What is the personality of your organization?

November 17, 2022

Take a minute to assess your organization’s personality

I love talking about personality. I literally could and sometimes do, talk about it all day depending on who I’m meeting with.

When an organization hires me to facilitate training, everyone takes a scientifically based assessment of their personality at work. (Which is why I call my programs “Personality@Work.”) I’m an Authorized Partner with Wiley & Sons Everything DiSC and a certified facilitator. (My clients LOVE these programs!)

So once everyone gets their report (in a virtual class) and learns all about their strengths and motivators, as well as their challenges and stressors, then we begin to explore their teammates’ styles so everyone can learn about their colleagues too.

Eyes are opened wide when reading about yourself, however, the laughter seems to begin when we begin to focus on the “others.”

People say things like “Oh wow! Now that explains a lot!”

Some say nothing at all because they process internally but I can see all the gears turning in their heads.

Knowing your colleagues’ personality styles helps you listen to them in a whole new way and build better relationships because you know so much more about how they prefer to operate. And you have permission not to take things personally because it’s not you, it’s just their style.

As a leader, when you see an overview of the DiSC map and where everyone’s dot falls, you begin to get a sense of how to delegate, motivate and develop your team members a lot better.

Plus we give you an app called Catalyst that provides a road map for everyone on the team, making it easier and faster for newcomers to get to know others and vice versa.

Here’s an example of one organization’s DiSC Map:

You can also begin to see why the culture may be skewed one way or another.

Over the years, especially in the last few, we have learned a lot about establishing and improving company culture so that organizations can thrive and retain their best people.

Company culture is often called the personality of an organization.

Culture is a shared set of workplace beliefs, values, attitudes, standards, purposes, and behaviors (like a personality).

A quick cultural self-assessment is below. Which one or two of the following descriptions best fit what you think is your workplace culture?

Research in Harvard Business Review (HBR) identified eight distinct culture styles:

Caring, collaborative, and supportive
Purposeful, idealistic, and altruistic
Learning, inventive, and innovative
Enjoyable, fun, and stimulating
Results-oriented, driven by achievement and winning
Authoritative, competitive, and controlling
Safe, predictable, and risk-averse
Orderly, methodical, and cooperative

Did one or two of these rise to the top?

Please respond and let me know, what is the top 1 or 2 of these eight culture styles has your company embraced? I am really interested so hit reply now.

Be aware that in large organizations, I’ve found that there may be different cultures in different departments.

I’m dedicated to helping managers fix what may be broken, to help them retain more of their highly valued employees.

Stay tuned for a new tool I’m creating for exactly this purpose.

If you’re ready to move forward in assessing your organization then let’s talk.

In the meantime, have an awesome week as we lead up to Thanksgiving. I am so grateful for you and I never take my blessings for granted.

Many thanks,

Maureen

On the Emerge. Evolve. Lead. podcast this week . . .

Sober since 1998, my guest this week is Tiffany North. Tiffany is a Registered Nurse, Certified Intuitive Eating Professional, and the creator of the Food Attachment Model. This is fascinating to me because food is one of the things I’ve been obsessed about my whole life. I know I’m not alone. Especially during the holidays.

As the creator of the Food Attachment Model ™, Coach Tiffany helps people with disordered eating finally find freedom, balance, and satisfaction with food. She helps her clients focus on secure attachment, and body respect, and has a health-at-every-size informed approach. Listen to this episode if you want to learn more about your attachment to food.