628 | How DISC Can Transform Leadership & Business Success with Bryan Arzani

Business owners, leaders and entrepreneurs. If you've ever felt frustrated by team misalignment, personality clashes, or employees who just don't seem to get it, this episode is for you.

Today we are talking with Bryan Arzani, a leadership expert and DISC specialist, about understanding personality styles and how they can unlock better communication, teamwork and business growth. All of that is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fantastic, fabulous day wherever you are.

Today we are talking with Bryan Arzani. Now, we have said it a bajillion times, right? If you're going to have great leadership, it starts with knowing your people.

And there are few tools more effective than DISC Personality profile. My guest today is Bryan Arzani, vice president and co founder of Results Group LLC.

He's a speaker, facilitator, trainer specializing in talent alignment and leadership development. He has spent decades helping leaders understand personality dynamics to improve communication, build stronger teams and grow successful businesses.

And today we're going to break down the four DISC personality types, reveal the biggest mistakes leaders make when it comes to communication, and give you practical steps to use DISC in your business. So, Bryan, welcome to the show, brother.

Hey, thanks so much, Chris. Honored to be here.

It is so good to have you on. We have been connected for, gosh, I don't know, like, 13, 14 years or something. Our business is. You and I both, we're gonna give away our ages here.

We've both been doing DISC. I'm like 29 years. I know. I think you've done probably at least that, if not more, but phenomenal, I'll be honest.

20, 23 and a half, you know, so, okay, you got, you got two more gray hairs than I got, brother. I think I have a few. I definitely have less hair than you've got. I've got more gray hairs.

But just, you know, what you guys have done with the Results Group is phenomenal. And we just appreciate everything you guys are doing over there. And today we're doing.

We are doing a series of experts and having you on to talk through things that you've seen, things that you understand, things that you teach, struggles that leaders are experiencing.

So once again, thanks for joining us today. We're going to just jump right in. So most leaders struggle with communication. This is not something that is. It's not revelation to a lot of people.

And while I say that we do find a lot of folks think that they have really good communication. And what we have discovered over and over again is that they talk. Well, yeah, they figured out how to type into ChatGPT.

What am I supposed to say? But it. The sound is real, but the fabric beneath it is hollow or just there's missing little bites, you know? Exactly, exactly.

What we always say is communication is not about what you say. It's about setting the other person up for success. It's about what they are hearing, what they're receiving.

So if we are going to be real about this, most business leaders assume that their team understand everything that they mean.

We find that all the time. But then reality hits. You know, you, you, you tell your team to move quickly. You tell them to do something, you find that they might be paralyzed.

You might, you know, they, maybe they're indecisive. So what are when. When we're looking at leaders communicating to their teams, from your experience:

What's really going on when leaders feel like they're not being heard by their teams? (00:04:01)

You know, it's interesting. I don't think. Actually, I'll tell you this. I would not be able to articulate DISC and communication if I didn't understand the psychologies that support that tip of the iceberg. Right.

Because DISC is just that outward thing. It's the end result of a tremendous amount of stuff that's going on under the surface. And so the old adage, you know, message sent does not equal message received and just understanding those dynamics.

And one of the things that I find so much is that we do a great job of explaining that latter part in clarity. But all of the things that went into getting to that point are a lot of times not understood, misunderstood, taken for granted or whatever.

And that leader has spent so much time preparing for and doing all of that homework, they become intrinsically connected to their message and they know their message so well.

And then because that emotion connects to the delivery, then that, that there's just, there's a gap in there and everybody wants to receive it the way they would have communicated it.

And unfortunately, teams are made up of diverse humans who have a lot of other little things going on, whether it's micro bias or value or life's just bad that day. Yeah, I think we, one of the things we say is don't be emotionally handcuffed to your communication.

Right. If you, if you are so stuck to what you're saying or what you're experiencing, then you're not focused on the other person.

We say, you know, care, be concerned and be curious if you're going to, if you're going to communicate well and you are focused on you and you're focused on, like you said, that the psychology of what you're putting together, everything that's behind it or, you know, the, the fears of how somebody's going to receive something or if they're going to, you know, just trounce you right after you finish saying something, then everything is going to be focused on you, protecting you, whatever it is, on that communication.

And so if you get rid of the hand, the emotional handcuffs and it's not about you, then you can start to focus. And nobody's going to be perfect at this.

You know, I've been doing this for so long and I'm still working on it like crazy. But if you start practicing getting rid of the emotional side, then it changes the logical aspect of what you're communicating. Do you agree with that?

Oh, totally, man. I mean, the moment I get emotional, I'm activating other parts of my brain that are going to just, they're going to shortcut, you know, they're going to completely disconnect all those other pieces.

And I think that's where you talk about, you know, I think the you got to prepare plan and then create such an objective way to deliver such a subjective message. And it starts with me, for sure, and that's self awareness, understanding and, and then disconnecting.

So that it's not about me, it's not about my message, it's about our message, it's about our mission. And how that gets done is so just synergistic with DISC. Yeah.

So what do you see when it comes to like, blind spots?

You know, a lot of leaders out there are thinking I, you know, they might say, I think I do good, but definitely deep inside they're going, I know I'm struggling. I know I have blind spots.

What do you see as far as blind spots for leaders when it comes to personality styles and how it impacts communication? (00:07:42)

That's a great question, man. And define real quick blind spots.

So we all have blind spots. However, if my position requires me to be proficient at that on a consistent basis and I'm unaware of my blind spot, so it's a stretch.

