High D in DISC and Teamwork Weaknesses (MTDISC) - Part 1

This episode focuses on the challenges that individuals with a high Dominance (D) personality trait face in teamwork and how they can improve their interpersonal relationships within a team.

1. High D individuals are naturally assertive and task-focused, which can lead to perceptions of aggressiveness.
2. Their direct communication style often skips social pleasantries, impacting team rapport.
3. It’s crucial for high Ds to recognize and mitigate behaviors that can be seen as domineering or insensitive.
4. Adapting communication styles to include giving credit and validating others' ideas enhances teamwork.
5. Continuous self-awareness and adjustment in behavior can improve interpersonal relations and team effectiveness.

1: Understanding High D

Brief overview of the high Dominance trait within the DISC framework, including its strengths and potential pitfalls. Key discussions on how high Ds can inadvertently harm team dynamics. Wendy: "High Ds, like us, tend to be assertive, meaning we believe and act as if we have the power to change the things around us."

2: Mitigating Negative Impacts

Exploration of specific behaviors high Ds should adjust to improve team interactions, such as reducing interruptions and being more inclusive in discussions. Sarah: "It's neither good nor bad, but in the situation where you're trying to build relationships with other styles, it doesn't help you to speak first."

1. Practice Listening: Make a conscious effort to listen more and speak less in meetings.
2. Acknowledgment: Regularly acknowledge and credit the ideas and contributions of teammates.
3. Adapt Communication: Adapt your communication style to be more inclusive, especially around less assertive team members.
4. Self-awareness: Increase self-awareness of your natural tendencies and their impact on others.
5. Feedback Solicitation: Actively seek feedback on your interaction style and openness to others' perspectives.

Part 1 of our guidance for High D's when working as a part of a team.

People

Wendy, Sarah

Content Warnings:

None

Wendy

Welcome to career tools. This week, the high d in disc and teamwork weaknesses, part one the questions this cast answers as a high d, how might I be hurting my relationship with my team? As a high d, what behaviors should I stop doing to improve my relationship with my teammates? And as a hid, what behaviours should I start doing to improve my relationship with my teammates?

This is one of a series of casts about disc, and we're going to put this short explanation in before the cast because not everybody knows what disc is. So if you don't know or you want to find out more about it from manager tools, you can listen to this. And if you've already heard it, you can just skip to the cast. Exactly. And folks, disc is a self assessment that measures how you naturally behave when interacting with other individuals, at least when you're not thinking about it.

Sarah

William Marsden identified four behavioral styles back in 1928. They were dominance influence, steadiness and conscientiousness a la disk. And since then many companies have developed disc assessments, including us here at manager tools. But MT Disc itself differs from many of the other assessments. It's more than an assessment, it's an eye opening, game changing, career accelerating revelation.

Wendy

And I think we say that because all of us here have found it to be that when we found it the first time, oh yeah, it certainly was for me. So we have free podcasts which describe each of the styles, D, I, S and C, and we have podcasts that describe how each of the styles act in particular situations, like the one that's about to follow. And we will link to them from all of the podcasts in this series. But first you have to know what your profile is. So the MT disc assessment starts with a 20 minutes online questionnaire.

Sarah

It's very affordable. All you're going to do is answer 28 questions about your preferences and you'll be delivered a customized 40 page ish. They're all different lengths, I think report unpacking your strengths, weaknesses and tendencies in clear and actionable behavioral language. No theories, no psychobabble. The MT Disc report will give you tailored insights to help you in terms of your communication behaviors.

Wendy

And what I really like about disc and our reports in particular, is they're a language you understand because there's no psycho babble and they're super simple to remember and communicate with other people about. So if there's a bunch of you that learn it, you're all talking the same language very quickly. Yeah, the power of MTDisc lies in what follows, because unlike other disc tools, your report compares your styles to the other profiles with specific guidance on adapting your communication behaviors so that you can collaborate more effectively. And when you apply them, that's when you see how empty disc transforms your relationships. Because folks, the thing about it is it doesn't actually matter what your natural tendencies are, because your natural tendencies are ones you can change anytime you want to change them.

