In my opinion, DISC is one of the most powerful tools available for team cohesion and leadership development. It’s also really approachable and user-friendly so groups very quickly get what it’s all about.
My latest DISC workshop was conducted at Pullman Phuket Panwa Beach Resort for a group of 33 pax from the beauty/skin care industry. It was planned to be quite a long and intense afternoon with the first three hours dedicated to the DISC training and assessment and the final two hours focused on a fun, yet very challenging, indoor team building activity.
We used an online DISC assessment for every group member to first identify their own DISC style and, through a facilitated group activity, understand more about their personal styles including strengths and weaknesses, motivators and stressors. With this understanding of themselves in place, we then looked at how each style can communicate more effectively with each of the other styles leading to improved collaboration. This is the key benefit of DISC. It’s not just a personality test. While based in personality, it is far more about one’s professional working style and how we can adapt our working styles to fit better in certain situations and avoid unnecessary and unproductive conflict.
To end the DISC session I moderated a fireside chat between the group’s senior leaders in which each leader opened up about their DISC style, working style, professional preferences, and personal weaknesses. It was a valuable session as the group was able to better understand how to work with their leadership team as well as their colleagues.
While I always try to make my team development and training workshops as fun as possible, there is serious work to be done of course. So it was nice to end the afternoon with two hours of team building before heading to dinner. Some really fun team challenges and games in the meeting room that raised the energy levels after an intense workshop and brought out everyone’s competitive spirit.