Using DISC Behavioral Style Profiles
Why use behavioral style profiles?
Online Delivery and Software Collection

DISC Graph Reading 101 Lunch and Learn:

Self-Insight and Knowledge-based Style Adjustment

• Understand your “native tongue, your most natural communication style.
  
• Send the messages you mean to send - how we deliver verbal and nonverbal messages
  
• Become aware of the adjustments made in response to the work environment, streamlining them into more natural and fruitful responses.
  
• More effectively capitalize on the strengths of your style.
  
• Decisively navigate the areas which are not naturally your strengths.
  
• Identify your behavioral style liabilities, and compensate for them.
  
• Make blind spots visible with specific feedback.
  
• Productively differentiate between task management and relationship building.
  
• Appreciate your unique contributions to leadership and decision-making.
  

• How to identify those with different behavioral tendencies.
  
• Decode visual and verbal signs of behavioral language.
  
• Utilize communication and motivation style preferences.
  
• Adjust behaviors to optimize your approach toward different styles.
  
• Avoid communication mistakes such as misinterpreting others.
  
• Successfully direct behavior-based interactions.
  
• Influence and motivate others who don't seem to think the same way you do.
  
• Separate behaviors and intentions to create dynamic responses to what you see and hear.
  
• Translate strong emotions into workplace intelligence.
  
• Recognize and practice interpersonal skills that promote success with others.
  

Ask us about specialty products!
Teeshirts and full-color magnets of DISC characteristics are great for retreats and workshops!

Spotlight on JAX
The Job Analysis Expert

Ever had a job description that you liked? Try our behavioral job description.
JAX provides you with the ability to create comprehensive behavioral job profiles to more clearly define and communicate job requirements. The result is an in-depth job analysis that highlights the most important job related behaviors, the motivational needs satisfied by job activities, specific characteristics to look for in candidates, and potential conflicts between job requirements and the described nature of the work. A wide range of job templates is also included.

At any point, you can view, edit or delete your job analysis information or use the program to do "what if" job modeling. A built-in text editor allows you to include critical information, such as interview questions, job activities or a job description with each of your analyses. You can store your job analyses and conduct multiple analyses for the same position.

More Info on JAX
Download a Sample JAX Report
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We offer several different packages to improve organizational vitality and worker satisfaction and engagement, most of which include an anonymous survey administered by us to encourage open, honest feedback.

There are some questions that seem so obvious that many never ask them. Here are a few of the general areas - we would ask more specific questions.

• If you were offered a comparable job elsewhere, would you take it?
• Why would you stay? Why would you leave?
• Does your manager welcome your participation in decisions that affect you?
• Do you understand how your daily tasks fit into the big picture of the organization's success?
• Do you understand how your efforts affect other employees, customers, owners, and the community?
• Do you feel valued, respected?
• What suggestions would you make for improvement?

A new survey of 5,000 U.S. households found that just the number of American workers who are content with their jobs is down 10% from a decade ago (The Conference Board, Feb 2005).

• 40% of workers feel disconnected from their employers.
  
• Two out of every three workers do not identify with or feel motivated to drive their employer's business goals and objectives.
  
• Less than one-third of all supervisors and managers are perceived to be strong leaders.
• Less than half feel content with job security.
  
• Only a third approved of their salaries.
  
• Less than a third were satisfied with educational and job training programs.
  
• Company promotion policies and bonus plans "tended to be the lowest on the satisfaction scale."
  
  

Compared to the generations of Baby Boomers and Veterans, the post-Baby-Boomers (Generations X and Y, or whatever shorthand you prefer) expect more satisfaction from their jobs. Workers of ages 35-44 saw the largest drop in job satisfaction, from 60.9% to 49.2%. Next came workers aged 45-54, who dropped from 57.3% to 46.7%. Workers 65 and over are the most satisfied with their jobs.

Employee Disengagement

These studies lend further validation to the Gallup Employee Engament Index Poll that found a majority of workers (54%) that actually fall into the "not engaged" category, putting time into their work but only in "autopilot mode." Only 29% of workers are estimated by Gallup to be truly "engaged," employees that "work with passion and who feel a profound connection to their company." Worse yet, 17% of employees are considered actively disengaged. These employees are not just unhappy in their work, but actively undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish.