Sarah

Which will in turn be the theme of this series of podcasts and everything else basically that you hear from manager tools. With MTDiSc, youll learn how to adapt your natural communication style to achieve effective outcomes in every interaction. And people are everywhere, so you can. Practice all the time, all the time. Constant.

Wendy

If youd like to find out what your disc profile is, you can just go to the website and purchase it for yourself or an entire team. You can buy in bulk through the website and have the option to distribute to your whole department or a company. And like I said, when everybody, a whole organization, understands the MTDiSc language, it's amazing how much it impacts communication and collaboration. And there are a wealth of other resources on our website as well that will help you continue this path of better workplace relationships. So there's the effective relationship podcast series, which is a deep dive on tactics for working with bosses and direct reports of all this styles from driving dominant individuals to supportive steadiness individuals through real workplace scenarios.

Sarah

You're going to learn what to say and what to do to be more successful. And then we have a training called the effective communicator. And we have a bunch of ways in which we deliver it to fit your budget and you your availability. So we have a video product as an on demand and low cost option. And then Sarah, you delivered all of the others.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We have live virtual delivered over Zoom. It's a one session. Oh, it's quite a long session. I think it's like four and a half hours somewhere in around there.

And I mean, we deliver it internationally, in person as well as a whole day event. But people can sign up, just sort of open enrolment, anyone can come to our public sessions. But you also will go to companies for groups, right? Absolutely, absolutely. If you have got a group of individuals in your organization that could all use better communications as a group together, because why not?

We all could. We also do come on site as well to work with organizations, groups of people to help them as an organization department company communicate better together. MTDiSC delivers insights that empower you to transform communication and collaboration. And those personalized assessments and actionable reports are just the beginning. So set yourself up in your workplace up, I should say, for success by purchasing an empty disc profile as well as any of the coaching and training on our website today.

Invest in yourself, break down barriers and propel your career forward. Mt Disc is really a revelation for many people and the secret to a positive communication and teamwork environment within your organization. All disk or MT disc profiles have strengths and weaknesses. Depending on the situation and the people in the room, the natural behaviours of one or other of the profiles might be more or less effective in getting the objective achieved. And that doesn't mean only a high I could get the objective achieved if it's the high I strengths that are needed in that situation.

Wendy

If a high d can bring the high I behaviors, then the high I at d can still get the objective achieved, right? You just have to behave differently to what your natural behaviors would be. And there's sometimes when you and I are both high ds, our natural high d behaviors shockingly work against us when we're working with our peers. Amazingly, I love that I am on this episode because I read these show notes and thought to myself, wow, you are basically in my head, Wendy. Basically, you're inside my brain.

Sarah

So today our outline and what we're going to cover is mastering your weaknesses, waiting to speak, stop interrupting, pre wire your ideas, give others public credit, and murder the unchosen alternative. All lessons that I'm sure you took some time to learn, wendy, they're lessons I'm still, I feel like I'm learning every day a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. None of us are good at it. You have to be paying attention the whole time and master your weaknesses is not only enough to know your own weaknesses, you have to know them, know your particular flavor of them.

Wendy

Because some of them I'm particularly bad about interrupting people, whereas other things I'm not so bad at. And then you have to be able to mitigate them in the moment. Yeah. Before they actually happen. Yeah.

In order to be most effective. And that's a. I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a lifelong learning thing. Yeah, I agree. I totally agree.

Sarah

I mean, we're evolving every day. We're getting a little bit better and learning lessons. And hopefully we can help some of the folks listening to this podcast right now mitigate some of those lessons before they stumble upon them to a wildly unsuccessful degree. Exactly. That's exactly it.

Don't learn the hard way. Okay. As I think a reminder, for most people, listening to this empty disc is not a personality test. Rather, it's a study of behavior. We can see and hear behavior in three ways, those ways being verbal, vocal and visual.

And if we look at all the people we see that these people fall into four groups. As far as those characteristics are concerned. That is, there are individuals who are task focused and assertive, those who are people focused and assertive, those who are people focused and reserved, and those who are task focused and reserved. And each of these four groups tends to show a different set of those. Verbal.

Verbal. It's not a word. Verbal, vocal and visual cues, those signs. And so each one of those is one of the letters D, I, s, and c. And the high ds are task focus, which means in any conversation, we focus on getting the task done before we focus on any of the niceties.