It's a conscious moment. If my position or my role requires me to be proficient in that blind spot, then I manufacture a weakness and ultimately I'm going to fall short.

So the blind spot is so huge and so many people are aware of their blind spot, yet it stops there. Most trainings are like, well, be different, you know, or, you know, get good at your blind spot.

And I think the traditional systems of education and all of the algorithms we've been plugged into, they.

They lie to people and say, you can become amazing at and you know, having two sons that are special operators, you know, being able to encounter individuals that have been through traumatic brain injuries, family members that are stroke victims, go to a stroke victim or go to somebody who's had a traumatic brain injury and say, if you just try hard enough, you will become proficient.

And I know that's an extreme visceral example, but that's what a lot of humans and professionals that are committed to their own success feel like when, when they're told by those that have authority, you can become great at your blind spot.

When in reality, what we found after 25, been 24 years, you know, approaching, you know, that over 20,000 hours belly to belly, clinically applying these concepts.

What I found is it's not about change. It's about figuring how to do what I desire to do in a way that's congruent with me.

And the only way I can be congruent with, with myself is to become so in connected with my blind spot to say, okay, when I'm in this situation, my tendency is to approach it this way.

And if I can learn to do that at the moment of impact, then I've earned the right to figure out multiple options for application of messaging, of communicating.

Oh man, I love it. So basically what you're saying is just do better. Yeah, just try harder to put your belt on the opposite way and tie your shoes and accidentally sign your name to that document with your opposite hand.

God bless you. Pay me more money. I'll see you next week. Oh, no kidding, man, it is so true. It's ridiculous.

You know, whenever we have people go through like our personality styles video or something, one of the things I always say is, you're now dangerous. You've just begun to learn.

Now you know, you've seen this a bajillion times. High Ds will have a little bit of learning and go, aha.

Now I know every personality style. I'm going to tell you all about yourself. And you know, it's very quick to be a.-- I now know this. And really the truth is you're just beginning.

This is a long process and if you will stick with it and continue to learn and master. I tell people all the time, if you will take the profiles of the people you work with consistently and every time you go work with them, come back and read their profile.

Work with them, come back and read their profile.

If you will continue to do that, you will gain a master's in DISC because you're looking at the individual and how they act, how they react, how they give information, how they receive information and able to dig in and go, now again, this is not digging into the psychological effects of what that person's experiencing. Right.

But at least you could start to see the tendencies.

Yes. And that, that is huge because most business owners, I'm gonna say most business owners really should not be diving into the psychological aspects of their team. Right.

We have to be very careful. It's all this, it's, it's great. If you don't have training on it, if you haven't been taught on it, then, you know, just be cautious. Right. Instead what we say is lean in their direction.

Lean in the direction of the other person. When you look at, you know, a lot of, a lot of people, whether it's business owners or not, will just say, well, this is just who I am, this is how I am.

This is, this is my personality, this is how I communicate. You just need to get used to how I communicate. And we think that is beyond ridiculous. Right, well, good luck staying married.

Right? I mean, come on. That is perfect. Yeah, how's that been working in your marriage? Yeah, number six is doing just fine. Figured out this time divide my half of stuff in half six times.

Yeah, whatever. Yeah, I got you. It's been three weeks. I think things are going well.

So how do you get them from that concept or that mindset and shift it from this is just who I am and teach them how to lean in somebody's direction or how to lead people through personality styles.

The first thing is getting into self awareness in a much more micro granular level. And what I found is it's important to compare other areas of their lives because I love the word you used.

DISC only measures tendencies and preferences. And so a phrase I've used is DISC isn't who you are, it's who you how. And it sounds weird, right?

Yeah, it's just a tendency and an application for how I might interact with people or how cautious I might be with procedures and how I prefer, which doesn't mean I always.

And so I get them to connect with something in their lives and say, well, are you the same psychotic, tenacious Tyrannosaurus rex at home with your 5 month old or with your 12 year old or with your daughter at the age of 16 when there's those interesting conse-- Well, no.

Well, what's the why behind that? How they go, I care about her or I genuinely desire, which. This doesn't measure any of those things.

And so when they kind of go, oh well, that's why I am this way in this. So there are the linear psychologists which say as you are, it's how you always are.

Well, I'm sorry, behavioral analyst, psychologist. DISC doesn't measure "are", it measures how, tend, prefer.

And so once we get that defined and we, we, we as a articulator of these instruments and this theory and psychology of behaviors, we can start to separate that.

And so we got to get into and understand all of the things DISC doesn't do before we drink the Kool aid and wait for the spaceship on the how.

And once we create that awareness, bigger awareness than just self, but awareness that, you know, I am a multifaceted, complex, you know, infinitely capable human who can literally develop new synaptic patterns, even up and including the day I die.

Right. The brain can continue to stay neurally plastic. Okay, so let's figure out what it is. Okay, so I'm going to communicate more effectively.

What's my tendency, preference, blind spot for it and how do my people desire, wish and need to receive it? So once we define that, then we go to your point of interact, come back, read, Interact, come back, read.

Then we start to create a top of mind awareness that in every setting contextually, not linearly contextually.

In this context, with my operations team, who most often are more stabilizing and accurate individuals. So they don't appreciate the abrupt nature of my persona as I arrive and go, do you got a minute? Right.