"Actively disengaged" and "not engaged" workers can add up to more than 70% of your workforce if your organization is not actively aware and working on issues of disengagement. Opportunities for increased growth, improved customer relations, and smoother operations that are missed because of cruise control and sabotage are difficult even to estimate.

What Can We Do?

Developing trusting and supportive relationships between workers and managers should be a top priority.
One of the primary problems identified by the Gallup poll is bad management/leadership; a majority of engaged worked are satisfied with their managers, while the others are not. Bad management turns off your workers and cuts your productivity. Engaged workers feel that their manager sets them up for success. Dysfunctional organizational cultures often reflect the practices of the top leadership as well. It is difficult to address top leadership on these kinds of issues, even when the organizational problems are fairly obvious.

This workforce trend indicates that both individual organizations and the national economy are seriously affected by worker discontent. Continuing to ignore or "shrug off" worker discontent will create lasting repercussions. With today's advanced tools, you can make targeted adjustments to increase worker satisfaction, while at the same time lowering labor costs. Call us to discover how.

Major Shifts in Workplace Attitudes

Over 50% of American workers believe
that their managers treat them unfairly.
Over 50% of American workers question
the basic morality of their organization's top leaders.

Key findings such as this, from "The New Employee/Employer Equation," suggest that the figures for disengagement and dissatisfaction are even higher - if you ask the right questions. The nationwide survey of 7,718 American workers (over 18, working more than 30 hours per week) was sponsored by 24 leading U.S. companies and conducted by Harris Interactive for Age Wave, an independent think tank that counsels business and government on issues impacting an aging society; and The Concours Group, a senior executives' consultant.

Workers seem to understand job satisfaction as a different category than job engagement

Satisfaction: Only 45% of workers are satisfied with their jobs. 33% are satisfied, and 12% are very satisfied.

Engagement: Only 20% feel passionate about their jobs. Less than 15% feel strongly energized by their work, and only 31% believe (either strongly or moderately) that their employer inspires the best in them.

Managers, in turn, are only slightly happier:

*  66% care about the fate of their organization, but more than one-third do not!
*  Only a little more than a third of managers felt that their organizations inspire the best in them
*  Only a little more than a third of managers would be willing to promote their organization as being a great place to work.

Burnout:
42% are coping with burnout issues now.
33% believe they have reached a dead end in their jobs.
21% are eager to change jobs.

We expect to see this issue increase in importance as baby boomers retire and the shortfall in professional and skilled workers gets worse. Older workers are the most engaged in their work, the least likely to feel burnout out, and the most satisfied. Younger workers are the most restless and unhappy, and feel the least amount of loyalty to employers.

How Can We Address Discontent and Disengagement?

What does your skilled, productive workforce want? Have you tried asking them? (See Sidebar) The New Employee/Employer Equation" survey says that the number one priority in terms of benefits is overall health care coverage. At the national level, employees want better management, job security, professional development, and a better balance between work and home life. Nearly all workers were also seeking a better balance between work and the rest of their life, with more paid vacation time as the top desire, followed by a more flexible work schedule and paid maternity leave. Workers are increasingly seeking jobs that give them more opportunities to learn and grow.

Large corporations take note!

Despite the more generous benefits package offered by larger firms, the employees of smaller companies are much more engaged and care more about success of the organization. Workers in smaller companies are:

• More willing to put forth extra effort to help the organization succeed (60% vs. 43 %).
• More likely to feel that the organization inspires the best in them (44% vs. 24%).
• More likely to agree that they would accept almost any job to keep working there (20% vs. 16%).

We predict that to remain competitive, larger corporations will strategically respond by reorganizing into smaller units for better satisfaction and efficiency, even if they remain institutionally merged. To do so, however, they will need more information about the factors that really matter in these comparisons between workers in smaller companies as opposed to larger ones.

From our perspective, we would speculate that workers in smaller organizations understand better how they fit into the success of the organization as whole. Such employees feel more "part of the family." For the optimal interaction of human perspective and larger team structures, it may be a more manageable size for the imagination. Large corporations may be too alienating, the workers may not understand how their job contributes to company success. In smaller companies they may also feel more valued or have more personal attachment to their team. We expect to see studies which will explore these issues further on a national level.

Based on your own unique context and needs, we can provide strategies, information, and solutions for your company now.