I’ve spent the last week learning and being inspired by the energy at the Global Gathering
on Liberating Structures in Brussels, and I’m excited to share new ways to make meetings
and collaboration more inclusive, creative, and impactful.

I’m looking forward to bringing these powerful tools back to my work!

The first one I want to share with you is Liberating Structures,
which is a simple yet powerful way to increase participation and collaboration.

What Are Liberating Structures?
And Why Should You Care?

If you’ve ever sat through a meeting where just a few voices dominated — or facilitated a session where engagement fell flat — Liberating Structures (LS) offer a refreshing alternative.

Liberating Structures are a collection of simple, easy-to-learn interaction methods that give everyone a chance to contribute, no matter the setting. Instead of relying on traditional formats like presentations or open discussions (where a few people often do most of the talking), LS are designed to unleash the collective wisdom of a group.

How Are They Used?

Training design: LS create learning experiences that are interactive, inclusive, and practical. Whether teaching leadership, conflict management, or customer service, they turn passive learners into active participants.

Meeting design: LS make meetings more productive by encouraging creative problem-solving, deeper listening, and shared ownership of outcomes.
Team development: LS foster trust, strengthen relationships, and help teams surface new ideas and solutions together.

Why They Matter

In a world where time is tight and attention is short, Liberating Structures help people work smarter together. They are simple to apply, but powerful in impact — creating environments where everyone can contribute, innovate, and feel heard.

The post Liberating Structures – New Ways to Increase Participation & Collaboration appeared first on BHR Training: Management, Leadership, Customer Service, DISC Certification Training.

A staggering number of people continue to leave their jobs, resulting in the perfect storm of staffing shortages and remaining employees being expected to pick up the slack.

Data from The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that over 3.9 million quit their jobs in March, and layoffs increased to 1.8 million.

What is the impact on those who stay? According to Gallup, almost two-thirds of employees are disengaged in their current job.

It should come as no surprise then that nearly half of managers from a previous Wiley survey reported having work related stress; with 25% saying this was due to staffing shortages and quickly shifting priorities in the organization. On top of that, 50% of managers reported leadership changes in the last year, adding to the strain.

While these numbers are alarming, we believe that organizations can turn this into an opportunity to retain and engage their employees, by investing in employee experience.

Why Focus on the Employee Experience?

First impressions matter. Initial interactions are a key predictor of retention. SHRM found that roughly 1 in 5 employees will leave their position within the first 90 days. Think about it: which onboarding process would you rather experience? One focusing on compliance, policies, and paperwork? Or onboarding that also incorporates an exploration of the workplace culture, vision for the future, and opportunities for growth? There’s no contest – a comprehensive onboarding process that prioritizes the employee as a person is an opportunity for organizations to empower employees to be successful in their role. When a company invests in its employees, they feel more connected to the work and business outcomes.

While a comprehensive onboarding process addresses retention and engagement with new employees, organizations still face the challenge of maintaining engagement to keep current employees.

Where Should Organizations Prioritize Efforts to Keep Current Employees?

To answer that question, Wiley Workplace Research surveyed 5,000 respondents about their thoughts on leadership, the employee experience, and organizational priorities. Interestingly, three key common themes emerged about where organizations should focus priorities and thoughts on leadership. Respondents said organizations and leadership should focus on effective communication, access to support, and a positive work culture.

1. Communication

It’s easy for people to say communication is critical to success, but when we don’t specify how or what to communicate, we lose people. Our current survey found that 82% of individual contributors and 86% of leaders feel confident in their ability to communicate effectively. Despite feeling confident in their ability to communicate effectively, respondents shared a need for clear and direct ways to streamline processes and systems, clarification of roles and expectations, and awareness of opportunities for development. One way organizations can improve effective communication is to ask employees how they want information shared. Learning if town halls, emails, meetings, a central communication hub, or a combination of those are the best ways to address communication concerns within an organization. Additionally, organizations who embrace a culture where employees feel safe to have open and honest conversations will improve communication.

2. Support

Employees want to feel that their organization values and cares about them. Employers should provide opportunities to communicate with leadership and access to resources necessary for personal and professional success. We found a one-size fits all approach isn’t effective for retaining or engaging employees, so organizations should tailor support to meet the needs of individuals or groups. Two ways to support employees are to give feedback and opportunities to learn new skills. Our survey found that only 9% of respondents get regular feedback. Likewise, only 3% of respondents said they’ve had the opportunity to learn a new skill in the last month. Based on these numbers, it comes as no surprise that employees don’t feel like they are supported. By learning what employees need to feel supported, organizations can tailor support to better meet the needs of their employees.

