As a professional event planner, you've certainly led your share of teams working to get an important job done. When everyone is on the same page, leading people isn't too tough, but what about when your team of helpers is full of very different personality types? This can challenge any leader. When leading a team its best to know what motivates and what stresses each of the main personality types. How are you supposed to know all this? Don't worry, a ground-breaking psychologist did all the homework for you creating the DiSC Theory.
DiSC is a behavior assessment tool based on the DiSC theory of noted psychologist William Moulton Marston, which centers on four different personality traits which are currently Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C). This theory was then developed into a behavioral assessment tool by industrial psychologist Walter Vernon Clarke. Okay, okay, enough of the history, here's how you can use it.
The DiSC Works!
Have your team take the short DiSC assessment quiz and let them each share their results. You'll have a nice look at your team and their different motivators, strengths, blind spots, stressors and more. you'll not only know more of what makes your team tick, but how they can work together perfectly, like gears, to get your next event off the ground. Our sales staff at the Greater Lansing CVB recently carried out this exercise and it really turned on a lot of lights for me as the manager of five sales managers and two directors of sales.
What I Learned
It was enlightening for me to learn how much the members of the staff had styles that differ from my own. I learned that a different approach to my management style (I had always managed people the way I'd like to be managed. Wouldn't you?) could have a better impact on the productivity of those I manage because of the varying emotional tendencies of my staff. I was also surprised to see that one of my staff who I always thought was different than me was more like me than the rest of the staff. I was happy to see our department has some nice balance, as well. You don’t want three chefs and no cooks in a productive kitchen, right? Well, you also don’t want to have a team that’s all results-driven and challenge oriented with no one focused on collaboration and support. It has been truly a beneficial exercise that I highly recommend for any manager looking to better understand his or her team. Follow this link for more information about the DiSC quiz: https://www.discprofile.com/
There's a small fee to that the test but its well worth the cost to get your team running like a well-oiled machine.
