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DISC Behavioral Personality Assessment and More!

Posted on July 22, 2009 // Leave a Comment

Recently I read a post about the DISC, which I believe is accurate. Essentially, the DISC measures behavioral tendencies along two axes: pace/assertiveness and task/relationship orientation, and the instrument shows both the natural style and the adapted style (adapted typically to the work environment) of the respondent.

Chris Young writes,

I like to think of the DISC assessment as a “user’s manual” to the talent within your organization.  The insights gleaned from a DISC report will provide you with valuable information about how well fit an employee is for a job and how they prefer to be managed and coached to reach their full potential…There are many DISC assessments available, but I have found Target Training International’s DISC assessment to be the premier assessment available on the market.

He is right on. TTI’s Success Insights™ (their DISC) has been validated and holds extremely strong. However, TTI’s TriMetrix report is much more valuable if you know how to read it. Riverstone Organizational Advisors, who I know personally and highly recommend, writes, “The TriMetrix™ System is the most thorough assessment solution in the marketplace today. The three pronged approach combines the behavioral, values, and skills/attributes assessments to provide the most accurate predictive instrument available.”

So now imagine being able to know an employee based on their behaviors and all the insights that it brings. Then add to it an expert knowledge of the DISC with all its intricacies of the YOU/ME, ME/ME, and ME/Job conflicts. Then add to that knowing their motivations and values. This would enable almost anyone to be able to predict their response in almost any situation. We then could be able to see the world through their eyes knowing the why and what for. Then imagine not only knowing their behavioral tendencies and their motivations, but also knowing their skill set and competencies along with their “intensity” or rather their disposition towards that certain skill set or competency.

Knowing all this would enable any organization to hand to any new employee an individualized development plan for at least the next 6 months to a year. Furthermore, knowing this one could easy understand and foresee any risk management questions and red flags of any talent within the organization. I have taken assessment after assessment, and none compare to my awe and wonder to TTI’s TriMetrix. It is simply fantastic. If you’d like to know more, please contact me or me friend at Riverstone Organizational Advisors. And no, TTI nor Phil are paying me…but that would be great!


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Why Do People Want to Be Treated as Individuals?

Posted on July 16, 2009 // Leave a Comment

While people want and claim to want to be treated the same, they really want to be treated as individuals. Treating everyone the same simply ignores people’s unique experience, skills, talents, wants/desires, etc. Beyond simply a person’s background, treating everyone the same also fails to realize the uniqueness of the day. Each day is different and contains its own difficulties, anxieties, stresses, and situations or circumstances. While we all can relate, we have never been where they are when they are. For example, take two mothers. Both were/are mothers of 3 toddlers under the age of 5. One mother mothered in the 1980′s while another mothers now, 2000′s. While one can relate to the other and understand, the new mother has a whole new set of circumstances, a different worldview/paradigm, personalities, and a different USA to deal with on top of the normal every day dealings of 3 toddlers. So mothering in the 1980′s is different than mothering in the 2000′s. AND, each child is different. The older mother may have had calm children while the new mother may have ADD or ADHD children (or vice versa or a mix).

But how does this relate to HR and leadership? Well, the statement obvious: leading in a company was different 10-20 years ago than it is now. While mothering, leadership principles, and human relations principles often stay the same, they manifest themselves differently. Furthermore, we would not relate to each mother the same. A great leader takes a whole variety of things into account when relating to someone. Failing to recognize this can cause a huge, unintentional backfire. Before we can talk about the how, we must first talk about the why. Why do people want to be treated as individuals?

There are seven basic reasons why people want to be treated as individuals.

  1. It makes us feel important.
  2. Because we want to feel valued.
  3. We want to feel respected as a real contributor.
  4. We are different, motivated differently, and respond differently.
  5. We are unique and one of a kind.
  6. We don’t want to be just a number.
  7. We want to be treated fairly, not just the same.