Wendy

I sent a slack this morning that said, what's the answer to this question? And then I wrote, hi, happy Monday, nice weekend. How are you? Etcetera. Exactly.

I wanted to know the question. High ds, like us, tend to be assertive, meaning we believe and act as if we have the power to change the things around us. We act as if we have the power to make things happen. And generally we want things to happen as quickly as possible and move on to the next thing. We are not waiting.

Sarah

That's exactly it. We just want to get it done as soon as possible. So in high ds, we can tend to see these types of behaviors. They tend to say I and you, rather than we tend to say think as opposed to feel. Because, let's face it, your feelings are irrelevant.

They talk more about what is is being done than who is involved in doing it. Generally use job titles or roles as opposed to people's names. Give deadlines and are driven by goals, milestones, future behavior, as well as facts. And we're also very happy to disagree. We consider a disagreement to be an academic thing.

Wendy

It's not a feeling thing. It's not an emotional conversation. We're having a discussion and you have one set of facts and I have a different set of facts, and we're just having a discussion about it. There's nothing personal about it whatsoever. Whereas some of the other styles completely on the other side of that conversation.

Sarah

That's exactly it. Also, high ds. We tend to speak more quickly than other profiles. Generally, we speak fast, and we also speak more loud. DS specifically, we tend to speak short in the sense that we use fewer words overall.

To Wendy's point, we will come in your office and say, hey, where are we on the project? As opposed to, hi, good morning, how are you? How was your weekend? All of the niceties generally will say fewer words and expect fewer words in return. If you get a one word email, it's from a D.

Wendy

Yeah. We interrupt, especially when other people are talking. We already got the point. We'll just go to the next point. Stop talking.

We make demands rather than ask, so we tend to say, give that to me, rather than, please give that to me. We don't start with Wendy. Please give that to me isn't even a question. Dude, you just made a statement in the form of a question. That was still a statement.

That's why we have to think about it first. That's exactly it. That's a high D. Yeah. Just prove my endpoint.

We don't start with a conversational as it is, which we just said, and we don't tell stories. If you meet high eye, the first thing they will tell you is about their weekend and how it went, and you're waiting for them to get to the point. We never do that. We very rarely. How was your weekend?

Fine. Now can we get to the point? Right. Okay. We get to the point.

Sarah

Exactly one word. Answer that. And from a visual perspective, high D's tend to make big gestures. So think of a shoebox in front of your torso. D's gestures tend to be outside that space more often.

And we make a lot of direct eye contact, like uncomfortable degrees of eye contact. Let's face it. It feels a little bit like an interrogation because we're staring right into your pupils. We tend to narrow our eyes, too, when we're thinking and assessing, and people think we're frowning at them or we're angry, and we're not. We're just thinking, but that's what they think.

Wendy

And also, we perpetuate that impression because we don't smile very much. If we're not thinking about smiling, we're not smiling. We just have that face of concentration and frowny, narrowed eyes and no smile. And people think that person is angry with me. Yeah.

Sarah

Why are you angry? Why are you mad? And we don't even realize that the facial expressions we're making could be perceived as mad. That's just our thinking face. But, yeah, you're absolutely right.

Now, in addition, in respect to these behaviors. These behaviors. This set of behaviors Wendy and I just went over make perfect sense to the high d. The problem with these behaviors is, while these make perfect sense to high D's and therefore likely other high ds in the environment, some of these behaviors are, in fact, detrimental to our ability to work successfully in a team, for example, a high d always wants to get to the point and won't hesitate to interrupt, speak over top of other people and even complete other people's sentences in order to achieve this goal. And to Wendy's point earlier, as a high d, you probably don't even notice yourself doing it.

But the other styles, they know it's being done to them. High ds, generally we tend to want to describe ourselves as authoritative and commanding and decisive. I assure you, other people are not using those words when theyre describing the high d. Instead theyre saying rude, arrogant, aggressive, belligerent, tactless, even tyrannical because of the behaviors we tend to engage in. So we think our ability to get to the point is a strength, and sometimes it is.

