Today’s business environment is dynamic and demanding. Economic uncertainty, grueling market conditions, and fierce competition mean companies need to thrive to survive. To do that, businesses need a workplace culture that creates a thriving work environment. This is where Everything DiSC® can play an important. While this may differ for different environments, in general, a thriving workplace consists of employees who:
- Have diverse and adaptable capabilities
- Understand the business goals
- Are empowered and engaged
- Trust and support each other
- Are highly committed to bringing their A-game to work
If you’re looking to improve your workplace culture, this article will help you identify the best practices and key behaviors that foster an enriching culture for being a market leader.
Develop a Clear Understanding of Your Company Culture through Everything DiSC®’s Catalyst Platform
Company culture refers to the shared attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, standards, and values that make up the work environment. It determines how the employees and management of an organization come together, perform, and handle business operations. Company culture is tacit but can be grasped through the organization’s past events, leaders’ priorities, and stories. It is also formed from diverse and cumulative traits of employees that the company hires over time.
A significant part of a manager’s job is to ensure that the team culture remains aligned with the company’s culture. As a manager, you must provide your staff with a clear understanding of what the company stands for. Begin with sharing the company’s vision and define its purpose, core values, and goals. Lead by example and demonstrate desired behaviors and attitudes.
Making Core Values Actionable
Values are a set of core beliefs and principles that provide an organization with purpose and direction. Since values are generalized concepts, they can easily be interpreted in various ways by different employees. If you want people to practice your values, make them actionable. For example, in a purely customer-focused work culture, respect is one of the key values. Here the required actions will involve maintaining a respectful approach while handling customer grievances.
Let’s assume your company has recently launched an educational toy that promises learning and entertainment. Some pieces were quick to malfunction without living up to customer expectations. Disgruntled parents and caregivers are storming your office and sharing their negative experiences. Under the DiSC® profile types, employees with the SC Style are ideally your right picks to deal with these frustrated customers because they are likely to remain respectful, listen patiently, and accommodate individual complaints.
Prioritize Diversity and Inclusion (D&I)
Creating a thriving workplace culture begins with developing inclusive hiring practices. An inclusive hiring process includes a wide range of candidates who are from different cultures, religions, ethnicities, and educational backgrounds. A diverse workforce comprises myriad skills, experiences, expertise, and perspectives. It lays the foundation for better creativity, innovation, understanding, and problem-solving. When it comes to profitability, a business case by McKinsey shows that the most diverse companies are more likely to outperform less diverse companies.
Inclusive hiring policies indicate that you respect diversity and different personalities. After you’ve hired a diverse workforce, you need to understand their different perspectives to manage them for the best productivity. To help you better understand the personality traits of your team members, make use of the Everything DiSC® platform and benefit from its powerful DiSC® Assessment feature to help you distinguish and understand employee traits, behaviors, needs, and priorities.
Using the DiSC® personality model, you can easily categorize your team members according to the four basic styles: (D) Dominance (I) Influence (S) Steadiness (C) Conscientiousness. In the presence of a diverse workforce, understanding unique traits and behaviors can become challenging and cumbersome. Fortunately, the DiSC® behavioral styles feature has made life much easier by helping us understand and value our differences.
Promote Healthy Communication and Candor
Open communication and transparency are critical for organizational success. Healthy communication in business depicts a sense of positive responsibility and creates trust between management, employees, and customers. It allows employees to remain aligned with company goals, paves the way for open discussion, and maintains a steady flow of regular feedback.
Organizational silos, job ambiguity, and lack of motivation are threats faced by companies that don’t value communication and transparency. Positive communication allows team members to feel valued, remain engaged, and receive clear information regarding objectives and progress.
Build Supportive and Collaborative Teams
Teamwork, collaboration, and sharing allow employees to remain focused on common goals. Cross-functional interaction helps build better work relationships and encourages camaraderie. Frequent collaboration opens doors to better learning and growth opportunities. In such organizations, employee engagement is high, and teams focus on providing excellent customer service.
Let’s take the example of a family-owned food business where the company promises exceptional food and excellent customer service. Your main chef just called in sick, and the kitchen is in chaos. Fortunately, you have a deputy chef with the Si Style who is highly collaborative, supportive and accommodating. She focuses on building team spirit and is less concerned with individual accomplishment. She’s stepped in and extended her support in the hour of need so your customers can continue enjoying their dining experience and excellent customer service.
Foster Continuous Creativity and Innovation
A diverse workplace is a field for creativity and innovation. People from different backgrounds bring new thought processes and ideas. Encourage creative thinking and provide colleagues with a safe environment where they can explore and experiment with new ideas. Companies that foster creativity and innovation are more likely to be pioneers and market leaders. Mostly, people with ID Style traits will best fit these demanding roles. These workers are highly energetic, fast-paced, and action-oriented. They move quickly toward their goals.
Recognize and Reward Positive Performance
Recognition motivates employees and drives performance. According to Gallup, workplace recognition helps boost employee engagement, improves productivity, and increases a sense of loyalty to the company. Recognition does not only need to come from management – encouraging team members to recognize the positive contribution of their peers will build stronger relationships and create a positive environment. The DiSC® behavioral styles tell us that workers differ in how they prefer to be recognized. For example, colleagues with the “I” (Influence) Style are highly motivated by public recognition, whereas colleagues with the C (Consciousness) style prefer to be praised in private.
A Thriving Work Environment
When an organization has the right company culture, employees are engaged, enthusiastic, and committed to their responsibilities. A positive workplace culture fosters a sense of community, motivation, and collaboration among employees, leading to increased productivity, job satisfaction, and business success.
Creating a positive work environment is not an easy task but with the Everything DiSC® Workplace Assessment, you can make good use of its robust features to identify the key behaviors essential for creating a thriving work culture. To take the first step towards becoming a great manager, head over to our Everything DiSC® Management and choose the option that best suits your needs.