First, treating people as individuals make us feel important. Mary Kay Ash said in response to a question about her success, “Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Make me feel important.’ Never forget this message when working with people.” We want, not only to feel important, but also to feel valued. While this really goes hand in hand with feeling important, it needs to be stated. Making a person feel important and valued also has to do with the way we relate to them personally. It also has to do with what we do in response to their ideas and their work. Both have to do with their heart.

Third, we want to feel respected as a real contributor. While not every idea is a good idea, which I should know, some ideas are worth considering. Howard Hendricks, published author, professor at Dallas Theological Seminary since 1951, and founder of the Center for Christian Leadership, said, “For every 30 ideas, there is 1 good idea.” Simply, it takes 30 ideas both good, bad and ugly before coming up with 1 great idea. In my place of work, I come up with a plethora of ideas, many of which are fleeting (it’s kind of an office joke with me and my boss because I have so many ideas. I’ll say, “Hey NAME, I have an idea!” And he’ll always come back with a joke, something like, “You? An idea? No!?” Which with my personality, works great!); however, I always tell my boss my ideas regardless of how stupid I may think they are. I actually work best in a sound boarding situation where every idea is qualified but none are rejected until it’s time. So what my boss does with those ideas is what makes me feel like a contributor or not. What my boss does with my work is what me feel like a contributor or not.

Fourth, we are different, motivated differently, and respond differently. Think about it! We are different. Each one of us was created differently from the next person, even twins have differences. No one of us is like the other. We may have similarities, similar likes and dislikes, but we also have grave differences physically, mentally, intellectually, and emotionally. Each of us is in a different place physically, mentally, intellectually, and emotionally. We have different personal stories and familial stories. Each one of us has different personalities. Though we may be categorized generally (or classified, no pun intended), we have specific nuances, quirks, or “imperfections” that make us different. We all have our own little idiosyncrasies (characteristics, tendencies, or personalities that are peculiar or specific to an individual). As Sean (AKA Robin Williams) said in Good Will Hunting, “People call these things imperfections, but they’re not. Ah, that’s the good stuff.” And it truly is!

Fifth, we are unique and one of a kind. You are unique. I am unique. People are unique! There is no one like them. There is no one like you. You are an individual. Christianity declares this and makes a huge deal of this one basic truth. Each person is unique though we may belong to this group or that team. We all have our own set of skills, characteristics, and traits. Each one of us is different in age, gender, and ethnicity. We also each have our own specific DNA composition and our fingerprint unique to each one of us (though this later part is under intense speculation).

Therefore, sixth, we don’t want to be just a number. It goes against everything in us to be just a number. While having a number associated with us may be imperative for companies, corporations, governments, etc., with people we don’t want to be just a number. When I worked as an Operation Manager at FedEx, I had a co-worker who never knew anyone’s name. When I asked him about this he said to me, “Every day, when we are starting up, I look at the door and all I see is ’1′, ’2′, ’3′…’15′ and then any after that I send to another area/manager or home.” And his productivity numbers showed it! He was constantly being drilled on his low numbers, and his manager was frantically searching for a way to motivate him to be better. What his manager failed to realize was that the reason his productivity was so low was because everyone was simply a number to him. Really, his manager was treating him just like he did everyone else, pulling out all the book-answers and the standard leadership/managerial tactics he learned or saw.

Seventh, we want to be treated fairly, not just the same. I personally don’t want to be treated the same. I need some flexibility. I have a family with 4 kids ages 5 and under with only one car! So if one needs to go to the doctor, and I have the car, I need the flexibility to run home, get my kid, run to the doctor, take him home and then come back to work. Because of this, my boss has allowed me these freedoms entrusting that I would put in at least 40 hours a week. And I do, but I do it differently than my co-worker beside me who is an older, single, retired military guy. What’s fair for me is not fair for him and vice versa.

So, there are basically seven reasons why people want to be treated as individuals (though some of these can be combined).