Wendy

But if you're working in a team full of other styles, it's holding you back because they are not seeing it as a strength, they are seeing it as all of these negatives. And so you have to know that that is possible and then what to do to mitigate it. So in this guidance, we're going to talk about five of the things that we do most often that are most harmful to us. This a long list and we might do, we might do another cast with some more of them, but we are going to go over these five, which is always speaking first, interrupting, intimidating others into agreeing with your ideas rather than winning them over, forgetting to praise, give others credit, or generally being positive about other people's actions and not supporting others. Ideas are chosen or decisions that are made that you don't agree with.

Those were our top five things high ds do that other people don't like. Exactly. That other people don't like. So the first is, or the first bit of guidance I suppose we're going to give is wait to speak. That is, make a habit of trying to speak last when a question is asked to the group, wait until everyone else in the group has spoken before you speak.

Sarah

Now, we know you. We are you. We know you're not going to be able to do this, we know that. But unless you start listening to yourself and attempting to wait for other people to speak first, your natural tendency is going to drive you. It's going to take over and you're going to always speak first.

So instead, sit, wait and allow people to speak. And to be clear, we're not criticizing you for this. It is neither good nor bad, and we've confessed to the fact that we do it too. But even if we didn't, it is neither good nor bad. But in the situation where you're trying to build relationships with other styles, it doesn't help you to speak first.

Wendy

That's what's important about it. It doesn't matter particularly. It's not a moral judgment, it's does it help you or does it not? It does not. Don't do it.

Sarah

It does not. Yeah. It hinders you in this case, yeah. The other styles notice it. And because particularly the reserved styles, the S's and the C's, they attribute meaning to always speaking first, like it's rude or it's overbearing.

Wendy

And so that habit is getting in the way of your relationship with them. That's exactly it. So when you have a one on one conversation with these reserved individuals, they have an expectation of you that's being built based on previous emails that they've seen you write and all of the times they've ever seen you communicate, whether it's in a meeting or in conversations with other people, and they know who you are, they feel like they know who you are. And these preconceived notions cause them to be more reticent in giving you criticism or pointing out flaws in your idea. That is, they probably won't share it due to sheer intimidation because hades are overbearing and they just take over the conversations.

Sarah

And if you go into a conversation feeling and thinking that way, why even share your opinion now as a high d, what your benefit is from hearing other people who are speaking first, in this case is it would be so much better for you to find out about the flaws in your argument before you present them in a department wide meeting. And that's an example of how waiting to speak more often will pay off in the long run. I've told this story before, but I was in a team where the company had been taken over and we were trying to update. The computer system had been updated overnight and it hadn't worked very well. And we were trying to update all within recruitment, we were trying to update the status of all these jobs and people were sending them in from the field.

Wendy

Like, the status of this job should be at this stage and this job should be at this stage. And there were hundreds of these emails. And so we were updating the database and then just replying to the emails with done, done, because we had hundreds of them to do. And after about three or four days, somebody called from one of these outlying places to ask a question. And I happened to be one of the people that had a lot of experience.

I'd been there a while and I'd worked in lots of the offices and so on, and she called and she asked this question, and I was like, oh, you want to do this and this and talk to this person. If you can't get them, then talk to this person and do this. And she said, oh, they said you'd be nice, but I didn't think so. From your emails. Yeah.

And I spent three days trying to work out what else I should be writing on those emails in order to sound nice, to sound more nice. I am nice, actually. It just so turns out. So then I started writing their name and I've done this. Wendy.

I still don't know if that was nice, but that was it. I had been sending these emails. I'd been very efficient. I'd been answering. I've been changing all these statuses, and I had given the impression that I wasn't nice.

Sarah

Yep. And that's what happens to us. Yeah, I've absolutely had that happen to me. People. Actually, you know our good friend Andrew Spillman?

I do. He used to present at manager tools. Also, guess what? Amanda and Andrew Spillman had a baby over the weekend. Oh, congratulations.

Congratulations. Andrew Spillman. But yes, Andrew, when he started working here, he said to me one time, he's like, wow, you're so nice. I just didn't think you'd be that nice. I was like, ow, that burns.

Are you serious? He's like, yeah, no, really, I just didn't think you'd be that nice. And folks, that's the impression that other people get of us as D's. And it's because of things like always speaking from first. If you always speak first, often the other styles, especially more reserved ones, will not share their ideas at all.

