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July / August 2010
Volume 22, Number 4

Workshops highlight importance of personality differences, understandings in managing employee-related risks / By Maria Sprow

Take out a pencil or pen and a sheet of paper, and draw a pig. There are no other directions here; just spend a minute or two minutes or maybe five minutes and think of a pig, then draw it. In fact, draw it here.

Now, stop and wonder: What does that pig drawing say about you and your personality? Is there something about it that shows whether you’re analytical or creative, whether you’re detail-oriented or opinionated, whether you’re a risk taker or observant? What would the drawings of various coworkers have looked like, and how would they have been different? Would the pigs have all faced the same direction? Would they all have four legs and large ears?

In truth, the pig drawing is the elementary-school version of a personality assessment. It’s nice to think we can each be understood based on the direction our pig faces, but in reality, learning how to get along with each other to create a positive and productive work environment is more complicated.

But thanks to this year’s Risk Management Regional Workshops, which ended in June, many county managers and supervisors around the state will have a better tool to use to understand themselves and their interactions with fellow colleagues and employees.

The regional workshops were oriented toward managing risks associated with employee conflicts, many of which are rooted in or begin with personality disagreements and misunderstandings.

“If you have a problem with communication with a subordinate, with an employee, is that a risk to your county?” Loss Control Representative Ron Shuffield asked attendees during the workshops. “Yes, it is. Someone misunderstanding what you are saying is a risk to your county. … Management, supervision and leadership all tie in together, and you can have a risk to your county if they are not properly done.”

Employee-related risks can range from things like fraud and harassment or discrimination claims to wasted time and resources on failed projects. “They don’t just wake up one day and go, ‘hmmm, I think I’ll go to the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission], looks like a good day to do that.’ By the time they get to the EEOC, we’ve had a lot of days of things not going very well for us, and we haven’t properly managed our employees,” said TAC Human Resources Specialist Diana Cecil.

Fortunately, a county can protect itself from those risks with good communication and listening, and educating employees on how diverse traits and strengths make a team strong, said TAC Field Representative Lori Wiggins, adding that sometimes human resource liabilities and risks can be avoided not only through the understanding of others, but also by understanding yourself.

“We can have people do what we want them to do, what we need them to do, and be happy about it, all because we understand what makes them tick,” Wiggins said.

To help aid counties in minimizing those risks and strengthening the bonds within their organization, Wiggins introduced workshop attendees to the DISC Personal Insights Profile™, a behavioral assessment tool similar to Myers Briggs, in that it involves a self-assessment and answering questions related to different personality types.

But While Myers Briggs-type tests divide the population into 16 different “types” based on four different factors – whether a person is introverted or extroverted, what a person does with information they are given, how a person makes decisions and how consistent a person is in their thinking — the DISC system divides people into four “normal” central behaviors — dominance, influence, steadiness and compliance — based on whether a person focuses on tasks or people and if they are introverted or extroverted.

Each of the four characteristics can be used to understand the types of tasks a person excels in and enjoys performing, how they best destress, and how to best get a group of individuals to work well in a team.

“Everybody has strengths and everybody has weaknesses,” Wiggins said, adding that personality diversity is an essential element of most successful teams and departments, and that none of the four behaviors captured by the DISC assessment is better than the others. In fact, each trait plays an essential role on a team: dominant people tend to direct a team, influential people tend to motivate a team, steady people tend to ensure that the team sets realistic goals, and compliant people ensure that the team meets standards. “People are different, and if you only hire employees who are like yourself, you end up with a group of mini me’s that have the same strengths and weaknesses you have.”

When a person understands their own characteristics, Wiggins said, they can also understand how other people perceive their behavior. “People are hard on other people, and they judge people because they act differently,” she said, adding that it’s important to transcend those differences and consider each person based on how one personality may conflict with another personality type. “Progress gets stalled because of people problems. ... Shot-in-the-dark management doesn’t work.”

To understand that better, Wiggins recommended thinking about the characteristics possessed by a favorite boss and a least favorite boss. One person’s favorite boss may be professionally demanding and detail-oriented, while another person’s favorite boss may be laidback and humorous. “Who you just recognized as your best boss is someone else’s worst nightmare,” Wiggins said, but added that it’s possible to motivate an employee with an opposing or non-complimentary personality type, even if the relationship stems from a worst nightmare scenario. “You just have to provide an environment in which they can work.”

To do so using the DISC method, individuals are given 24 different sets of characteristics, and within each set, are asked to choose the characteristics that most apply to themselves and the characteristics that least apply to themselves. Answers are then scored and plotted on a graph to reveal certain things about their professional character and behavior, such as how they respond to stress and how they have adapted their behaviors to suit their environments, whether the focus is on their professional environment or their home environment. For example, one grouping includes a choice between “gentle, kindly,” “persuasive, convincing,” “humble, reserved, modest” and “original, inventive, individualistic.” A test taker may say they are “most” persuasive and convincing and “least” humble, reserved and modest.

Each possible answer is then assigned two natural behaviors — one for when it is chosen as the “most” likely trait, and another for when it is chosen as the “least” likely trait. The assignments relate back to the “DISC” name — “D” for Dominance, “I” for Influence, “S” for Steadiness and “C” for Compliance.

