Case Study: Coaching with DiSC Classic In Large International Corporation
Technical skills and people skills often do not go hand-in-hand. The DiSC Profile can help with emotional intelligence and people-skills for all levels of talent.
The Client
- A Global consumer goods company
- 138,000+ employees working in 80 countries
Challenge
“Tom,” a highly-valued chemical engineer, was seen by his peers and employees as divisive, controlling, and lacking collaborative skills. In addition, Tom’s behavior was a key reason several of Tom’s peers had left the company. Tom’s direct reports were equally unhappy. They reported not feeling valued and several were seeking to transfer to different departments.
Tom’s behavior, although always problematic, had always been overlooked because his engineering skills had led to successful product developments. He was also good at building relationships with those above him. Tom was given a choice: work with a coach to improve his people-skills or lose his job. The goals set for Tom were to:
- Understand the impact his behavior has on peers and direct reports.
- Learn to work with people of diverse perspectives and approaches.
- Recognize, accept, and mitigate his blind spots.
- Learn to coach employees with differing styles than his own
Solution
Although Tom held a senior position, he had focused his professional development on scientific topics and not on people-skills. The first thing I did was to have Tom take the DiSC® Classic 2.0 Profile. The profile showed Tom his strengths, blind spots and the specific areas that needed to be improved to end the on-going conflict. He also understood that while the strengths of his D/C style had helped him succeed as a scientist, building relationships was not as natural to him, and he’d need to work at it.
While this was all useful information, even more valuable to Tom was the insight that people have different motivations for their behavior. He started to recognize that the conflicts he had with his coworkers were style-based, rather than personal attacks on him. With this realization, we developed action plans for working better with the individuals he had the most contact with.
Results
Within days, Tom’s peers and employees started to notice a positive difference in his behavior, particularly in his communication. They felt they were working with a different person, someone who was open to their input and was willing to work collaboratively. Tom’s manager noted that Tom was developing partnerships with his coworkers—for the first time.
Tom was so excited with what he had learned about himself and working better with others that he asked for his team to take the DiSC profile. Using the DiSC Classic 2.0 Profile, I conducted DiSC training for Tom’s team, his manager, and the HR director. The HR director commented that the insights DiSC gave the team made it the, “best training investment they had ever made.”
Other departments noticed improved morale and increased effectiveness of Tom’s team. As a result, additional departmental managers have asked for and received DiSC training. After the training, one employee commented, “I used to hate to come to work. Now, I cannot wait to come to work each day.” And a new member of the team reported: “Tom is the best manager I have ever worked for.”
At the end of the year, Tom’s manager rated his coaching skills as “markedly improved.” Tom credits this to his understanding of what motivates each of his employees and use of their specific behavioral patterns. People are now asking to work with Tom rather than requesting transfers out of his department.
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