It can be hard trying to hire the perfect person for your company. It takes all types of people to build a successful team, but even interviews can’t tell you all there is to know about a person.

How do you know before you hire someone that they’re the best person for the job?

One method that many business owners are turning to is the DISC assessment, a test that helps you understand your employees’ personality and communication styles. Think of it as the key to understanding how the people around you tick.

Utilizing DISC assessments at your company can help your business flourish in more ways than one. Read on to find out more.

What Is DISC?

Before we get into how it works, let’s take a look at just what a DISC profile can tell you.

The DISC assessment gets its name from the four working styles it classifies people into:

Dominance

Influence

Steadiness

Compliance

Of course, people are complicated, and not everyone will fit perfectly into one working style. If people fall on the line between two styles, you might see a result like “Si,” for people who lean towards the “Steadiness” style but also have a lot of the “Influence” traits.

Each working style has different priorities and a different way of communicating with others. Someone who falls under “Dominance” is motivated by competition and authority, while a someone with a “Steadiness” DISC profile is motivated by appreciation and opportunities to help.

On the other side, someone with an “Influence” profile is more likely to be an enthusiastic people person. If a team member scored high under “Compliance,” you might notice that they’re very precise, logical, and reserved.

Each style has its own strengths and weaknesses. Once you know how to recognize them in each employee, you can leverage each person’s strengths.

Here’s how taking a DISC personality test can help improve the way you do business.

Increase Self-Awareness

First of all, it’s just as important for leaders to take a DISC assessment. Understanding the way that you work is critical.

We might think that we have a handle on the way we talk to others, but sometimes assessments like these can teach us a lot about ourselves. Business owners should take their own DISC test before or along with their employees.

You’ll learn more about your own strengths and weaknesses and could be able to pinpoint some ways to become a better manager.

The best managers score high when it comes to emotional intelligence. DISC surveys help you to get in touch with your emotions and your personality in the workplace.

Understand How Your Employees Work

The most obvious advantage is figuring out how employees, or even potential employees, operate in a work setting.

If you have your entire team complete a DISC assessment, you’ll find out which team members are more assertive, who is the best at creating relationships with customers, and who is more likely to exhibit persistence and patience.

Using a DISC profile to pinpoint people’s strengths will help you to place them in roles that they’re well-suited to. It can also help identify ways for you to help them in their professional development.

What if you’re trying to build a team?

If you’re hiring someone to join a team that has already become a cohesive whole, their DISC profile can help predict if they’ll be a good fit. If your team is full of people with the “Dominance” profile who like tasks to be completed quickly, someone with a “Steadiness” profile might constantly feel rushed or badgered.

If you’re creating a team from scratch, on the other hand, you have an opportunity to make sure different ways of thinking are represented.

Improve Internal Communications

Each DISC style also has a lot of information about how people communicate. While some might prefer a more direct and to-the-point style, others prefer to make conversations more personal.

Without an understanding of a fellow team member’s communication style, an employee might end up feeling slighted or unheard.

DISC profiles can help you improve your communications with employees by tailoring your management style to their DISC results. Generating reports for relationships between employees can also help coworkers communicate with one another better.

Build Relationships

The self-awareness and increased understanding of others that a DISC personality test offers naturally leads to relationship building. You want to have a team that’s built on a mutual respect and understanding.

That can be hard to do if people aren’t really communicating as clearly as they think.

This assessment makes different personality styles clear, which helps people to build their relationships with one another. They’ll be able to look at different relationships from their perspective and their coworkers’ perspectives.

This is a great way to build empathy and a spirit of collaboration amongst your team.

It’s also much easier to build a relationship with a customer if you know the four basic ways to categorize their personality, even if they haven’t taken a DISC assessment. Understanding the way they communicate will help with another area of your business…

Boost Sales

Finally, a DISC survey can help your business to boost sales and generate even more revenue for your organization.

Anyone can work in sales, but some people are better suited to it than others. That doesn’t mean that you need to completely exclude someone with a certain DISC profile from your sales team — but it does mean that you might want to put them to work on a different project.

Someone with a “Dominance” profile is motivated by competition, so the thrill and challenge alone of sales will help drive them. An “Influence” profile, on the other hand, might do much better in a sales environment that’s more people-driven.

Playing to their strengths makes them more effective, helping them to generate more leads and close more often.

Take A DISC Assessment With Us

DISC surveys can help you better understand your employees, improve workplace relationships, and increase sales. For a test that only takes a few minutes to fill out, there’s a long list of benefits.

Ready to get started? Let’s figure out if you’re a candidate. Request a free consultation with us today.