  1. It makes us feel important.
  2. Because we want to feel valued.
  3. We want to feel respected as a real contributor.
  4. We are different, motivated differently, and respond differently.
  5. We are unique and one of a kind.
  6. We don’t want to be just a number.
  7. We want to be treated fairly, not just the same.

Next, we will talk about the how in a bit more detail.

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Do We Need to Improve Human Relations Skills?

Posted on July 16, 2009 // Leave a Comment

In Bringing out the Best in People, author Alan McGinnis says:

Promotions are 90% dependent on technical know-how for a rank and file worker. For promotion to supervisor, technical know-how is 50% and human relation skills are 50%.  For promotion to an Executive, technical expertise is 20%, human relations is 80%.

The Harvard Bureau of Vocational Guidance studied 1,000 people who had been fired.  They found that for every one failure because of work skills there were two failures in human relation skills.

Stanford Research Institute, Harvard University, and the Carnegie Foundation (which spent $1 million and 5 years of research) proved that 85% of the reason you get a job, will keep a job, and move ahead in that job, has to do with your people skills and people knowledge.

So do we need to improve our human relations skills? What do you think?

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Sanity

Posted on July 12, 2009 // Leave a Comment

So I was at church these past two weeks and twice the speaker or pastor referred to sanity and/or insanity. So it got me thinking. Albert Einstein once said, at least I believe he did, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result each time” (if anyone has the source for this, please let me know). How many times have we done this?

Have you ever heard someone say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? How ridiculous is that mentality or approach!? Think about it, your car needs maintenance. It needs periodic fixing, but it technically “ain’t broke.” So should we take it in for its tune up, its oil change, its tire rotation, etc.? People will repeat this slogan again and again, but all we are really doing many times is preventative maintenance or basic process improvement. They really believe that if they keep doing the same thing, they can expect to get better and better. But in reality, nothing gets better without a little fixing. Left alone, things only get worse. The second law of thermodynamics even states this in other terms! Technically it is “the entropy [measure of the disorder of a system] of the universe always increases” or simply everything is moving towards chaos.

Before I continue, let me tell a story. I used to work at FedEx as an operations manager. The great thing about that position was that it didn’t matter what you did two days ago, it only mattered what happened yesterday and what will happen today. Every day is a chance to erase what happened the day before, whether good or bad. Anyways, our hub manager, about 6’8″, 270lbs (ex-hockey player) used to meet with us daily for about a month, and every meeting was the same. He would come in and rant and rave about the day before. And then he would say, “Insanity is simply doing the same thing again and again expecting different results.” He would open the door, and take a few steps back and try to run through the wall beside the door! He would do that 2-3 times (depending on how mad he was) and turn to the group and say, “All I need to do is make one adjustment and…Boom! I’m through the door, off running!” What one adjustment do you need to make?

While the message is great, the illustration is great, and the point is great, the ironic thing was he was falling victim to his own message! He was doing and saying the same thing day in and day out expecting different results though he never got better results!

So it made me think, how would I describe sanity in light of Einstein’s definition of insanity. I believe sanity is not mere “normal or sound mind” or simply “reasonable and rational behaviour” or “mentally healthy.” I totally agree with the Wikipedia article which states:

Sanity considered as a legal term denotes that an individual is of sound mind and therefore can bear legal responsibility for his or her actions. It is generally defined in terms of the absence of insanity. It is not a medical term, although the opinions of medical experts are often important in making a legal decision as to whether someone is sane or insane. It is also not the same concept as mental illness. One can be acting under profound mental illness and yet be sane, and one can also be ruled insane without an underlying mental illness.

Then,

In his classic book, The Sane Society, published in 1955, psychologist Erich Fromm proposed that, not just individuals, but entire societies “may be lacking in sanity”. Fromm argued that one of the most deceptive features of social life involves consensual validation:

“It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth… Just as there is a ‘Folie à deux‘ there is a ‘folie à millions.’ The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane” (Fromm, The Sane Society, Routledge, 1955, pp.14-15).