3. Culture

Our respondents shared they want organizations to focus on creating a culture that promotes a healthy work-life balance, encourages the development of positive relationships, and creates a work environment that is both psychologically and physically safe. While this may seem daunting, organizations have an opportunity to promote a positive and inclusive culture that fosters collaboration and empowers employees to be the best version of themselves. Organizations can positively affect culture with regular recognition of employees. While 79% of respondents said they are confident in their ability to recognize others for their work, only 7% said they receive recognition on a regular basis. Clearly there is a disconnect between confidence in the ability to recognize others and doing it. Given how few employees receive recognition, organizations have an opportunity to positively change culture by regularly recognizing employees for their work.

What Do Employees Want?

When it comes to the goals, aspirations, and expectations of your employees, priorities do and should shift over time. Changes, both personal and professional, are inevitable. Organizations need to acknowledge that a one-size fits all approach to the employee experience does not promote engagement and retention. Companies must be proactive and consider how to adapt and flex the employee experience to meet the current and ever-changing needs of their employees. One way that organizations have responded is by incorporating wellness benefits into the employee experience. While well intended, it may not be what employees want. When asked to rate aspects of the employee experience, our respondents didn’t see wellness benefits as a big factor. In fact, 63% of respondents ranked wellness benefits at the bottom of importance.

What came out on top? Culture, with 34% of respondents sharing that this is the most important thing to their experience. Employees want their organization and leaders to build a positive culture where everyone is empowered to unlock their potential. Employees are less concerned about where they work, PTO, or wellness benefits because at the end of the day, a toxic work culture will always negatively influence their engagement, satisfaction, and ultimately their decision to stay. In fact, 96% responded that when they feel valued by their organization, they are more productive; 87% say they feel less stressed; and 96% more likely to remain at their organization. To keep and engage employees, organizations must examine their current organizational culture and make critical changes where needed. Organizations that foster a positive culture are more likely to keep employees who are connected to the work and success of the organization.

The Best Investment a Business Can Make

The best investment that a business can make is in their employees. Successful organizations prioritize the creation of a positive, collaborative, and inclusive work culture that’s focused on the employee experience. The payoff to this investment is a workforce that feels valued, connected, and supported, while encouraging them to actively contribute to business outcomes.

Article courtesy of Wiley. Originally published at www.EverythingDisc.com

The post The Employee Experience: An Investment That Pays Off appeared first on BHR Training: Management, Leadership, Customer Service, DISC Certification Training.

I am excited to announce six new programs for the new year!

These workshops are for leaders who want to take their skills to the next level and create an environment for people and teams to thrive, grow, and succeed.

Of course, all workshops are customized to your needs, and include pre- and post-workshop support to ensure that the learning sticks.

New Programs Include:

Coaching Skills for Leaders – Effectively coaching employees is essential to a leader’s ability to help people develop to their fullest potential and motivate them to contribute at their highest level. Some of what we’ll cover in this workshop includes: Three key foundations of effective coaching, building a strong coaching relationship, mastering the coaching conversation, and more. Learn more.

Having Difficult Conversations – Learn how to move past conflict and into cooperation. If handled appropriately, working through difficult conversations can create strong bonds between team members and pave the way for improved communication. In this session, we’ll explore different approaches to difficult situations, strategies to get from conflict to cooperation, how to give and receive feedback, and more. Learn more about Having Difficult Conversations.

Leading Remote Teams – Driven by technology, rising operational costs, and increasing globalization, not to mention a global pandemic, remote teaming has increased 800% in the last five years. Thanks to the pandemic, companies launched head-first into remote work, without the luxury of planning, and without the time to think about the unique challenges it presents for both leaders and team members. With the support of this program, your leaders will learn how to establish best practices, incorporate agreements, foster trust, and use communication tools that work! Learn more.

Leading with Emotional Intelligence – Outstanding leaders keep their cool and never let their temper get out of control, are totally trustworthy, listen, value your input, and understand when to push you, when to coach you, and when to lift you up, among other things. These are traits of high Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, and are correlated to success in work and in life. While a high EQ doesn’t always come naturally, it can be learned. This training workshop will help you to identify the key domains that impact emotional intelligence and to practice activities that build emotional competencies, as well as help you to adapt your responses and reactions for better outcomes. Learn more.

