Do You Have People Smarts?

Great team leaders have people smarts. They believe that people want to do good work. They understand that their role as a leader is to coach team members to their ultimate success by celebrating each person’s individual strengths.

Team leaders with people smarts have a few things in common:

They understand themselves and how their behavior affects others
They understand how to respond to people, instead of react to them
They know how to capitalize on what they do well and let others do the same
They know how to adapt their behavior to meet the needs of other people in particular situations
They want to lead a team that is unified to reach a similar goal or vision, not uniformed in approach and ideas

How do you enhance your people smarts?

The solution starts with the DiSC® Personal Profile System developed by Inscape Publishing. DiSC® represents the four behavior styles that each person uses in a given situation.

Dominance – Bold, confident, risk-taker, loves a challenge
Influence – Enthusiastic, amiable, persuasive
Steadiness - Loyal, cooperative, planner
Conscientiousness – Detail oriented, diplomatic, analytical

Leaders are enhancing their ability to lead their teams by using DiSC® knowledge as a coaching tool. Let me demonstrate with the following scenario.

Susan Storemanager is receiving reports that Cathy Cashier is spending a lot of time having personal conversations at work and it is impacting her job performance. Here are the report details from her peers:

Cathy’s drawer has been short twice in the last week.
Cathy forgot to remove sensor tags from merchandise two times this week.
Cathy is always talking story to colleagues and customers while she is ringing up transactions.

The last thing that Susan Storemanager wants to do is fire Cathy Cashier. While Cathy’s chatting may contribute to her errors, Susan recognizes that Cathy is able to develop positive relationships with her peers and customers, which supports the stores goal of being the ultimate shopping experience. Susan realizes that she needs to help Cathy develop strategies to be more detail oriented in the cash handling transaction, without losing her enthusiasm for developing customer relationships.

Susan Storemanger decides to use the DiSC® Personal Profile System as a tool in this coaching situation. Cathy Cashier takes the DiSC® assessment of 28 questions and based on Cathy’s responses, the self-assessment shows that Cathy exhibits a high Influence behavior style in her job as a salesperson. Susan Storemanger notes that her high influence behavior style is instrumental in helping Cathy develop relationships with the customers and staff. Susan also notices that Cathy’s assessment shows that her conscientious behavior is rather low in her focus as a salesperson. Since her conscientious behavior style relates to her detailed oriented behaviors, this could explain why her drawer has been short a few times.

Susan Storemanger meets with Cathy and together they discuss the results of the assessment. Susan begins the coaching session by restating that the mission of the store is to create the ultimate shopping experience fo