach sales communication from the old golden rule “treat others as you would like to be treated,” however that old expression overlooks the idea that “others” may not want to be treated, in behavior or communication, in the way that makes you yourself feel the most comfortable.

DISC opens the door for us to understand that the behaviors or communication modes that feel natural to one person may cause stress to another. With this insight we can amend the golden rule to say “treat others as they wish to be treated” and use this idea to build a better foundation for sales success. Teaching salespeople to recognize their own behavioral styles and those of the clients they interact with gives them the opportunity to adapt to a mode of communication better suited to the client’s need. As the salesperson’s skill in recognizing and adapting to the styles of others increases so will their ability to build trust and credibility in relationships that were previously difficult and puzzling. Although the salesperson’s natural behavioral style will remain their same they will learn when and how to adapt for better results.

Recognizing that people have different natural behavioral styles also helps us understand a mistake that is unfortunately quite commonly made by businesses: they take their best performing salesperson and promote him or her to sales manager. Consider that the track record of the person in question indicates that the behaviors demanded to be a top sales performer are well-aligned with their natural behavioral style. Does a sales manager perform the same behaviors? What would indicate that the roles are interchangeable? As an analogy would a pro football team promote someone to quarterback because they were a great receiver? Not likely – the skills, the reflexes, the behaviors wouldn’t fit.

Let’s examine a scenario from a DISC perspective to further illustrate the point. At Company X the top performing sales people tend to be people skilled at keeping people happy and emotionally vested while driving for quick decisions and buy-in that keep the process moving forward rather than slipping into stasis. Meanwhile the successful sales manager at Company X must assert authority and accountability to the team, following a strictly defined process to assure fairness in hiring, firing, and compensation systems while also tracking the endlessly detailed expense reimbursement process. In the language of DISC that successful sales person is exhibiting high I (Influence) and high D (Dominance) behaviors while the sales manager’s role requires a low I and a high C (Compliance) – essentially opposite attributes. An individual might be able to adjust temporarily to fit the requirements, but quickly the stress and energy drain of maintaining that adjustment so strongly away from the individual’s natural behavioral preferences will cause the situation to either erode or explode. Reverting to natural behaviors the ex-salesperson now manager in question starts to try to make the salespeople she is responsible for as happy as she liked to make the customers she used to interact with, she grows restless handling the details and uncomfortable enforcing the policy and procedures because her C isn’t naturally high. Simply put, the former star receiver ends up being a lousy quarterback through no fault of her own.

At Data Dome we specialize in using the science of DISC behavioral analysis to unlock the keys to better performance, improved team dynamics and creating the best fits for your organization to thrive. Contact us to find out more about training and tools that can improve sales performance while helping you understand the success criteria for different roles in your organization.

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In our previous sales article we discussed some of the common mistakes made when hiring a salesperson. At the heart of that discussion was an assumption that not all products, services, sales cultures or industries are alike. What works well as a sales approach in one industry may not translate well to another. Each company has it’s own policies, systems, sales training methods, etc. and it is essential to understand that what makes a great salesperson at another company may make a misfit at your own.

To unlock the riddle of what makes a great salesperson at your company there are three critical questions to ask:

1) What are you selling?
Is it a product or a service? Complicated or easy to explain? Does it require training? Configuration? Ongoing support? Is it an impulse buy or require multi-departmental approval? Does your great salesperson need technical know-how, a skill at pushing for decisions, a meticulous approach to fact gathering, a knack for navigating the client’s bureaucracies, etc?

2) Who do you sell to?
Who are your buyers? Are there consistencies of personalities, communications styles, behaviors? How many decision makers are involved in the process? Is it B2B, B2C or B2G? Does your great salesperson need to make her case to fact-checkers or is he building up an emotional appeal? Or do they need to be able to communicate with both and every communication style between?

3) Who are you?
What kind of sales environment do you provide? Your training? Your procedures and reporting? Are your salespeople expected to handle their own administration duties? Do they work closely with technical sales engineers? Is your culture collaborative or competitive? Are they expected to bring back marketing feedback or follow up on support issues? Does your great salesperson have the skills to recognize different behaviors and the aptitude to adjust to those requirements as needed?

As you can see these questions open up doors to examining the behavioral requirements, attitudes and communication adaptability demanded of your salespeople. These become the foundation for creating a criteria for a great salesperson that is customized for your unique situation. Or to put it another way, it is hard to find the right peg if you don’t know whether you’ve got a round or square hole.

Improving sales performance requires educating your salespeople and improving their ability to recognize and adapt to behavioral and communication styles that may not match their own. At Data Dome we specialize in using the science of behavioral analysis to unlock the keys to better performance, improved team dynamics and creating the best fits for your organization to thrive. Data Dome has the tools and processes to help you build the target profile(s) for successful selling. We ask these three questions (and a whole lot more) so that we can help you bring in the best fits for your culture, market and growth.