New Managers: Moving from Bud to Boss – Making the transition from employee to manager can be a stressful and challenging event. Once in a management role, new managers often find that management has more demands, administrative tasks, planning, organizing, and people challenges than they ever expected. In this workshop, participants will explore the challenges and opportunities that all new manager face when making that first leap into a supervisory role, including common mistakes and how to avoid them, key competencies, best practices to increase respect, and more. Learn more about this new manager workshop.

Fostering Resilience for Leaders – Change is necessary for growth, but it’s hard, and can be emotional and painful for teams and individuals. Whether it’s due to a pandemic, mergers & acquisitions, downsizing, restructuring, or even simply new leadership, change is an inevitable part of business and the workplace. In this interactive workshop, leaders will learn about living in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment and what is required to lead successfully. You’ll learn how to recognize and navigate the emotional shifts that happen during change and how to focus on well-being. You will walk away feeling more confident and equipped to handle the daily hiccups and challenges that come your way. Learn more.

The programs can stand alone, can be combined to enhance effectiveness, and they work well with our DiSC solutions!

Drop us a line and let’s talk about your leadership goals!

The post Announcement: New Programs for 2021! appeared first on BHR Training: Management, Leadership, Customer Service, DISC Certification Training.

Short answer: Trust.

Some of you are probably thinking, “Great. Bonnie talks about trust a lot, and how important it is to creating a great team, but what do I do when I’m in an environment where people are so guarded and wary that it’s impossible to build trust?”

Fair enough. This can be a tough situation. But impossible? Nope.

I’ve got another trick up my sleeve, but first, let’s talk about the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Nobody Wanted to Be Blamed for Delays. Instead, People Died

For those of you who are too young to remember, in 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated shortly after launch, killing all aboard – six astronauts and a school teacher – on live TV.

The Rogers Commission, created to investigate the disaster, found NASA’s organizational culture and decision-making processes had been key contributing factors to the accident, with the agency violating its own safety rules. Physicist Richard Feynman implied that NASA was more concerned with public relations than reality. It turned out that management was resistant to bad news and didn’t want to hear that there were potential problems with this launch, even though engineers at both partner companies tried to alert them.

The tragedy is that a delay would only have made NASA look bad, and might have cost additional dollars. Going ahead with the launch cost lives, and made NASA look a whole lot worse.

If the culture at NASA had been “safe” and open to negative feedback, the Challenger launch would have been postponed and the disaster would have been averted.

Safe to Work

When we talk about safety at work it’s not physical safety, but the understanding that you are “safe” to disagree, or offer negative feedback, or tell management that there are serious flaws in the new design and the current deadline for launch will have to be pushed back.

This is “psychological safety”.

Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, coined the term while studying healthcare workers in the late 1990s to answer a basic question – do better teams make fewer medication errors? What she found was that the most effective hospital teams reported making more mistakes, not fewer. Digging deeper, she realized that it wasn’t that better teams were making more mistakes. It was that they were more willing to own up to and openly discuss their mistakes.

She defines psychological safety as “the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes”.

When there is psychological safety your employees are willing to say “I screwed up” or “I have a stupid question, but I’m going to ask it anyway”.

An internal study conducted by Google found that teams with high rates of psychological safety were better than other teams at implementing diverse ideas and driving high performance. They were also more likely to stay with the company.

Gallup also weighs in on the benefits of psychological safety, noting that, “employees that engage in strategies to fit into dominant organizational norms report: 16% less committed to the organization, 14% lower sense of belonging to the organization, 15% less likely to perceive having opportunities to advance, and 27% more likely to have considered leaving the organization in the past twelve months. Not surprisingly, given its positive emotional effects, psychological safety is linked to greater employee engagement.”

A common misconception is that psychological safety is about being “nice”, and it can easily be dismissed as something fluffy or touchy-feely in our data-driven age. This could not be further from the truth. Psychological safety is more about creating an environment where candid feedback is given, mistakes admitted to, and learning is the foundation of how people work. It’s also the sense that our coworkers care and have our back.

How Do We Create a Psychologically Safe Workplace?

There are different elements to psychological safety, and some may be easier to implement than others. The good news is, if you don’t know where to start, our tips will help!

Share personal stories. Personal story-telling creates authentic connections with employees and normalizes the sharing of personal experiences. Sharing personal information develops empathy and intimacy and enhances perceptions of psychological safety.

Provide room to experiment and fail. Provide protection and support when employees encounter difficulty or challenges in their efforts to innovate and deliver results. Failure should be a learning experience, not an opportunity for blame and shame.

