Personality Tests and Profiles Can Help Everyone Get Along
More remodelers are turning to values and behavioral profiling tools to determine how employees respond to challenges and procedures, and how they influence co-workers or clients. Why not? Fortune 500 companies have used profiling for years.
Mark Scott of Mark IV Builders has a DiSC-based “cue card” for how to communicate or how not to communicate with all 19 of his employees. They, in turn, have cue cards on how to deal with their boss and other colleagues. Here’s a sampling:
When communicating with …
Mark
DO:
DON’T:
Be clear, specific, brief, to the point.
Come prepared with all requirements, objectives, and support material in a well-organized “package.”
Read his body language for approval or disapproval.
Motivate and persuade by referring to objectives and results.
Provide ideas for implementing action.
Forget or lose things or be disorganized or messy.
Confuse or distract his mind from business.
Be redundant.
Come with a ready-made decision or make it for him.
Andy
DO:
DON’T:
Be precise about the use of his time.
Provide solutions, not opinions.
Provide yes or no answers, not maybes.
Stress logic.
Offer assurance and guarantees you can’t fulfill.
Ramble.
Be vague; don’t offer opinions and probabilities.
Keep deciding for him, or he’ll lose initiative.
Kirk
DO:
DON’T:
Provide details in writing.
Have the facts in logical order.
Give him time to analyze the data before making a decision.
Be patient and persistent.
Use an unemotional approach.
Leave things open to interpretation.
Manipulate or push him into agreeing; he probably won’t fight back.
Overuse emotion.
Patronize or demean him by using subtlety or incentive.
