by Jeannine Guerci on January 18, 2010
A DISC profile can be used to improve communication skills with amazing results. By categorizing people in four behavioral dimensions, a DISC profile helps in applying the most appropriate method to align communication styles.
The importance of communication skills has been emphasized in the biannual survey of the Association of Graduate Recruiters. The report says that job seeking candidates are mostly lacking in soft skills such as verbal ability and communication skills. These problems can be resolved with the help of a DISC profile.
Tips on Improving Communication Skills with a DISC Profile
By categorizing people in four behavioral dimensions including Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance, a DISC profile offers the solutions to communication problems:
• High D’s: They are talkative, bossy and authoritative. They usually speak very fast. They can learn listening skills and ask more questions.
• High I’s: They use stories and anecdotes in their speeches and sometimes exaggerate. They can improve by controlling time in their speech.
• High S’s: They listen more and do little talking. They are patient, tolerant and are normally embarrassed by recognition. They can improve their communication skills by learning to adjust with self-affirmation.
• High C’s: They have slow speech and do not react much during communication. They are precise while talking. By learning to accept other’s ideas and participating in groups they can improve their communication.
Your Ultimate Success (YUS) has helped several managers to smooth out communication channels using a DISC profile.
by Jeannine Guerci on January 11, 2010
DISC assessment provides an effective method of judging the behavior of prospective employees. It is a behavior assessment model that offers profiling techniques of determining a person’s traits that has implications on his/her professional life. DISC assessment covers four areas of a person’s behavior – Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance.
According to a Michigan State University study, traditional hiring techniques (including resume reviews, interviews and reference checks) result in only a 14% likelihood of successful hiring. With the help of DISC assessment, an employer finds out if the person that is being hired has a motivating or de-motivating personality. A person’s strengths and weaknesses could be easily found out with the help of this method.
DISC Assessment: How it Works
DISC assessment is carried out in the form of an online questionnaire. Based on a person’s responses, a report is generated. The main focus of this behavior assessment is to determine the preferences of the person. By matching such reports with the required role in the organization, employers can find out the person’s suitability for the job. In this way, behavior assessment contributes to the hiring process by identifying the candidate who best suits a particular job.
Due to a host of benefits provided by this method, DISC assessment is used very commonly by HR professionals for effective hiring. Your Ultimate Success (YUS) has expertise and experience in DISC assessment and has assisted companies in successful hires.
by Jeannine Guerci on January 4, 2010
DISC assessment is an effective tool to improve the organizational environment. Organizational assessments help companies in determining the personal and professional behavior of prospective and current employees. The key parameters of DISC assessment include dominance, influence, steadiness and compliance. These traits of an employee are profiled with the help of a questionnaire.
Once the behavioral strengths and weaknesses of employees are understood, this insight is used for reducing conflict and enhancing cooperation. The development of such an organizational environment helps in increasing employee performance.
Role of DISC Assessment
According to a study published by the American Psychological Association (Washington) in the Journal of Applied Psychology, job involvement and work environment are interrelated. Therefore, a cooperative organizational environment would ensure higher employee productivity. DISC assessment lays the foundation for effectively dealing with conflict.
Still another benefit of organizational assessments is that they impart a community feeling. Once employees feel like a team, they are more committed to the work and the organization.
With the help of DISC assessment, Your Ultimate Success (YUS) has helped several organizations in developing strategies to deal with conflict and to inculcate a cooperative environment.
by Jeannine Guerci on December 28, 2009
DISC assessment is an effective tool for identifying the right match for a given job profile. DISC is a model for behavioral assessment that tests four important behavioral attributes of a prospective employee. These include Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. These personal attributes are judged by testing the candidate’s preferences with the help of a questionnaire.
DISC Assessment: Growing Importance
The need for a continuous supply of high potential human resources has introduced new trends in hiring. According to a survey conducted by Career Builder, more and more employers are now looking outside their own industry for hiring. The survey showed that 78% of the companies were willing to hire employees from industries other than their own. It is, thus, not the technical or vocational skills that are of utmost importance. Equally important are the behavioral attributes, which can be judged through DISC assessment.