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If there is one truth in business it is that you won’t stay in business if you don’t make sales. Every single day businesses struggle to unlock better sales performance and hire the best salespeople, but unfortunately all that training and screening doesn’t always get you the results you want. Why? To understand this let’s explore some common sales hiring mistakes:

Mistake #1 Over-valuing sales experience.
We love to see the president’s club mentioned on the resume, but it is dangerous to assume that past sales success will mean that the candidate will know how to sell your line of products or services. Simply looking at the sales performance numbers won’t tell you about the type of customers that salesperson was successful with nor the sophistication/complexity of the product or service sold. Looking at numbers without context won’t help you find a candidate with the right behavioral match and communication style required for successful sales at your company.

Mistake #2 Not hiring inexperienced people.
There are no statistics that show past sales success alone to be predictive of future success. A sales “newbie” is likely to be more receptive to the training you provide, with less need to unlearn approaches that may have worked while at a different employer, but are no longer applicable due to the changed circumstances. Hire for behavior and attitude first, aptitude second and experience last.

Mistake #3 Hiring based on old criteria.
Even when sales are faltering many companies will continue to hire salespeople based on the same old criteria typically established during a more successful “heyday” period in their past. The business landscape is always shifting making it necessary to adapt hiring criteria to those changing circumstances. Why would you bring in new people selected with the same criteria as your current team when that team is now underperforming? Hire for the future not to recapture a past that no longer exists.

Mistake #4 Hiring all the same type of people (just like you).
This isn’t just true in sales, it is a common problem in all areas of business. We fill teams with people like ourselves because they make us feel comfortable, but the real world is full of people with diverse communication styles and a range of behavior profiles. Salespeople tend to perform better when their behavioral style is similar to the prospective customer’s, but unless all your customers happen to fit the same profile, you’ll be missing out on your team’s overall sales potential.

Mistake #5 “Bumping” a top salesperson to sales manager
We’ll be expanding on this mistake in a future article, however, it is not uncommon for organizations to either take one of the best salespeople they already have or bring in someone with a great selling track-record and “bump them up” to the role of sales manager. Unfortunately this is all too often a mistake because many of the behaviors, reflexes and attitudes that work so well for the sales process are not necessarily desirable as a manager. Similarly, managing sales people requires behaviors that are not necessary for success in selling. Although every scenario is different, one common example is simply taking someone who is happy having independence, self-direction, mobility and a high degree of interpersonal interaction in their sales role and suddenly putting them in a position that requires spending the majority of time confined to a desk filling out reports and prepping for internal meetings. It is an abrupt behavioral shift and one that will be difficult to sustain.

Awareness of these common mistakes can help you build a more effective sales hiring process. We can help you learn to identify the behavioral and attitudinal criteria that are better predictors of sales success. We also offer behavioral based sales training that can teach your new hires and your “old guard” how to recognize communication preferences and adapt their own behaviors to build trust faster, lower resistance, and close more deals.

Improving sales performance requires educating your salespeople and improving their ability to recognize and adapt to behavioral and communication styles that may not match their own. At Data Dome we specialize in using the science of behavioral analysis to unlock the keys to better performance, improved team dynamics and creating the best fits for your organization to thrive. Contact Data Dome for more information on developing hiring strategies and for training that opens the DISC Doorway to Better Sales Performance.

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Before we get into the discussion of smiles and DISC behavior, let’s set the mood – Cue the music, you may remember the lesson from the classic old song Smile‘s lyrics: “Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though its breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by…”

Or maybe not. In a recent article published by Michigan State University makes the case that there is a big difference for workers who “fake” a smile to appear happy when they are not, versus those who actually develop positive thoughts and smile as a result. According to Brent Scott, an MSU Assistant Professor of Management “Employers may think that simply getting their employees to smile is good for the organization, but that’s not necessarily the case. Smiling for the sake of smiling can lead to emotional exhaustion and withdrawal, and that’s bad for the organization.”

Looking at this information on smiling employees from the perspective of DISC behavioral styles the results seem less surprising. Let’s examine the I-column of a DISC profile. It is common to talk about I or Influence from the perspective of the High-I DISC style. Adjectives associated with the high-end of the I column are garrulous, effusive, magnetic,
gregarious, expressive – all words that speak to being engaged with other people. However, this is only a natural behavior for those who we call a High-I. What about the other end of the scale?

The Low-I DISC style brings up adjectives like withdrawn, guarded, unexpressive and aloof. It’s not difficult to picture the person who is naturally a High-I smiling frequently as they are quite at home, even crave, a high degree of social interaction. The Low-I DISC profile on the other hand, by definition, exhibits a behavioral preference for a low level of social interaction. Forcing these people into an unnatural behavioral style can be damaging. The well-intentioned manager could be sowing seeds of frustration, stress and anxiety (and all the negative outcomes that can go with them) by demanding behavioral adaptations that cannot be sustained by an employee.

