“DISC Is a Swiss Army Knife”
How Elizabeth Roberts Uses DISC to Help Start-Ups Succeed

When Elizabeth Roberts, Partner and Head of People at Ulysses Holdings, took the DISC TriMetrix HD Assessment over three years ago, it made an immediate impression on her.

“I thought, ‘I don’t really understand this, but I feel like they might have cameras in my house’,” she jokes.

She had taken assessments before, and hadn’t been overly impressed. She hadn’t bought into the idea of an algorithm telling her about herself and had been put off by tests that attempted to tell her who she was. “Different tests told me I was an introvert, an extrovert … and the feedback was never in a language that I understood.” Read More

The Four Commitments of Inner Circle Coaching

By Whit Mitchell

My favorite method of executive coaching (and by far the most impactful for my clients) is called Inner Circle Coaching. It is a team effort that relies on feedback and partnership from a leader’s inner circle to help that leader see his or her blind spots, and to create long-term success and changed behaviors.

Why do it this way? In order to create change, I’ve found that it is extremely effective to involve the people who work directly with the leader I am coaching. The leader’s inner circle has better access to the leader, which gives them invaluable observations. The person being coached chooses five or six people as their inner circle—bosses, peers, direct reports, colleagues. These are people whose opinions matter to the leader. Read More

What Leaders Should Know About Innovation

By Ron Price

These days you hear and read a lot about innovation. It’s a common buzzword and there are constantly new articles and blogs written about it, but most of it is simply a rehashing of what has been written in the past. There’s very little new thought going into innovation, which is ironic if you think about it.

This is part of the reason Dr. Evans Baiya and I decided to write The Innovator’s Advantage. We wanted to share with leaders the link between innovation and people that we discovered through our work in innovation with our clients.

For effective leadership, innovation is not an option. Successful innovation requires leaders to have equal amounts of dedication to the process and new ways of thinking about people. Read More

4 Tips to Eliminate Emotional Blind Spots

By Bob Sands

It happened in an instant. My wife was on a conference call sitting next to me, and I was driving. My kids were in the back seat looking at their phones. I was in the far-left lane on Florida’s Turnpike when the semi-truck to the right of me began merging into my lane. I couldn’t speed up or slam on my brakes because there were cars both in front of me and behind me. The truck continued to merge. There was no place to go but into the VERY narrow shoulder. I took a deep breath and threaded, as it were, the needle between the semi-truck and the retaining wall. I’m relieved to say there were no accidents and no injuries. It was a miracle.

After making a few comments about the driver, I realized what had happened. He didn’t know I was there, I was in his blind spot and he never even saw me. Read More

Are You in a Leadership Rut?
5 Ways to Break Old Habits and Shake Things Up

By Whit Mitchell

Many of us have experienced times in our careers when work seemed stale and personal progress slowed. This can be particularly true for a leader, especially if you’ve been leading for a while. Leaders can find themselves sticking with a single leadership style, instead of adapting and trying new approaches. But the pace of change demands that leaders continue growing. Those who don’t will find themselves in a leadership rut.

Not only are technology and consumer needs constantly evolving, but so is the workforce, with new generations entering the workplace who demand to be managed in a different way. Leaders need to engage each of their employees and help them reach their full potential, and adaptive leadership is the way to do it. Read More

Hire the Right Candidate Every Time with These 3 Steps

Joe Smith seemingly has the whole package. He has a solid resume, great references, skills that showcase his expertise in his field and plenty of success stories to his credit. On paper, Joe seems like the ultimate “can’t miss” candidate. Joe looks the part and his appearance seems to match his resume.

During the interview, Joe is well-spoken, polite and asks great questions. Relaxed and comfortable throughout, he is both engaging and interesting. Not only does Joe seem like a great candidate, the company believes he is the best person for the job and hires him on the spot.

Then day one arrives. Joe looks good and says the right things but something isn’t quite right. He seems a little different than he did during the interview. He is not quite as sharp or prepared as the company expected he would be and seems easily confused and distracted. Read More

Help Your Boss Understand Your Work Style
Using DISC Insights to Manage Up and Manage Down

When Leadership Coach Lori McNeill first met Mike Molloy, Associate Director at Immunext, Inc., she noticed that he was experiencing frustration at work. “His speech was fast-paced, and he would strike the table for emphasis. You could physically see and hear the tension he was experiencing.”

Luckily, Mike’s frustrations were easy to get to the bottom of—and to remedy.

Mike was among a group of leaders at Immunext that were going through The Complete Leader program. As part of the leadership development course, the group took the DISC Assessment, and then had debriefing sessions with facilitators Ron Price and Whit Mitchell, to help them unpack all of the insights that the assessment offers. Read More

Who Makes the Best Leaders?
A Yin and Yang Look at the Eight Types of Leaders

By Andy Johnson 

In an interesting 2010 study, a team of researchers led by Adam Grant of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania set out to understand a nagging question in the leadership world. Who makes the best leaders?

Adam Grant and I both identify as social introvert. A social introvert is someone who is slower-paced, inward-oriented, and stimulation-averse, who loves people in usually smaller doses, is not shy and enjoys talking long and deeply with them. Though Grant conceded that the literature is extremely biased in favor of extroversion as a prerequisite trait for leadership, he and the research team wanted to test leadership effectiveness as it relates to different kinds of followers. Read More

5 Keys to Creating the Ideal Work Environment

One of my favorite interview questions to ask candidates is “what’s your ideal environment?” If the environment is not right, skills, values and other intangibles may not matter. Different individuals thrive in different environments. The key to craft an ideal environment is to understand a person’s drivers and primary behavioral style.

In “What’s the Color of your Parachute,” author Richard Nelson Bolles explains there are several variables leading whether a person will be happy with his or her job.

To name just a few, one has to have strong interest in the field or job function. They need to be able to use skills they possess and enjoy using those skills when doing the job. Finally, they need to be happy with the people around them. Read More

Make Your Team Better with DISC

By Whit Mitchell

Why do people lose their jobs? Managers hire for skill, but they rarely fire for incompetence. Instead they fire because of bad behavior.

“Bad” behavior comes in many forms. It can be behavior that the manager doesn’t understand, or a reaction to a recent responsibility change or a promotion. What if you had a tool to understand employee behavior? What if that tool could even help you anticipate where an employee might succeed, where an employee might struggle, or where conflict on the team might appear? Well you do, and it’s called DISC. Read More