Model reasonable risk-taking and failure. In addition to the above, show your employees that it is okay to take reasonable risks even if they do not always succeed by sharing your own failures.

Avoid blame. Fear of blame plays a big role in unsafe workplaces, like at NASA during the Challenger era. Blame and criticism lead to conflict and defensiveness. Discuss personal performance issues using factual and neutral language. When there is a problem with a project, seek the employee’s explanation and ask for their thoughts on how to solve it. Ask how you can support your employee and praise their courage in raising the issue in the first place. Depending on the problem, bring it to the team to help solve it. Blame won’t get any problem fixed.

Recognize effort as well as achievement. Recognition goes a long way in motivating employees. When employees feel appreciated, they put in extra effort to deliver exemplary performance on a consistent basis.

Be curious. Curiosity is the antidote to blame. Ask a lot of questions to encourage employees to voice their ideas and to demonstrate willingness to hear diverse perspectives and thoughts. Actively seek dissenting views and do not shut down any ideas, no matter how crazy. When people feel that their managers want to hear from them and value their perspectives they are more likely to offer their input.

Listen. It’s not enough to ask the questions. You have to actively listen to the responses you get. Does it make you a little uncomfortable? Then you’re doing it right!

Delegate authority/ allow autonomy. Allow employees the room to make decisions on their own that are well within their area of expertise and scope. A sense of agency helps team members feel more accountable towards their responsibilities and perform accordingly.

Be open to feedback. Managers need to be accessible and open to receiving and giving feedback. Eliminate all the bureaucratic procedures that discourage employees from reaching out to their managers and ask for or give feedback.

Go first! Perhaps most importantly, you need to be the first one to open up, acknowledge a failure, share a personal moment, ask questions, encourage discussion, and maybe even dig deeper.

Exercises to Build Psychological Safety with Your Team

In addition to the tips above, you might want to try this exercise. Gather your team and pose the following questions, in this order:

1. What can we count on each other for?
2. What is our team’s purpose?
3. What is the reputation we aspire to have?
4. What do we need to do differently to achieve that reputation and fulfill our purpose?

It is usually most effective to ask one person, perhaps the person sitting on your right or left, the first question, “What can the team count on you for?” and then have the rest of the team share how that affects them. Follow this method around until everyone has answered, then move on to the next question, which can be asked to the group as long as everyone has a chance to be heard.

Another suggestion is for all team members to take a personality/behavior assessment. This can remove interpersonal roadblocks among teammates, helping them understand each other better.

Finally, consider taking the team off-site to do something just for fun, even if it’s just lunch. Make a point of sharing personal stories during this time. If that is something your team has never done before, as the leader you get to be brave and go first!

Psychological Safety = Team Success

If you make a conscious effort to create this sense of psychological safety on your own team starting now, you can expect to see higher levels of engagement, increased motivation to tackle difficult problems, more learning and development opportunities, and better performance.

The post The Key to Great Teams that Last? Psychological Safety appeared first on BHR Training: Management, Leadership, Customer Service, DISC Certification Training.

What does “trust” mean to you? When I say that employees, teammates, and colleagues need to trust each other, what comes to mind?

You may think, “Yes, I trust that my direct reports are going to show up on time, ready to work their shift.” Or perhaps, “I trust Bob. I know that if he says he’ll have the weekly stats to me by noon, he’ll do it.”

Trust is a key element of high-performing organizations. Employees in high-trust companies are more productive, more satisfied with their jobs, put in greater effort, are less likely to search for new jobs, and are even healthier than people working in low-trust companies.

So, What Is Trust?

Trust is a complex set of social behaviors, expectations, norms, and interpersonal actions. And there are two kinds of trust. The first kind, as in my examples above, is the kind where we put ourselves in another’s shoes and think, “If I were her, I’d do xyz.” Combined with experience of people’s behavior, we can forecast their actions. This is predictive trust.

The second kind of trust is based in empathy, and, believe it or not, the release in our brains of the neurochemical oxytocin. Oxytocin reduces the anxiety we naturally have when around other people, and motivates us to cooperate with and help each other. This is vulnerability-based trust, and it’s critical to effective teamwork. I’ll come back to this in a moment, but first, let’s look a little closer at the effect of trust on companies.

Why Does Trust Matter?

Trust, among team members, as part of organizational culture, and even with customers, leads to improved morale, increased employee retention, increased performance, less stress, and higher profits.