Well, no High C or High S is going to say, well, I was waiting for a disruption. Right? Yes, exactly. Bring me conflict. Yeah. So they just, they, they accommodate, which then creates micro biases of resentment.

But yeah, so that I, I love what you. It's, it's tendencies, preferences. Let's define what DISC is and bigger than that, what it isn't.

And then let's find the areas where we can find complement. Because the first area of amygdala triggering is the how I'm approaching you. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I think that that is so vitally important to always start with you. Right. It. If you think that the way that you're going to win at communication is figuring out other people, you've already lost.

Right. Because if you can dig in and understand how you operate and when you do things differently and when you're operating in your Natural. And when you're operating in your adaptive and.

And the, the. The version of you that you're trying to portray to people and the version you believe people are seeing. And if you can see all of these aspects and focus on you first, instead of this concept of I need to learn others.

Right. If I can get me. If I can know my tendencies, if I can know how I give and receive information, then I can start to at least quasi empathize with what somebody else is experiencing.

I had a great event recently and had this two executive leaders where one's a High S, one's a High D. And they both were so confused. They both had these, these emotional triggers from the other person, which is not uncommon with a D & S.

But the issue digging when I got underneath everything was what they were projecting from their own insecurities on the other person because of their style. Yep.

And the moment we broke that down, we focused on one person. And once that person broke it down, the other person broke and was like, oh, my gosh, well, I've been thinking this about you. It was this incredible visual of I've not been focused on me.

I've not been focused on what I'm experiencing. I'm taking what I'm projecting on you and making that my reality. And because I'm seeing a harsh D response, I'm assuming this about you, and I'm assuming this.

And because the D is seeing this s kind of shut down and not communicate. Instead of it thinking, you know, this person is experiencing struggle and conflict. They're thinking, well, this person just thinks I'm a total jerk.

And once you get in there and they could see themselves and they can see their own projections, crazy. In a heartbeat, communication happened.

And it began, and it has been going for a while now really well, really decent because again, they're caring more about the other person than themselves.

So here's the phrase I use, Chris, is that what the DISC allows you to do is create objectivity around the most subjective area of your business.

And it gives us a common language to. To talk about us. And when we deal with us, that's emotional. We are. We, you know, release oxytocin that creates a biological connection that we don't even understand, but we feel.

Well, feelings don't have language. And the beautiful thing about the DISC is you created sounds like in that situation, a way for them to talk about something that they were feeling but couldn't put into words.

And those are two different areas of the brain. And then when we get to those higher level functions we start to create. I always say, you know, awareness precedes acceptance.

And many teams aren't able to accept their counterparts because they do not understand them. In most CEOs and presidents don't understand themselves.

So in reality, they don't even know how to accept themselves. Oh, totally, totally outward. Yeah. So I know that's complex and philosophical, but dude, it's real, it's legit.

It's totally legit. Yeah. And again, I think it's because of self protection, self preservation, seeking approval, seeking validation.

When you look at all of those aspects again, I always say, you know, DISC is that tool like you, like you pointed out, this is not a spiritual aspect, but oh my gosh, the spiritual aspect shows why the DISC is happening.

You know, why these responses are happening the way that they are.

So let's do this. We haven't, we haven't broken it down. Break that. If you walk us through DISC, give us a quick overview of that. So people under, most people should understand this. But for those that have been under a rock.

No, bro, I love it. Because here's what, here's all. So here's the thing. I get asked this all the time.

Well, who owns DISC? (00:21:02)

Right? Nobody owns it.

It's, it's a theory that's out there, that's proven. William Marston did his practices on it and released it to the world. The beautiful thing is it's the most prolifically used instrument on the planet that measures four dimensions of humans.

However, because it's the most prolific, it's the most misunderstood, misused and misguided. That's why there's, well, how many, like thousands of different, or maybe hundreds of different religions out there?

Well, there's hundreds of different ways to apply it, but at the end of the day, I'm a simple just farm kid that breaks it down. And there's really only 12 words that we need to really understand.

And they formulate in these four categories. The D represents how decisive or deliberate we tend to prefer to be with problems.

The I is how interactive or introspective we tend and prefer to be with people and share opinions.

And the S measures a stabilizing area. And so what S measures is how stabilizing or spontaneous we tend and prefer to be with the pace of things in our life.

And the C is measuring a tendency or preference for how cautious or challenging I tend and prefer to be with established protocols and procedures. And the word I love is precedent. Yep. And, and so in. The DISC operates in a pretty simplistic way.

And, and it's, it's really like a radial volume at 50 rather than being loud or soft. It's almost like very neutral, situational, non demonstrative.

The farther I go in one direction or the other in the case of the eye, the more introspective on the low scale or interactive I am or on the high scale and the farther I go away, the more you see it. So DISC is a great instrument.

That's why I love the tip of the iceberg. Because it's just what we see and, and tendency, preference for how not, not who, not why not what. It's just the thing that we see, but because it's what I see.

Humans judge others by impact and they place intention behind it.

So if your approach to it appears or looks like you don't care or looks like you are mad, well, I'm going to say to myself, well, for me to be that way, I'd have to be in the phrase I use and then I'll shut up here for a second.

Is just the lie I tell myself about you when I'm in this situation with problems, people, pace or procedure is well, the power of just me looking at you, Chris, and saying, well, the lie I tell myself about you when I see this is this.

And the reason I love the word lies because it's so visceral and it's really a reality. Right. I've made it up. Yeah, it's like I was saying the, the those two leaders looking at the other person and seeing how they responded and then applying the lie from their insecurity.