Meaning the input or ideas that you could have received will never be shared and you'll never hear them. And the first idea or thought is not always. In fact, it is rarely the winning one. So your habit of always speaking first is harming your team's ability to win as a whole. And that's what it's about.

We can't do this alone. We got to count on everyone. If we could do it, we would, but we can't. We would, but we can't. Exactly.

If the summer months are the optimal opportunity to schedule training for your organization, we recommend you start talking to Maggie now. It's a busy time over here at manager tools, and what that means is our lead time is running a little bit longer than normal. You don't want to miss out. Get on our calendar. Its simple and it costs you nothing.

We guarantee youll have an MT presenter and you guarantee that your workforce will be better off for it. Contact us by emailing us at customerserviceanager dash tools.com to get more details on all of our organizational offerings. Next. Stop interrupting, and you can stop interrupting. And if youre thinking I dont interrupt that much, you do.

Wendy

You don't. That you do. If you have a recent meeting that's been recorded, watch it back and listen to yourself, interrupting people. And you, I promise you, you do it way more than you think you do. Mm hmm.

Sarah

Exactly. You interrupt to do simple things like finish other people's sentences because you know, you think you know what they were gonna say because they can't find the words that they need. So you're gonna help them by giving them the word that you think that they probably need or because you know what they were going to say was probably incorrect in terms of that conversation, you're going to jump in. You often do with their next point because you understand all that they were going to say, and without really noticing, you're jumping in. You jump in as soon as you made a decision because you don't need to listen to the rest of their explanation, you jump in.

Wendy

And when we're in a conversation, we are not really listening to the sound of the room and what's going on in that room. We're listening to an interpretation of that sound in our own heads. Because if we listened to the sound in the room, we'd hear all of the sound in the room. We'd hear all of the annoying sounds, like the buzzing of the computers and so on. And actually, your brain filters all of that out and only gives you the sound you need.

And what it does is it tells you what you're saying in your brain. It doesn't give you the sound of your own voice. And so when you think you're not speaking with ums and ers and so's and likes and all those other verbal tics, you don't hear them because your brain tells you you're not saying them. But when you listen to yourself and it's recorded, you are saying them. It's the weirdest thing.

When you start listening to your own voice instead of listening to what your brain tells you, you're saying. And when you do that, you start hearing yourself talking over other people. And it's only when you get to that point that you can then stop yourself doing it. And at first, you can't even stop yourself. Yeah, it's all about awareness.

Sarah

At first, right? At first, tuning into your own voice is not enough by itself to stop you from interrupting. It just allows you to hear when you do interrupt other people, and when you realize it, stop what you're saying. Now, mind you, you'll have already started speaking by the time you notice this happen. So stop what you're saying and say, I'm so sorry I interrupted.

Please finish. And just don't go through with finishing that thought. You won't be good enough. We promise you to stop yourself before you do it. Just stop talking, apologize, and tell the person to continue.

Wendy

Because other people, other styles aren't thinking, oh, this is so efficient. Because they're finishing my sentences. Yeah. No one's like, oh, my gosh, thank you for the efficiency you've brought into this conversation. Appreciate that.

Excellent. We shortcutted that conversation because they knew what I was thinking. Nobody's thinking that. They're thinking, you're rude. And what's more, you're rude to me.

They're thinking it's personal, even when it's not to us. They think it's about them, and that's damaging your relationship with them as a person. And even though we don't like it, relationships matter. Careers are built on relationships, results and relationships. We say every, practically every cast.

And when it comes down to it, we have to have good relationships with other people. Otherwise, we don't get the results that we want, and we don't get the winnings that we want that get us the promotions that we want. So we have to start with being nice to people, and that means not interrupting them. So we've given you two really difficult things to do in the first week, waiting to speak and stop interrupting. And one of the most fun things in life is to give yourself a challenge.

So pick a number. See how many times in the next week you can wait to speak and catch yourself interrupting. And we'll be back next week with mitigating the rest of our bad habits. We'll call them bad habits, not weaknesses. Bad habits.

Sarah

I like it. Bye, everyone.

Wendy

Bye, everyone.