DISC Success Story
DISC Team Success Story # 1

by: Dr. Michael Abelson

Situation:
A particular office had a history of repeatedly hiring poor performing administrative assistants. We did a DISC behavior team report on the entire administrative staff; ownership, management, administrative assistant, and a few other staff. We also looked at the individual DISC of past administrative assistants who also performed poorly.


Analysis:
We found that most assistants they hired had a very similar DISC profile. Interestingly enough, their profile was very similar to the leader of the team. Even though we developed a benchmark for this organization for administrative assistants, this office was not using the benchmark. The management and owner were hiring people like themselves; fairly intensive “D” behavior styles. Not even close to the benchmark.


Recommendation / Outcome:
We showed them the correct benchmark that we had discovered for administrative assistants for their organization. Organizations may have different benchmarks for this position. We also looked at the DISC Team Wheel from our DISC Team Report. As suspected, they were missing the type of behavior recommended by our administrative assistant benchmark for administrative assistants. Their team was missing an essential behavior, the “C.” We recommended they stop hiring people like themselves and hire administrative assistants who had the “C” behaviors. They followed the recommendation and soon contacted us. The outcome was an expected.
Their team was now functioning much better. The team performance was greatly improved and everyone, including the new administrative assistant, were enjoying what they were doing and the team outcomes.

Dr. Michael Abelson

© 2024. Michael Abelson (BA, MA, MBA, PhD) founded The Abelson Group in 1986, is Emeritus (retired) from the Management Department at Texas A&M University, and specializes in communications and over a dozen other human resource areas.

He has spoken to over 1000 business and non-business groups on four continents, been quoted by over 100 newspapers, newsletters, and magazines, and authored over 100 articles, books, monographs, and other publications.  He is frequently invited by the media to share opinions and solutions.

Contact him at [email protected] or www.theabelsongroup.com to invite him to consult, coach, speak, or for a media interview.  

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