That negative self talk of going this is my assumption of you and just shutting them down or causing them to explode or you know, whatever that is, is that that's so I'm right there with you.

There is lies that we continue to tell ourselves. We just don't realize that they're lies. We think that they're truths and it's, it just destroys us. I love. I've used DISC literally since 1996 and started teaching it not terribly long after that.

And there's a lot of great personality profiles out there. There's a lot of great stuff. One of the things I tell people all the time is the reason why.

And I've had many of them come to me, we want you to switch to using our product. And I'm like, I appreciate your product, I think it's great.

However, one of the things why I've stuck 29 freaking years with DISC is because it is a common language that can be discussed inside of a business.

It is something like, I am not going to try and teach somebody 16 different versions of a personality style and then say, hey, go have a conversation with everybody inside of this business. Right.

And try and understand every aspect that you possibly can on all these different levels. Right. And they're still coming back with the same information. But I've always found that DISC is if you want to do that solo, if you want to do that inside of a family, that's great.

But when you're looking at leading 10, 20, 100, hundreds of people, DISC has that common vocabulary, that common DNA, where it's. It's an easier discussion.

We don't define everybody by just a D or just an I or just an S or just a C. You have percentages of these. But I think it makes a considerably easier conversation because we're breaking it down essentially into four categories. Do you agree with that?

I do, 100%. And the role I play within Innermetrix, which is the other role I play. I started battling with our psychologists that help to authenticate our instrumentation through the American Psychological Association.

And what I learned very quickly after I started to get involved is I spent my 90s at GE Capital, where I was forced to go to training sessions where they would tell me what I was and wasn't and good and not good at, and I was the guy in the room that messed with them.

But what I started to learn as I got behind the psychology and learned other psychologies, what I found was everybody in DISC always resonates with what are they high in?

And the vocabulary tends to be more negative the lower we go. And what I found was high is just as valuable and powerful as low. And so I tasked our behavioral scientists for years to say, I want positive low DISC words.

So the beautiful thing is you and I are partnered with an instrumentation organization, Innermetrix, that is the only one on the planet that actually uses positive vocab words to create objectivity about the low scores and behavior.

So rather than saying, I'm decisive, I'm interactive, I'm, I'm. I'm stable and cautious. You know what? A low D still can be very aggressive, but it's contextual. But their tendency is to be deliberate.

The low I introspective, the low S spontaneous, and the low C challenging. So we've, we've removed part of the amygdala from the discussion around behavior, which allows more people to accept because I'm not a high D, okay.

People think I'm a high D. Well, contextually applied, I am very aggressive when I'm attached to my values. So for me to teach DISC, I must accept and acknowledge that what is context.

Context is what I care about. So when we care, we see those adapted styles. Right? Because I'm moving for a reason.

Either I'm being forced to adjust how I approach problems, people, process, or procedures, or I'm choosing to. Right?

So if I'm choosing to, I may do it more often. And so that's why people don't always connect with their DISC, because they're like, well, and sometimes I do.

Right. Well, now as a facilitator, I'm going to try to shoehorn them and they're going to feel guilty and agree. Okay, fine. Right. Versus giving them the grace and the humanity of saying, look, bro, you.

You may be psychotically passionate about this one aspect of your role as a leader, as a CEO, but you score like this, the worst thing that we can have happen is somebody gets done with a.

With a training session and goes, oh, man, I got to go back and retake it because I look weak, right? And there's no weak, no strong. There just is. Yep. Yep. It's so funny.

Over the years, the common things I've always experienced is High Is. If you're. If you're a 99 I, you're going to take this profile and you're going to go, I don't agree with this. And it's like, well, how many things don't you.

Like, three or four? And I always ask the same question. Do you show it to your spouse? And like. Yeah. What'd your spouse say? Well, well, my spouse said, those are me too.

And I'm like, there you go. The high seas, it's like if they see a variance between the natural and the adapted, they're like, I've had literally the same words asked of me. What's wrong with me?

There's. There's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. You know, But I love how you just explained all that out in the decisiveness of where you are at the time. Right.

If we are in a normal state of mind, we're choosing probably those areas that we're most comfortable with. But...

What happens when we get under pressure? Yeah, right. Where. Where do we go when we get under pressure?

So there's a question that I'd love for you to explain. You know, when you're looking at certain personality styles, have you noticed that. That some really clash under pressure? Or what.

What combinations do you see on. And this is really tough when I know it's, it's so situational. But...

Do you tend to see certain clashes under pressure with, with personality styles? (00:30:46)

Well, there are statistical correlations that say these areas will clash.

If, if I wasn't such a geek, on the deeper level psychologies, my answer would be very different right now. But because I understand we're, we're bound by paradigm, right?

Our map and frame sets, our natural abilities and our motivations. So when do we see different ones crumble and crush? There's a lot of research into grit and resilience, and I'm going to leave those, those categories out for a second.

However, when I force you or you feel forced or compelled to move away from what your normal tendency is, well, then there is a stressor that occurs.

And the question is, is it distress or is it youstress? And we don't have enough time to go into that.

But this is where me and the behavioral psychologist have lots of fights because we know that eustress is a reality and we know that distress is also a reality.

The problem is the therapy world moved completely into trauma and, and distress. So everybody assumes that if I'm not in my natural state all the time, I'm distressed, when in reality humans are like, dude, you know what?