DISC Assessment: Identifying Employees for Different Roles
DISC assessment plays an important role in identifying the right employees. For instance, if the DISC assessment for a particular employee results in a high D attribute, s/he would be suitable for a managerial position. Similarly, a person with a high I score would suit a sales position.
Your Ultimate Success (YUS) has helped diverse companies in their hiring endeavors by using DISC assessment.
by Jeannine Guerci on December 21, 2009
DISC assessment is an essential tool for boosting the performance of employees. It also equips employees to perform against an adverse economic backdrop. During the 2008 global meltdown, behavioral assessments helped organizations create an improved work environment.
Companies are increasingly feeling the need to bring significant changes in their systems and processes. With the help of DISC assessment, employees can be trained to quickly adapt to such changes.
DISC Assessment and High-Involvement Work Practices
Recent trends have companies switching from “free-agent work practices” to “high-involvement work practices.” According to a study published in the Academy of Management Journal, there is a high level of association between high-involvement work practices and employee productivity. High-involvement work practices depend heavily on the proper understanding of employee behavior patterns and their emotional strengths and weaknesses.
It is in this regard that DISC assessment plays an important role in the growth of organizations. DISC profiling helps in determining such personality factors that can improve an employee’s performance. It familiarizes employees with their own styles and preferences.
In this way, employees not only continue to grow in the company, but also sustain their growth during the time of adversity. Your Ultimate Success (YUS) has taught many organizations effective ways of sustaining growth in difficult situations with the help of DISC assessment.
by Jeannine Guerci on December 14, 2009
The key to success in the world of smart businesses is the ability to ask for professional expertise at the right time. Behavioral assessments fulfil every organization’s need to plug the gaps with expertise so that smart decisions can be made.
Adecco’s American Workplace Insights Survey 2009 delves into suggestions made on career choices to American college graduates. They include:
• 71% of former college graduates advised the next batch to choose a career they like rather than because of its earning potential.
• Only 13% advise students to choose a career based on the salary.
Clearly, ‘liking a job’ is related to an individual’s thinking, values and vision more than anything else.
DISC Profile: Factors to Consider
A DISC profile serves as a scientifically valid psychometric profiling tool that enables organizations to eliminate guesswork and uncertainty. Factors to consider are detailed below.
Job Fit: Every team and its members need to fit well with the job.
This involves:
• core competence and capability to do the job well
• conduct a proper match of their skillsets
• plan for learning new skills and implementing them to the needs of the job
Interpersonal Awareness: This involves finding how employees can ‘flex’ their:
• skills
• behaviors
• strengths to work with the rest of the team
Job Clarity: This involves:
• Knowing what the job role entails
• Imbibing the organization’s vision and goals
• Clarifying the tasks periodically
At Your Ultimate Success Inc, we enable organizations and their teams to focus and do better to trigger excellent results. Effective profiling tools, such as behavioral assessments and DISC profile results, indicate how well teams really ‘tick,’ and how efficiently resources can be used to deliver successful results.
by Jeannine Guerci on December 7, 2009
Behavioral assessments play a critical role in ensuring high employee performance. A study published in Human Resource Management (Vol. 34) establishes that the perceptions of employees regarding job satisfaction, commitment, teamwork, stress and communication significantly predicts their performance. Such perceptions can be easily determined with the help of behavioral assessments.
Benefits of Behavioral Assessments
As a means of determining psychological strengths and weaknesses of an employee, behavioral assessments provide the following benefits:
• Team Building: Behavioral assessments help in team building by making each member aware of his/her own styles and the behavioral patterns of his/her team members.
• Finding the Right Fit for a Job: By determining behavioral traits, a candidate’s alignment to the organizational culture and performance in a particular role can be predicted.
• Creating a Supportive Work Environment: Better awareness of each other’s personal styles creates a supportive work environment based on mutual trust.