I totally agree with Fromm. One can be rational (or of sound mind), yet insane; and one can be mentally ill, yet be sane. Rational and sound mind could work, but who defines it as sound? What makes something rational? Who’s standard? Even Fromm states that the masses could be insane. So I tend to think that sanity and insanity have something to do with Truth. For businesses, truth is often defined by policy; however, there is a truth higher than policy, the law. And there is Truth higher than the law, Absolute Truth. While many postmoderns will struggle and disagree with this definition, I believe that truth is a necessary component of sanity. If they don’t agree, postmoderns could still agree with me about the law. And not to debate about absolute truth, but without a baseline of some sort (even if it is only company policy or governmental law), one borders insanity.

I also really like this definition from Wikionary: “ability to get what you want without doing things that will ultimately get you more of what you don’t want.” While this takes away the focus from a baseline or truth, it places the focus on performance and results, just as Einstein did. Sanity is the ability to acknowledge, adapt and change, even only slightly, to be able to produce a desired result.

What do you think? How would you define sanity?

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Leaders Challenge the Process

Posted on July 12, 2009 // Leave a Comment

Andy Stanley, Senior Pastor of Northpoint Community Church in Atlanta, GA with approximately 23,000 people, said, “When you stop challenging the process you stop leading, and you’ve begun managing .” Managing is not bad and people. Please don’t get me wrong here. We need managers. We need people to oversee the administration of various programs or processes. However, if you have been gifted to lead, then you have no business managing. And if you have been gifted as a manager, then you have no business leading. Too often people aspire to places beyond their ability. Too often companies promote simply because that person was good at their job. Just because someone is good at their job, it doesn’t mean that they are ready for the next level. They may think so, and I surely have. But in reality, if they move up, they will eventually move out either from self-selection or termination. I’ve always coached people, players, and even myself: Know your abilities. This means knowing what you can do, what you can’t do, and what you sort-of can do. Beyond knowing your abilities, you need to know the situation, and based on that situation, knowing your abilities, what can you do or what can you sort-of do?

Leading always means challenging the process. It is part of the Leadership Challenge and The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®. It never settles. It pushes and pushes and pushes some more. Continuous improvement requires challenging the process. It’s essential to any sort of improvement.

Usually challenging the process comes quite easy at the beginning of any adventure. However, what do you do when you have everything where you want it to be, when you have arrived!? What do you do when you have your ducks in a row and everything seems to be working like a fine-tuned machine? Most of us switch from leading to managing. We stop challenging the process. We have arrived!

Instead, we must force ourselves to be open to change. We must allow our ideas to be challenged. But why is this so hard? Because most of us confuse someone challenging the process as a challenge of authority. Why? Because when someone challenges the process, they are challenging my idea. I feel challenged personally. And when we feel challenged we begin seeing those rising leaders as arrogant and rebellious. However, at one point, we were just that. And it is arrogant to not listen to them. It is a disservice to them and your organization. We must realize that every time someone challenges the process, someone is challenged, and that may include us. At one point someone came up with that process. Someone put their heart and soul into the creation of that process. It is someone’s baby. At some time, the process that was created was considered a good or decent idea. It was revolutionary and probably went through a battle or two to win the day. And, the better someone thinks the idea is the more they will feel challenged.

Have you ever found a process that you thought was ridiculous? Have you ever heard someone say, “Well that was a dumb idea,” or “Who came up with that?” I have been guilty of saying those phrases countless times, not thinking that the person who came up with the idea may be in the room or the next office. Have you seen those ideas and think, “How could this have ever been thought of as a good idea? What problem did this solve?” Hind-sight is 20-20 or even better. Whenever we are looking at a what we think is a “broken process,” at some point, and maybe even now, it wasn’t broken (my rebelliousness wants to say “so broken” or “as broken”). And it may not even be broke! And it definitely isn’t to other people, especially the “owner.” Instead, all we are doing is trying to improve the process. Make it more efficient. Make it better, simpler, or whatever. It’s not that it isn’t good, it’s just not great! And as leaders, we are looking to make things great!