I love my kids. Yeah, they stress the heck out of me. But I look to the outcome of a contributing citizen to society that provides for me grandkids or whatever that sounds like, right?

Or that's why people get a fur baby. You know, they're now blowing 900 a month at a doggy daycare. And before they could barely think about going out to eat once a month, you know, whatever.

So. But what are they? Well, you know, if I'm natural, if my tendency is naturally to lean into solving problems, well, what if I'm managing a group of individuals that really are cautious, stabilizing humans?

And so now I feel this stress of being less aggressive because I know the fallout that I'm going to have. And so they can.

And so anytime I'm vibrating away from my, my natural tendency whether to be cautious or challenging, if I'm challenging to status quo, and now I'm being forced to follow rules without deep understanding of the why behind it, then I'm going to feel distress.

And so many times as leaders, they come in and they share the mission and the communication the way they tend and prefer to do, well, there's a recipient.

And so that why behind it is so powerful. But you know, for example, Is, right? I mean, if I'm a high I, I'm highly interactive, I'm outgoing, I tend to interact with people in a positive way.

Well, if you put me in a room with a bunch of analysts that prefer to deal with things, not people, or maybe they all have low Is, well, I'm going to attempt to interact with them the way I prefer to be interacted and their micro biases.

Dude, watch out for sketchy dude. He talks too much, right? Yeah. Now we start placing intent behind it because the low I says you're trying to lie to me or sell me a car or whatever, and the high Is like you don't like.

So I'm going to talk and even act more. So is there a tendency that anyone's style will crumble? Well, all can crumble if there isn't payoff or if their adjustment is the new normal.

So we can all adjust temporarily. It's when it becomes the new reality that I see myself forever being forced to expend energy versus invest energy.

So purely in that DISC area, I'd love to give. And if you asked me this 15 years ago, I would have said, oh, absolutely, you can totally tell when someone's going to break away and fall off.

And now I'm much more hesitant after another 10,000 hours of working with humans and looking at the whole human versus just the, the tip human.

But there are some best practices, Chris. And you know them, right? I mean, we do them. And, and, and so it's just a matter of saying when. I'm going to pull you away from your tendency without payoff.

Now we're going to feel distress when I pull you or you feel, you know, motivated or committed, not compelled, committed to move away from your strongest tendency as long as you can identify with the payoff or you see the end of the road in that regard.

Now I have the ability to activate more of myself presently. So I know you're probably looking for a textbook answer, but because I know the other pieces, I resist saying some of those things because that's in the vacuum of just behaviors.

But I think if the leaders and the people listening can say, okay, I get it, I'm a low D and I'm involved in a sprint or an agile project right now that has a very tight time frame and I am running this project for these 11 people.

And so every day I gotta charge my energy. Well, first thing is at least they know they gotta charge it. And then the second thing is they have awareness that says my tendency is to be deliberate and react or respond.

But now I'm in a role that I've gotta be more aggressive. As long as they can at least have that conversation in their head. What a cool, objective way to talk about themselves with themselves.

And then they can say, so, well, now that I have awareness, what options do I have? How do I get a little bit more present? And again, how do I get right? I've defined the why.

I love working in this project. I love this task. I love this objective. Well, just talking about that puts fuel in my tank to allow me to be you stressed for two hours a day, you know, eight hours a month, you know, for the next six months.

Okay, so that's, that's eight times, you know, six. Okay. I can do that for, you know, 96 hours. Yeah, that's not, that's two work weeks. But not all at once. Yeah.

So I think so many, so many leaders make the mistakes, even knowing or learning, I should say DISC questions I get all the time. Like, you'll, you know, you.

When you look at a lot of folks that are doing, you know, maybe they're out working with clients on, like, maybe they're sprint bug spraying around a house or they're, they're, you know, they're, they're, they're doing lawn mowing or, you know, whatever, you'll find a lot of the folks that work in certain, you know, if you're in a hospital, you're going to find a lot of the nurses are going to be high S as high C.

You know, you can see these personality styles that are going to flock to comfort, you know, least, you know, or care and concern for other people.

You know, there's these certain types of things, and I'll ---

For years now, I don't get it much anymore because I think people have heard me say this so many times, but for the longest time, I would get like a high D that would say, Chris, tell me how to get my guy to sell while he's out there working on somebody's house.

And I'm like, yeah, you're not going to do that. And like, no, I know what you say. I hear your stuff. What I'm saying is, how do I get them to sell?

They're already out there. And I'm like, you're a high D. Yeah. All right. Could you be an accountant in a flannel cubicle eight hours a day for the next five years? Oh, heck no. There's no way I could do that.

Okay, so same thing. And I think there's certain Pieces that at least. And you're so right. It's so well beyond just that as an obvious. Right. But I think there's some critical pieces that if we can start to look at the.

Why is that? Yeah, what. What is causing. Why is a high S not going to become a salesperson, you know, upsell, you know, a client while they're out there spraying their house for pass?

Why are they not just going to turn into the automatic salesperson? And I think that's. That's a mistake that a lot of leaders think that. Yeah, I now understand this.

I understand personality styles. I've spent 37 minutes on it, and now I can turn people into whatever I want them to turn into. You can't do that.

And I want you to push back on any of this. But when you're talking about the amygdala, which in the limbic system, you've got this system where you set response.

It's also fight or flight or freeze mode and all that. And you set response. And this is my personal take. I believe you set how much response, you know, are you going to respond with frustration? Are you going to go postal?