A scoring and graphing process leads survey takers to discover first their dominant “adapted behavior” and then their dominant “natural behavior” based on the four normal behaviors of dominance, influence, steadiness and compliance. The graph also scores the level of non-dominate traits each person possesses. The adapted behavior is based on “most” answers and the “natural behavior” is based on “least” answers, the theory being that it’s easier for a person to discern what they are least like than what they are most like.

A person can have the same adapted and natural behavior, or an adapted behavior that differs from the natural behavior. A small difference means that the person has adapted their behavior for their work environment — for instance, someone who is naturally dominant can adapt over time to become more influential in a work environment — but a large difference between the adapted graph and the natural graph may mean a person is in the wrong job, Wiggins said. Of course, each behavior type in the DISC theory has its strengths and weaknesses, and an individual’s personality can rarely be encapsulated entirely within one trait. According to some research, about 18 percent of American professionals are dominant, 28 percent are influential, 40 percent are steady and 14 percent are compliant. Dominant and influential people are extroverted, while steady and compliant people are introverted. Additionally, dominant and compliant individuals are task-oriented, whereas influential and steady individuals are people-oriented.

Dominant people, under DISC, are described as adventuresome, competitive, daring, decisive, direct, innovative and persistent. They are task-oriented extroverts who make good forward-thinking bottom- line organizers. They enjoy challenges but dislike control and supervision. Their ideal work environment is open to new ideas and viewpoints and doesn’t follow a routine. However, dominant behavior types also tend to be perceived by others as being demanding, nervy, aggressive and egotistical. They are more prone to anger than other personality types and may set standards too high, lack tact and diplomacy, and take on too much work.

“If there is not a challenge, they will create a challenge,” Wiggins said. “Train them on being easier on other people. You may need to tell them, ‘your demeanor can sometimes come across as intimidating to other people who are not as assertive as you are,’ and you may need to train them to ask other people for their opinions.”

Influential people, on the other hand, are described as charming, confident, convincing, enthusiastic, inspiring, optimistic, persuasive, popular, sociable and trusting. They are people-oriented extroverts who tend to be team players who can negotiate in times of conflict.

Their ideal work environment is one where they can consistently interact with other people, move around a lot, express their ideas openly and go unsupervised. However, Influential behavior types tend to be self-promoting, overly optimistic, gabby and unrealistic.

They are generally inattentive to details, and they trust people indiscriminately. They may not be good listeners. “They tend to not hear what you are saying,” Wiggins said. “They are always surprised when people cheat them or lie to them.” Face-to-face personal interaction is important when it comes to motivating an influential-type person, she added, as is getting away from the office and other closed-off environments.

“They need to interact, they need to talk, they need to use their words to convince you and inspire you,” she said. “For those of us that are Is, when we have to stay in our office, that just drains us. … They truly fear social rejection, so if you don’t talk to them, they are going to think you’re mad at them. You need to spend a couple minutes talking to them each day, and allow them freedom of movement.”

Another tip in getting an influential-oriented person to perform better: have them get ready for Monday morning before leaving on Friday night, so that they can dive right in to projects once they get done making their post-weekend visitations.

Individuals who rank high in steadiness are usually described as good listeners, patient, sincere, relaxed, non-competitive, loyal, empathetic and service-oriented. They think before they speak and have a strong need to help other people. But, they can also be overly concerned, hesitant and inflexible. They love routine and are the most resistant to change.

“These are the ones who day in, day out, get the work done, but they don’t like change. If you’re about to make a change in your organization and you’re dealing with an S, you’re going to have to build in safety nets,” Wiggins said. Changes and the reasons behind them need to be clearly explained, though a steady individual will rarely aggressively fight against anything; they are more likely to passively oppose something.

Another important thing about steady individuals is that they often want feedback from their supervisors, and they respond better to a person who is calm, cool and collected, rather than boisterous or loud. “They are looking for security more than anything, so you need to assure them and you need to let them know that they are doing a good job,” Wiggins said. “If you have a lot of turnover and you have a lot of [steady individuals] working for you, you probably should blame yourself. To them, it’s all about the relationship, and they will do anything to preserve the relationship.”

Finally, compliant individuals are described as analytical, factual, precise, rule-followers, objective and critical thinkers. Under stress, they can be pessimistic, fussy and “get stuck in analysis paralysis,” said Wiggins, adding that compliant individuals tend to feel fear more than others: fear that they have the wrong data, fear that something won’t work, fear that they will lose their jobs, fear that a project will fall through. They are slow to buy-in to new ideas. “They need more information because they need to check this out, check this out, check this out… they test, they test, they test.”

To work best with a compliant individual, Wiggins recommended sticking to business and setting realistic deadlines.

For bad days, each behavior type has its own form of stress relief to suggest: dominant people are competitive and can be encouraged to exercise or participate in sports; influential people just need a good conversation and time to blow off steam with others; steady people can be encouraged to take a bath or another relaxing activity; and compliant people can be helped by having alone time.

“When you are under stress, under pressure or fatigued, this is who you are,” Wiggins said. “People behave predictably in ways that can be observed and understood. … and this transcends even generational differences.”