Build Your Company Culture on Personality to Strengthen Your Brand

Guest Blog by Val Edwards, P2G Consulting

Purposefully enhance your brand’s potency, by ensuring it is recognizable in all aspects of your business operations, from tip to tail.

Strong company culture is built in part on insights into staff personality and preferences. Data from one of the many personality assessments can inform your hiring decisions, team relationship development, and communication practices.

Let’s delve into the pros and a couple of cons related to assessing your staff by style.

Pros:

Using personality/style assessments with staff members can:

provide a framework for relationship building, particularly linking manager to direct report
balance how colleagues view each other and interpret team behaviors
balance the team when used as part of the hiring process
support training for discrete tasks/skills rather than reshaping personality

These positive outcomes require careful planning and implementation. Training in interpretation and application increases the perceived and actual value of the assessment for both managers and staff. The data is most effective when implemented with clearly defined parameters and expectations.

Communicate the importance of all roles in achieving organizational goals by adopting the assessment with all teams and staff members.

Greatest Benefit: Reflection on assessment results opens a conversation about work style and communication preferences creating stronger internal relationships and building trust.

Cons:

Be on the look out for possible misdirection, misinterpretation, and misapplication of results. When not used carefully, the data can:

mislead when identifying causes of conflict; incorrectly pointing to personality rather than work culture or a project obstacle
create false expectations among colleagues, particularly if not implemented as expected
cause colleagues to assign preferences to others permanently, including in situations when other environmental factors are playing a larger role

Insights from DISC* users:

Implementing the data from personality assessments requires incorporation with other strategies and methods of leading. Here are two examples:

Tara Ingalls, owner of Tingalls Graphic Design uses DISC reports as part of her hiring process. She’s found that hiring for personality/character results in a more stable company culture. “I tend to ‘go with my gut’ since in almost every instance, I can train a new skill but it’s pretty difficult to train a new personality.”

Joe Fulco, President of Fruitful Yield relies on DISC results to aid in addressing miscommunication, fostering trust, and building a culture of team collaboration. He has found success by using data to move his managerial team away from “one size fits all” communication by providing them with a better understanding of who they are communicating with and having that guide how they communicate.

By opening the conversation, listening to feedback, and drawing on results continuously, your brand and your company culture can be positive reflections of each other.

Blog writer Val Edwards is a business consultant, providing services in workplace conflict mediation and team development for P2G Consulting.

* The DISC assessment is founded on a four factor self-concept theory – Dominance, Inducement, Steadiness, or Compliance. It is one of many personality assessments that are widely used in the business community.