Right. I believe you go, this is the level of my response. If we don't understand that everybody has. Like you said, like you just did the calculation of the high D.

Could I do this for two hours now? I think I could make that happen. How long am I going to have to do this for? This long? Okay, well, I can make anything. I can do anything as long as they've got this other aspect of their life, right? Yeah.

What if they go home every night and go, oh, my life sucks and I gotta be so aggressive and drive all of these things.

Here's the question. How long? Every week. I've never thought of that because again, I'm so wrapped up in my reality that now I think of my 40 hours. If they work 40. Right. Is consume.

No, it's actually two hours a week. And then. And then they can release that amygdala. Right. From the drama or the. Because I can create in my own mind a reality that my brain believes is real.

And it's going to neutralize every aspect of my execution. So, yeah, dude. Yeah, it's so. And here's the cool thing. So many times when we're doing development and training in the.

And that's. I mean, I've certified hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trainers who facilitate. And the biggest thing I tell them is you got to be careful because when you go in and you assess an existing team.

And you go, oh, this guy's gonna suck at this. And then the owner goes, oh, they don't suck at that at all. Yeah, you, you articulated it wrong. Right. The question is, is how do they do it? As a high S & C or. Well, they've learned.

So when you start to teach those training trainers, those managers that are living coach manager developers, with that little bit of psychology, we can say, let's figure out how to maybe break it down, quantify it, or have they learned to do it in a way that is congruent with themselves, but to still get the outcome.

Now when we're on the recruitment and we're, we're bringing people in, we can say, hey, moving forward, we know that this behavioral style is going to spend a lot less energy behaving the way the position rewards.

So that's. So then it gets easier. But if we just can't throw the baby out with the bath water and say, well, get rid of them all. Start over, you know, and that's where we drink.

Like you said, you know, we can't give them a little drink and say, you're now a, you know, PhD. You're dangerous, but you could also be dangerous for bad. Let's be. Let's make you dangerous for good. Exactly.

I'm sure you've had this a billion times where somebody will send over a profile and go, hey, this is somebody for sales. What do you think it is? Like, okay, all I can tell you, since I've not been in three interviews with this person, is what a tendency might be.

Yes. I don't know their maturity. You know, we always say maturity when it comes to DISC. Maturity has nothing to do with age. It's how well you know yourself or how well you don't know yourself. Right.

So you're immature. If you don't know you. If you really know you, you could be very mature. And again, back to your. Your comment about the high D and the number of hours.

And so if you're showing me a report that I would go on paper, I would say no. But here's what I don't know. I don't know what this person's been through.

I don't know how many years have they done this. I don't know if they're very mature and they've got a. They do a great job handling this situation in this way. So I find that that is something that I.

We're always warning leaders on is to say, don't. Do not use DISC to define a person. Use DISC as a tool for tendencies. So....

What are some of the biggest mistakes you see leaders make when it comes to implementing DISC? (00:43:23)

Well, the first thing is, I'll just say this for the record. If somebody's only using only a single dimension of a human in terms of performance, you're in trouble.

Yeah, If. If you just pull me behind closed doors, I pull the curtain back and go. I think paradigm life experience, frame sets of how they, what they've experienced.

Like you said, maturity and also just. That's huge. Natural gifts and talents are axiological. And then big is values. Why are they going to be connected if we're not using. If, if people are just using DISC as a selection tool?

I'm, I'm struggling with them. However, when you layer values in terms of. And that's the magic word in HR today is what's the engagement of our workforce? Right. Are they engaged?

Well, they do macro assessments on engagement and, and that's cool, but dude, it's still vanilla. And then you get division managers walking around, go, you guys rated us crappy. So if you do it again. And now I think engagement surveys today are crap.

I really do. Because so many managers have said, I scored the lowest because you are the most honest, I want you to lie next year. But they say it a lot nicer than that.

So I ask people, would you like to know the personal engagement map of each human on your team? Because how they go about doing it is key.

But we're only talking about DISC right now, so I think when it comes to behavior, I'm looking at it from the standpoint of how much are they going to be stretching in order to do it?

Because we all stretch. And I work out a lot. I'm a very healthy mid-50s guy. And what I've learned is I love to lean into struggle.

So what I don't do is I don't do the same exercise two weeks in a row because I always want my muscles to be stressed and confused because that means growth. Now I know the payoff if I'm putting people into roles where they're going to be stretching.

It's not just muscle. Now we got a brain that's confused and it's, it's going to stop, start, stop starts. We have those peaks and those valleys and those peaks in those valleys.

So the reality is this is the objective way to look at that very subjective thing. And I can. I love when I get to work with a new organization that I know that they've used some form of an instrumentation because they'll have a lot of people that look the same way.

Yep. And that just shows that they genuinely value their humans. Then we get to articulate and say, now we can teach you the application of the human versus just the interrogation. Yeah.

So I. I don't know if I answered your question, brother. I apologize. I. It's so. It's so difficult to nail down. You know, again, I. I love this conversation because it's on such a higher level. Right.

I think a lot of folks listening to this are going to be like, man, this is such good information for me to hear. And yet we also have folks that are going, I don't know what the crap they're talking about.

What is this DISC thing? I mean, I get personality styles. I think. I think I understand them. I. I hear what you're saying. And so there's the. This.

Is that. That flux that we deal with is that we have some folks that are coming to us. They've never done anything. And it's like, okay, we're going to the most basic.