• Motivating Employees: Behavioral assessments provide useful data on how to motivate each employee. By knowing what motivates a particular employee, a company can retain and grow him/her.
Behavioral assessment tools are being increasingly used by Fortune 500 companies. Your Ultimate Success (YUS) has successfully helped several companies in boosting their employee performance by using behavioral assessments.
by Jeannine Guerci on November 30, 2009
Behavioral benchmarks are created to assess a candidate’s behavioral suitability to a particular job or to the organization. Organizations normally focus on technical benchmarks such as education and experience. However, behavioral assessments are equally important to ensure a match between an employee and a role.
The research of Schmidt and Hunter, published in the American Psychologist Journal, has emphasized the importance of cognitive ability tests in predicting the performance of an employee. Therefore, psychological strengths and weaknesses should be determined before hiring. This can be done by creating behavior benchmarks with the help of organizational assessments.
Behavioral Assessments for Benchmarking
Creating benchmarks through behavioral assessments typically involves using the available information related to the requirement of the given job and the expectations of the organization from the candidates. There are processes and tools available that can help in creating behavior benchmarks.
One of the most powerful behavioral assessment tools is the DISC profile. This groups behavioral characteristics into four primary dimensions of personality styles which can be used to create behavioral benchmarks.
Once these personality attributes are known, they can be used for creating a benchmark and accordingly measure new employees against them. Your Ultimate Success (YUS) has helped several organizations create behavioral benchmarks.
by Jeannine Guerci on November 23, 2009
Behavior assessment assists HR professionals in the early identification of misfits who have problematic behavioral attributes, such as
• Aggressive nature responsible for triggering futile arguments
• Air of arrogance causing other employees to feel insulted
• Excessive control
• Adjustment issues with other employees
• Fault-finding attitude
• Procrastination
If not dealt with on time, such personality traits can further cause:
• Interference with the work progress necessary for the achievement of long term goals
• Marginalization of performance of fellow employees
• Damage to the organization’s reputation, image and goodwill (Uris, 1988, The Executive Deskbook)
Such misfits can undermine teamwork and team spirit, resulting in inter-team differences that can create severe problems for the project manager.
DISC Assessment for Dealing with Misfits
By implementing DISC assessment, HR professionals can help problematic employees to gain in-depth insight into their problematic behavior. Such behavior assessment tools assist the development of a custom-made curative solution. With properly planned motivation and support, these individuals can become important players in getting things done for an organization.
The implementation of DISC assessment is highly recommended for tackling non-conformists. Your Ultimate Success (YUS) has aided several organizations in the early identification and resolution of an employee’s problematic behavioral aspects.
by Jeannine Guerci on November 16, 2009
Against the backdrop of globalization, behavior assessment has become the need of the hour. As the business environment gets more competitive, the importance of having rigorous behavioral assessments increases.
Behavior Assessment for Allaying Stress
Employees working in an expansionary set-up usually complain about high levels of stress. Very often they succumb to the burden of high workplace expectations. Things can get worse where business expansion plans are heavily dependent on the efficiency of a select group of employees. In such cases, there is no room for deteriorated performances resulting from stress.
A study by the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health revealed that 25% to 40% of US workers experience job burnout due to stress. Stress related problematic issues, such as depleted productivity, absenteeism and the prices of curative expenses, costs around $300 billion annually. Timely behavioral assessments help in the mitigation of stress related problems.
Behavioral Assessment for High Authority Employees
Some employees are more vulnerable to stressful episodes than others. Situations can go out of control if people who are prone to traumatic stress episodes are working in positions of authority. Heavy workplace responsibilities can act as a trigger that can eventually result in irreparable psychological damage. Behavioral assessments help in singling out such employees. It sensitizes them to their behavioral problem and facilitates well-timed remedial measures.
Behavior assessment has become a panacea for employee-oriented business expansion issues. Your Ultimate Success (YUS) has a legacy of aiding organizations in business expansion plans through the deployment of behavioral assessments.