Creating trust lifts business performance in general. In a 1999 study of Holiday Inns (https://hbr.org/2002/09/the-high-cost-of-lost-trust), 6,500 employees rated their trust in their managers on a scale of 1 to 5. The researchers found that a one-eighth point improvement in scores could be expected to increase an inn’s annual profits by 2.5% of revenues, or $250,000 more per hotel. No other aspect of managers’ behavior had such a large impact on profits.

If you look at this the other way around, 70% of employees are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” at work. This makes them “less emotionally connected” and “less likely to be productive.”

Building vulnerability-based trust can change those statistics.

Call it “Essential” Not “Soft” Skills

Brené Brown conducted thousands of interviews to discover what lies at the root of social connection. A thorough analysis of the data revealed that it’s vulnerability. Vulnerability here does not mean being weak or submissive. Rather, it implies the courage to be yourself. It means replacing what we think of as a professional distance or coolness with genuineness and a willingness to act in ways that present uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Opportunities for vulnerability present themselves to us at work every day.

Patrick Lencioni’s examples of vulnerabilities include:

• Weaknesses – admitting them and asking for support from those whose skills are stronger
• Skill deficiencies
• Interpersonal shortcomings – do you have a particular behavior that gets in the way of communication or good relationships?
• Mistakes – failures are better acknowledged and shared with teammates who can help figure out what went wrong and how to fix it next time.
• Requests for help – people like being asked for help; it gives them a chance to feel valued.

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.” — Brené Brown

When trust is present team members:

• Are willing to be completely vulnerable with one another.
• Have confidence that their peers’ intentions are good and there is no reason to be protective or careful around the team.
• Acknowledge their weaknesses to one another.
• Willingly apologize to one another.
• Are unguarded and genuine with one another.
• Ask one another for input regarding their areas of responsibility.

Building Trust on a Team

Let’s look closer at four behaviors, based in being genuine and vulnerable, that are key to building trust.

1. Team members acknowledge their weaknesses to one another.
   Members of great teams don’t waste time and energy putting on airs or pretending to be someone they’re not. Everyone on the team knows that no one is going to hide his or her weaknesses, which helps build a deep sense of trust.
2. Team members willingly apologize to one another.
   When teams are completely comfortable saying things like “I screwed up” or “Your idea was better than mine,” they are practicing being vulnerable. Trust will greatly improve when members are able to set egos aside and move forward.
3. Team members are unguarded and genuine with one another.
   At the heart of vulnerability lies the willingness to people to abandon their pride and their fear and simply be themselves. While this can a little threatening and uncomfortable at first, ultimately it becomes liberating for people who are tired of over-thinking their actions and interpersonal politics at work.
4. Team members ask one another for input regarding their areas of responsibility.
   When people trust that their team members have their best interests in mind, they feel comfortable asking one another for input and opinions. They aren’t worried about being exposed or shot down.

From Brené Brown, again: “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”

If your goal is to increase vulnerability-based trust in your workplace and life, consider these ten tips:

1. Reduce the amount of gossip and talking about one another other behind their backs
2. Admit when you are wrong, make mistakes and readily apologize
3. Let go of holding grudges from the past
4. Understand and appreciate one another’s work styles and strengths
5. Be open and practice information sharing
6. Take time to learn about each other on a more personal level
7. Looks for ways to give credit to others
8. Acknowledge and celebrate successes of others
9. Share openly both your failures and successes
10. Give your team members the benefit of the doubt before jumping to a negative conclusion

Ready to take the next step?

Download my Team Trust Activity. It includes a short survey for all team members, and some suggestions for discussion topics, plus a “cheat sheet” on how the four DiSC styles approach trust.

The post Want High Performance? Build Trust Among Team Members appeared first on BHR Training: Management, Leadership, Customer Service, DISC Certification Training.

What makes you tick?

Why do some situations make you squirm with discomfort, while you breeze through others with no problem?

How is it that you can say the same thing to three different people and get three entirely different interpretations of what you intended?

It all boils down to personalities and preferences. You think and act one way, and your colleagues, friends, or family behave in their own distinct ways.

Well, I’ve got a short, fun exercise (PDF download) to help you understand yourself better and gain a little insight into the people around you. It gives you a few prompts and then asks you to “guess” your DiSC® style. You can do this on your own, or give it to your team and let everyone discuss where they think their teammates fall.

The DiSC® model provides a common language that we can use to better understand ourselves and each other, and helps us to adapt our behaviors to improve communication and effectiveness at work.

In our next post, we’ll look at how to communicate with the different styles.