Let's start here. Let's understand the tool. Let's understand, you know, begin to start. Understand people. And then it's phenomenal when we can continue to walk with them through the process, which does not take a short period of time.

I mean, it's a lot of utilization and over and over and over.

And some of our best clients have been with us for so many years, and their communication styles and their understandings and their, you know, their empathy, and there's so much great understanding.

And praise God, you know, we're talking about discovery, but if you're one of our clients, you don't walk through your hiring process without Values.

It's just. It's ridiculous. It would be stupid. But it's also difficult to say that to the person who goes, well, I'm just hearing this for the first time. Yeah. How do you walk me through both DISC and Values?

Well, we're going to temper this. Yeah. Thank you. Bring me back, brother. I need that. I love. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. No, the good thing is that we have so many clients that are.

So many folks that have been with us for so many years that they are on this higher end. This is so valuable and so, you know, perfect for their current situations.

And then we have folks that are listening to this that I'm hoping are going, I want to get to where these guys are talking about. I want to. I want my team to be there. We in. I've said this over and over again.

When we started implementing our, our video, our trainings and everything inside of businesses, people would come back and use the same word over and over again.

They would say we thought we had great communication. We discovered after doing the video, doing the DISCs, putting people through, we do the DISC plus which has the Values as well.

And every single time they would come back with the word we discovered it was chaos.

So to go from we thought we had good communication to realizing that they had chaos. To me that is so powerful that somebody is going holy crap, we are so far off on what quality.

You know, we would call it high levels of quality communication. We are so far off on that. We are so far off of on understanding. We have people that are communicating in ways that are just not effective.

You know, they're talking but we're not getting anywhere. So I think my hope is that for all of you who are listening that are on the front side of this and you're like well I've never done any of this stuff.

You are getting such a depth today of I want to get there. And it's a fantastic process to do. It just doesn't happen overnight. You get. It goes in waves.

I feel like it's like you're climbing the mountain. You get to a plateau for a while then you climb the mountains, you get some more information and you get up a little bit higher and you plateau and then you get some more information.

And it kind of works in this, this stair step process. At least that's the way that I experience it is that you get space repetition, baby.

Absolutely. Exactly. We're ready for more. What do we do now? So with and dude, you and I could do this for freaking hours. I'm loving this. But I think we gotta. It's.

We've been going 50 minutes. We got to land the plane. Otherwise we are going to be here for a couple hours. Let me just, let me just throw this out there for just pure DISC. Yeah.

The most valuable thing that I have seen come from it is people stop taking offense or offense wasn't intended.

Oh gosh, that's so, that's so true. Yeah, I just. And it's not that I, that I let you be, you know, the jerk or the worry wart or the non emotional or the overly optimistic or whatever.

It's. It's that I go yeah, that's my Chris man. And you know what? Yeah. I may not have done it that way and because I, I give that and I choose because taking offense is a choice.

But it's later, because I've seen, I've filtered it through my tendency. I've assigned a meaning, and then I choose an emotion. So now I, I. We teams perform faster when they stop taking offense.

We have less interpersonal issues because we now understand each other's communication styles. We let the right handers be right handers, the left handers be left handers.

And then when new people come in, because like you said, we've created a common vocabulary that creates objectivity around this subjective thing called talent.

Now our people are instructors, not in word, but in detail. And we get done with the meeting and the new person goes, wow, I was, she was really intense.

And they go, actually, Janelle is a crazy, passionate individual. She delivers it directly. But you know what? It's never personal, even though it might sound that way.

And then those, those cubicle conversations occur and they go, oh. So when Janelle comes to my desk and she goes, what are you doing?

She's not mad at me. She's angry at the situation and she wants to know how the process is going to. And it's never about the people. And, and then the new person goes, oh.

And then they create a frame because they're, you know, all that stuff. So it creates this, this thing that isn't tangible. And, and I learned this from a great leader.

My first project, and the only reason I got good at this was I was forced to help 1100 professionals career path within the organization of John Deere from 2002 to 2005.

Wow. And 1100 using four different psychologies. And so I would interview these individuals and say, this is what the data says. Put it in your words.

And so when I was done, as I was talking to the heads of the organization, my intent in the end was to sell them some cool curriculum, right?

To sell them some cool stuff. And this is what changed my career, Chris, is they said, you know, Bryan, we might agree that this thing is better, but we know that we could get better results with a different type of curriculum or approach.

However, we know at the end of the day, we didn't buy a curriculum. We bought vocabulary that creates culture. And I just went kaboom.

And Jim Hessman echoes in my head and heart every day, as organizations go, would this be better? And people like, oh, we've used this for 20 years.

And I go, you know what? I know you want the flavor, right? And we can argue about accuracy ratings that are hundreds of a thousandth a point better, or boy, this sure feels.

Shut up, owners, quit it. Because you are an Owner or you're a president, you're an executive because you, like Vern Hardish said in that book, written in the 90s, chasing the horizon.

You have an unquenchable thirst for new, exciting, and constant challenge. However, you disconnect with your humans when you change to the new and better because you've changed vocabulary.

That is the foundation for culture, which allows my people at the grassroots level to have objectivity and learn not to take offense.

That's why we use DISC. That's why. So good. So good. That's so powerful. I love that. And it's so true, especially on that piece of change. I think, you know, we.

We've both worked with entrepreneurs for incredibly long time, and so many get bored and. Or they pick up the. The newest, latest book. I'm always telling folks, stop putting in more information if it's not going to help what you're currently doing.

