One thing is for sure, there’s little chance of escaping behavioural profiling these days, but what is it and how can it improve performance in your workplace?
Behavioural profiling is basically the “science” of working out what makes an individual tick. Their motivators, their needs, and their common traits and behaviours.
Today, behavioural profiling is used widely to help organisations when recruiting to find the right team fit, to assess someone’s leadership potential, and to improve work productivity and communication within the organisation.
Communication and being understood is really the most critical skill required as a leader to ensure success. As a manager and leader, as you become more self-aware of your own behavioural style and work preferences, you can learn to adapt your communication style to best suit the people you’re dealing with and the situation.
What we have found when running our Management Skills training course, is that one of the most popular sessions is behavioural profiling because it’s like learning a new language to allow for better communication, and provides participants with a powerful insight into why people behave the way they do.
The profiling system we use is DISC as it is simple to understand, is non-judgmental and show’s a person’s leaning towards one or two broad behavioural styles as well as pinpointing their unique combination of traits and attributes from all four main groups. In otherwords, each person will have behavioural preferences but also possesses an individual recipe combining parts from all the groups, just some are more pronounced than others.
So how can behavioural profiling improve individual and team performance?
It comes down to first of all understanding where people are coming from. For example, picture this. In a team you may have a person who communicates positively but can at times be slow at getting to the point, whereas someone else may be very direct and quite aggressive in their approach. Sooner or later they’re probably going to clash with the fallout being felt throughout the team. Imagine if both understood their own behavioural and communication style and could identify and understand the preferences of others, how different things could be.
By understanding what drives an individual, organisations can support their employees to be more effective and, just as importantly, how to retain them.
In a team situation, many organisations recognise the benefit of bringing a diversity of skills but also personalities into a team, which may include the risk takers and innovators, and those that can provide high levels of customer care. If some behavioural styles are missing, teams can be unbalanced causing friction and significant loss of productivity. When team members become more aware of each other’s styles and needs, trust increases, communication improves and team performance is enhanced.
If you would like to learn more about behavioural profiling and how to use it to enhance your management and leadership performance, then please reach out to us or better yet, consider joining us at our next Management Skills for Managers and Leaders training.