So what do we do? Well, there are two extreme responses: Shutdown or Rebel. Obviously both eventually lead down a road of death and destruction. If we shutdown, we become irrelevant and die as leaders. If we rebel, then well, we have chosen our fate, and it is only a matter of time before we are moved out. Instead, we must walk the balance between the tensions. We must challenge the process but we also must come across as respectful and humble. So how do we do that?

Well a few things. If we are the boss, then:

  1. Continue to challenge the process yourself.
  2. Reinvent yourself.
  3. Encourage your workgroup, the leaders under you, to challenge your processes.
  4. Train them on how to properly challenge a process.
  5. Reproduce yourself in them in this manner.
  6. Engage in healthy debate not allowing yourself to be angry.

If we are not the boss, then:

  1. Learn how to challenge the process & challenge everything.
  2. Bounce your ideas off your colleagues and/or those in your discipline (through Twitter, Social Networks, Conferences, etc) depending on the security of the information.
  3. Come up with a strategy to educate the right people.
  4. Execute the strategy expecting resistance.
  5. Utilize the 5 principles of adoption found in Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers. They are (links to Kevin Jones’ Blog regarding Social Learning organizational adoption):
    1. Relative Advantage
    2. Compatibility
    3. Complexity
    4. Trialability
    5. Observability

So are you challenging the process? Are you still leading? Have you given up? Are you rebelling? Where are you in this regard in your leadership? What would you add to this? Start by challenging this blog. What would you improve?

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Quality Leadership at Its Best!

Posted on July 12, 2009 // Leave a Comment

Today, I read an article that is about a month old, but the story itself is astonishing! Should we ever choose to pull for our competitor? Should we ever reach out and help our “enemy.” Well this high school football coach did just that! It is the Gainesville/Faith story. Read a story below (my favorite story is the Focus on the Family story which is probably the best written, if you are not from Texas and of course, the ESPN videos are great).

From Faith Christian School…

The Gainesville/Faith story continues to gain momentum.  Check out the article written and posted by Focus on the Family and Vype High School Sports Magazine.  Another article about the game was written and appeared in the newsletter of The First Academy in Orlando Florida (download PDF). Check out the great article in the Fort Worth Star Telelgram by David Thomas (click here). The Associated Press released a powerful article about our own Kris Hogan and was picked up by papers across the country. Here are a few: Kansas City Star, Bloomington, Illinois, KDBC News, El Paso, The Canadian Press, World Magazine, USA Football, and many others.

Kris Hogan on ESPN’s “First Take”.

Watch the video.

Hogan on NBC’s “Out of Bounds”.

Watch the video.

Kris Hogan on “Good Morning Texas”. Watch the video.

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Social Media Objection

Posted on April 22, 2009 // 1 Comment

My company (who will remain anonymous, but not too much if you dig deep enough, because of their crazy Google Alerts) has for some time maintained a blanket NO stance against social media. I have been working for months to educate the right people on what it is.My company’s main objection is:

“They [Facebook and Twitter] are both “open ended” systems which means the Unions could join and start distributing their propaganda.  Also, if we support it over our network, we will have to keep track of it for discovery laws since these are communications that occur both inside and outside our company.  This would be next to impossible for us to monitor since it is open ended.” So simply, the objection exists because of employment and labor law and its relationship to social media. Current labor laws force companies to allow the same opportunities for all employees to say something, even if it means to include a union. So in order not to discriminate against those, we simply do not allow it for the entire company. My company has already shut down two “official” Company Facebook pages because of the fear of inappropriate comments (one made by two employees on non-company time, interesting that appeared on another employee’s Facebook page, not the group page or discussion page) and fear that unions will start posting on the site. I completely understand the apprehension against Facebook, as most companies do not use it—not that I agree with it though. However, because of Facebook and Twitter fears, they fear placing one inside our corporate firewall as well. Does anyone know anything about discovery laws and its relation to social media?