In some ways this is a classic “square pegs and round holes” problem. If the job requires a high degree of social activity such as a front desk clerk, cashier, receptionist, concierge, retail sales, etc. then hiring a Low-I individual is likely to be a recipe for disaster, or at least a conflict between management who wants a certain behavioral norm that is not sustainable for the Low-I, and the employee who to succeed must constantly muster the energy required to act against their natural behaviors. The situation is untenable and too often results in negative outcomes on both sides. If instead, behavioral modeling were made part of the hiring process this situation would easily be avoided by hiring a higher-I individual for the role that demands constant positive interaction with other people. Similarly if a job demands strict attention to detail and compliance to rules then a High-C would be a wise choice and an individual with a Low-C DISC style would be problematic.

In the MSU article, Scott cautions that “results of the study also suggest that if workers smile just to keep their bosses happy and do this over a long period, they start to feel ‘inauthentic.’” In DISC this relates to a naturally Low-I pressuring themselves to adapt a High-I behavior. It can be done, but not sustainably and not without damaging effects.

The lesson: managers should seek to determine the DISC behavioral styles best suited for the actually work to be done and hire employees whose natural DISC styles match those desired job behaviors, not try enforce policies or believe that training will somehow turn a naturally Low-I into a High-I no matter how much they are asked to smile.

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Keeping your top performers, those key employees that really help keep your organization moving, is an item that is always near the top of any executive’s priority list. Yet the workplace is always subject to change and sometimes yesterday’s motivated MVP can become today’s flight risk.

Shifting circumstances in the work environment can force changes in the default DISC behaviors of your people. This can lead the employee to experience one or more of these four states:

1) Frustration – the individual feels thwarted by the change, unable to act in a preferred manner or feeling that the opportunity to be successful has been sabotaged.

2) Elevated energy expenditure – the shift in the work environment has pushed the individual to adapt away from her natural DISC behavioral style to a new profile of behavior, this requires energy to sustain and can be draining if required for an extended duration.

3) Stress – change brings uncertainty, disruption of the status quo, this can provoke a stressed emotional state that can be expressed in multiple ways such as anger, fear, agitation, impatience, withdrawal, etc.

4) Boredom – change can shift an individual into a state of weariness and restlessness due to lack of interest.

Of the four, the last one, boredom, is the one to watch. It may sound relatively innocuous – certainly stress gets more attention than boredom due to the linkage of stress and health issues – however, it is boredom that is in fact the least tolerable state of the four. It can be a greater indicator that an employee is about to quit or otherwise change their situation than the other three change reactions mentioned above.

Consider for a moment, how well do you personally tolerate boredom? How would you react if confronted on a daily basis with lengthy periods of tedium? Most dynamic leaders squirm at the mere thought of enduring a boring meeting, let alone an extended work session. Many leaders, although not all, have a high score in the D column of a DISC profile indicating a behavioral bias towards action. They feel boredom is a harbinger of wasted time, inefficiency and a lack of productivity and they will do anything to personally avoid it. When boredom seems inescapable the individual will take action to shift the situation, that action is all too often announced with the phrase “I quit!”

Every day talented individuals quit tasks, projects, teams, and, yes, even their jobs because of boredom. The turnover and loss of knowledge and experience is incredibly costly for organizations and much of it could be avoided with timely intervention. But how do you know when someone is bored? It is easy for you to know when you, yourself, are bored, but it isn’t always easy to outwardly observe when someone else is bored. This is an area where DISC profiles can be a valuable tool not just during the hiring process, but in the ongoing development and retention of your staff. Using DISC assessments as part of a routine employee development process allows DISC styles to be tracked over time. When anomalous shifts in behavior profiles occur they will be recognized and may provide the critical insight needed to rescue an employee who is sliding down the funnel of boredom toward the door marked exit.

In the DISC vocabulary S stands for steadiness – If in our tracking we see a strong increase in an individual’s score in the S column it is often an indicator of entrenched boredom. They may shift from a low S dynamic style to a non-demonstrative high S style indicating that the individual may not have enough to do, or may require more variety of tasks. The individual may have grown in skills and is no longer sufficiently challenged by the current activity or they may have been moved into a role that runs contrary to their behavioral profile. For example take the DISC style of a high D person who is used to driving activity in pioneering ways and putting them in a role where they have large amounts of tedious “busy work” and no options to change things or delegate the activity – we’ll see the unchanging grind lead to boredom that is expressed as an elevation in the S column. It is in this state when they feel boredom is inescapable within the situation that they start directing energy toward getting out of the situation.

Without regularly administering DISC behavioral assessments, the bored amongst your key personnel can remain a hidden, yet “at risk”, population in the work force. I’ve compared my observations from teaching in management and leadership development classes, with those of other faculty in management programs; we concur that boredom is a prime motivation for a large number of the participants enrolled in such courses. We estimate that 45 – 60% of those paying for additional education around their current working situation are doing so because they are bored in their current position and are intending to use the educational opportunity to change their current situation. Doing whatever it takes to make a change.

In summary, to keep your top performers keep them interested. To keep them interested recognize when they’re bored. DISC assessments, if used properly, can provide the objective data to help you identify when your best employee is about to yawn their way out the door.

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