Download your copy of the DiSC® exercise, here.

The post Guess Your Style in Two Easy Steps appeared first on BHR Training: Management, Leadership, Customer Service, DISC Certification Training.

Are you part of a truly cohesive team? Based on the book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”by Patrick Lencioni, the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team is an assessment based learning experience designed to help individuals and organizations build a truly cohesive and effective team. The assessment will provide a clear, concise and practical guide to help improve your team, based on the Five Behaviors:

*Trust One Another – When team members are genuinely transparent and honest with one another, they are able to build vulnerability-based trust.

*Engage in Conflict Around Ideas – When there is trust, team members are able to engage in unfiltered, constructive debate of ideas.

*Commit to Decisions – When team members are able to offer opinions and debate ideas, they will be more likely to commit to decisions.

*Hold One Another Accountable – When everyone is committed to a clear plan of action, they will be more willing to hold one another accountable.

*Focus on Achieving Collective Results – The ultimate goal of building greater trust, productive conflict, commitment and accountability is one thing: the achievement of results.

The three-day workshop will provide insight into where your team is now on each of these behaviors and what your team needs to do to become more cohesive. Each individual on the team will also understand their own personality style and the styles of their team members, based on the DiSC model: D Dominance, I Influence, S Steadiness and C Conscientious. You will see how your DiSC style impacts how you react to each of these behaviors. You will be able to recognize your team’s strengths and, more importantly, your team’s challenges and how you can overcome these challenges that will result in a more cohesive and productive team.

By mastering the five behaviors, your team will be more effective, productive and will easily tap into the skills of each team member.

For more information on how your organization can benefit from The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team training, please contact bonnie@bhrtraining.com.

The post The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team appeared first on BHR Training: Management, Leadership, Customer Service, DISC Certification Training.

C styles place a high priority on Accuracy. Because they want superior results, they analyze options rationally, separating emotions from fact.

C styles prioritize Stability, and tend to take their time making decisions to ensure they have the correct outcome. They analyze all options and make decisions that promise predictable outcomes.

The C style also prioritizes Challenge. They may openly question ideas and point out flaws that others may have missed.

Because the C style focuses on quality and accuracy, they may be unsociable at times, working independently to ensure their work is accurate. This may be especially challenging for other styles, such as the S style team member who is highly social and prefers working together. When interacting with the C style, it is beneficial to realize that:
          -Although they may ask skeptical questions with very little emotions, they will follow through on their commitments.
          -The C wants a stable environment and thinks carefully before acting.
          -Realize that they are precise and dependable and do not push for drastic changes.

Keep in mind that everyone is a blend of the four DiSC styles but most people tend strongly toward one or two styles. All styles are equal and valuable in their own way. Understanding your own style and those on your team can improve the effectiveness and productivity among team members.

If you want more information about how DiSC can help your organization, please email bonnie@bhrtraining.com 

The post The C Style appeared first on BHR Training: Management, Leadership, Customer Service, DISC Certification Training.

The “S” stands for Steadiness. You need to understand the priorities of your S style members in order to get the best and work effectively with them. Priorities of S are giving support, maintaining stability, and enjoying collaboration.

People with the S style place a high priority on providing Support. They are good listeners and are seen as patient and understanding. They value a warm and easygoing environment.

The S style prioritizes Stability and often focuses on maintaining a predictable, orderly environment. They tend to be cautious and will avoid rapid change whenever possible.

The S style enjoys Collaboration and will go out of their way to make sure people feel included and accepted.

This style may seem soft-hearted and even-tempered and always willing to help. Some styles, such as the D style, may have concerns with their need to please everyone. Since the D is more analytical and does not always show concern for others, they may wish that their S team members spend more time on analysis rather than an emphasis on pleasing everyone.

The S style can prove to be a valuable member of your team and organization. Their cooperative manner and concern for others can be important in their role as a team member. When things get heated, they may act as “peacemaker” in an attempt to diffuse the situation.

There are some aspects of the workplace that may cause stress for the S style including taking risks, working under pressure, giving negative feedback and working in a chaotic environment. Other styles, such as the D and C style tend to thrive on some of these aspects that may be stressful to the S style.

When working with the S style, it is important to understand their need to make everyone feel comfortable and included. Although you may find their desire for friendly teamwork as counterproductive or unnecessary, you may have to compromise realizing their value to a productive and cohesive team.

The post “S’ Style appeared first on BHR Training: Management, Leadership, Customer Service, DISC Certification Training.