My response has been consistent. Here is one edited response that I have used.

I completely understand wanting to close off Facebook and Twitter. They are open applications that could allow for Unions to join and start distributing their propaganda. On the other hand, do we just allow the unions to keep the technology to themselves? Do we not chime in and listen even if we don’t want an official Facebook page or Twitter username? Unions are using these means already. Our own employees are using these means already. And we have no visibility into what is going on except through Google Alerts, which is truthfully inadequate alone. 2007 was the first year that there was more content creation than crawlers, servers, etc. could document and store. Facebook boasts for over 200 active million users! Surely many of our own employees are on this list, and Google does not Google Alert it. At first search without digging, I found 380 people on Facebook from my company (not a large company). A quick search on Myspace.com revealed 112 hits including job postings from their partnerships with job websites. Linkedin.com listed 190 employees. The people at these sites include people from almost every rank.

Furthermore, just today I checked out a public message board that has over 19,900 members, and one thread dedicated to our company. It is already being used for HR information, travel information, corporate communications, policies, unions, compensation, etc.

Again, to my knowledge, these threads are not supported by Google Alerts. So our people are already using social media for “good” and for “bad.” Why not have a discussion board on our intranet for our employees only (i.e. they have to login through their employee #) where we have full visibility? Are we that afraid of our employees? Are our employees that bad? Are we not treating our employees well? Aren’t we making strides to understand our people with our new survey? Will people post bad or negative stuff? Maybe. Maybe not. If they do, we won’t need to do anything because some other loyal and faithful employee at their same level or lower will say something. The community will police itself. There was a hospital who wanted to move away from email because email was being bogged down through too many discussions and announcements. So they created a discussion board for general announcements like cookout for all the ?? employees, and other social type things. For the first six months, it was used what it was created for. At the sixth month mark, they noticed a shift in the conversation. Employees began using it for work. They shared information and knowledge about all sorts of things. Why? Well, the biggest thing that we all have in common here is our company. It’s our work that unites us. It’s the logo, the brand. Yes, if the discussion board is inside, then yes the unions may place something on it but only through an employee. And we know who it is and we can address the root cause, but before they place union information, they’ll be warning signs. Things we can know and address.

As for our LMS, it cannot do some of the things that would greatly benefit us as can blogs, discussion boards, wikis, social networks, etc. Other companies are using blogs and Twitter, and yet they have to submit to the same discovery laws as we do. So how can they do it and we can’t? What good is Twitter? What good is blogging?

Imagine this. Having a tool that pressing one button, it will notify a long list of people instantaneously to their phones. Imagine this. Having a tool that notifies all our customers immediately about a new service, a new program, or some other PR or Marketing campaign. Imagine this: having immediate access to over 500 other professionals who do the same job you do. It’s like being at a conference all day every day. Networking with people. Conversing over hot issues that companies, even competitors can discuss. Helping one another improve through benchmarking. Imagine this. Our president makes a brief announcement via Twitter then everyone of his followers have it immediately on their phone.

Twitter can be used for all sorts of things. It is micro-blogging. It is texting. Currently, we cannot see what people are saying to one another in their cubicles, in the halls, in the stairwell, at the coffee station, in the breakroom, etc. Now imagine being notified every time someone says something. Twitter now can be searched via hashtag, Twitter Alerts (like Google Alerts), by attitude!, by words, etc. Twitter can be used to announce training opportunities, real time advice from the masses, leadership/motivational quotes, etc. Again, it can be whatever we want it to be. It can be whatever we officially deem it to be. It’s fast, simple, and easy.

But does anyone have any information about social media and discovery laws?

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