Right. Because nobody's as committed as they are. Right. I mean, if they were, they wouldn't work for you. Exactly.

You got all these folks moving in this one direction, and then it's like, hey, guys, this new direction is going to be so much better for us. And then you just toss the apple cart. I mean, it's just everything.

How am I supposed to do this? And I love the way that you said that you're trying to change their vocabulary and what a huge mistake that is.

And so if you get bored, I always say, if you get bored, let's put a fantastic energy over what you have, your money maker right now, and you could go and do little things over here.

But let's not keep upsetting and changing direction. Changing direction. We need to get, you know, we call that the shotgun approach. We need to be laser focused, allow people to operate on their gifts and talents.

Quit changing things up on the folks that hate change. I mean, it should. That's you. Everything you just said there was so fantastic.

So, last question I got for you, which I've got about 47 more, but I'm going to go with this.

How can new leaders apply DISC to improve their team's performance? (00:55:43)

If somebody's looking at this and going, okay, I hear what you're saying. I hear what you guys are saying about communication.

I hear what you're saying about understanding each other, leaning in people's direction, everything. But can I use this for performance? How can people use DISC for, like, a team's performance?

One of the things that this new generation of humans is coming out of the algorithm called education. They want to know a specificity, how do I win? Right. And they want to know the details, the granular details.

And the people managing them want to give broad strokes and they want to communicate that way.

One of the biggest things is first of all, quit worrying about generational gaps and start to become curious about how they became who they are.

And then when you're talking performance, really get in touch with do they clearly understand the objective and do they understand. And I just say this, okay, so this is the task. Yep. How are you going to approach this task and let that person talk?

And when you see incongruence between DISC and what they're saying, come back on them. Right. And then after they tell you the how, then ask them what obstacles and frustrations are you going to experience along this path?

It should echo the DISC. You know, I know I don't have a tendency to be overly worried about all the details and input all this stuff. So that's going to.

Okay, let's identify it and then let them articulate how they're going to deal with it and then why, what's the outcome they're looking for?

So as a leader takes those areas for improvement in the profile and those, those, those ideal work environments. Nobody has the ideal work environment.

But if we can talk about. Right. This is the deal. And, and then also within teams and performance. I love it when you've put those wheels together that show you know where people are leaning towards and then they can identify. So we have individual blind spots.

Teams have blind spots. And then those become. Those blind spots aren't this. I'm just going to make sure we don't. I'm going to work hard. Shut up. Right. Give yourself the grace of being right handed.

And so I have a lot of teams that maybe they have a blind spot in compliance and cautiousness and clear next steps and accountability. Got it. So you know what that becomes?

That becomes a process to use the what's your genius Model from Jay Neblick.

Right. We make that an agenda item at the end of our team meeting. And the, the agenda item says clear next steps, who's accountable and consequences.

Because maybe they won't do that. And then that gets defined as a process.

So the process complements the blind spot because we stay focused on their performance and so people start feeling more comfortable owning their blind spot. That's why I like the word blind spot versus weakness.

So the performance piece is easy. Once we get past the first piece, which is my tendency, my preference, I'm going to be outside my tendency and preference I feel the reward.

So I'm going to do it for a short period of time. That's why gyms all have 90 day get fit challenges, because the brain can adjust and we can adjust for 90 days and then we're going to slingshot back to our natural gifts.

So let's make it a system. Let's openly talk about it and say, I'm not adjusting for 90 days. I might be choosing, committed to adapting for an hour and a half every day.

And that's okay because then I get to go back and flex back into my high s and I'm going to make sure that my accountability one on one with Chris this week says, well, you know what I'm going to do to decompress on Saturday is I've carved out an hour where I'm going to read, right?

I'm going to do the thing that lets me do my natural gift. Or you know what, I'm going to get in and you know what, I'm going to balance the checkbook because not knowing to the penny where that's at really drives my high C crazy.

And you're asking me to write a new process for project management. So yeah, and these are the obstacles I face. This is how I'm going to feel.

And then one of the things the leader can say is, how do I support you? And many times the support sounds like accountability of be different, be different, be different versus saying, Chris, would you be my echo?

Would you just remind me of my blind spot and give me permission that it's okay to talk about it? Because what if I'm carrying 50% of the anxiety of knowing you're going to tell me I suck at being probably proactive today and I get rid of that anxiety to go, you know what?

My leader knows I'm not proactive. And so when they come by my desk and they see me engaged, they go, hey, bro, way to use your superpower right now.

Or they come by and they see me, you know, in the bathroom on my phone playing games because I need to decompress in a safe place. Maybe they see me and go, hey, bro, you burning it today? Or you invest in it and I can look at you and go, I'm burning it.

It's so wild what happens in the performance mind because they know they should and need and should and need are victim words I want, right?

And I feel safe because I can talk safely to my leader. So I know that's probably a little more organic, but that's, that's what I'VE seen and observed in practice. Yeah, it's. It. There's so many freaking much, dude. There's so much like, as you're sitting here, I'm like, okay.

And as we're talking performance, we really should understand Values and understand, you know, what people value in those processes and how they're going to perform.

And it's just a lot, which is great. Which is why it's not, you know, I have to just keep reminding people this isn't an overnight process. This isn't a one and done.

This is, you know, this is you building culture through common vocabulary, through understanding, through, you know, maturity, through growth, through leaning in other people's direction.

And the more you do this, so everybody listening, no matter what level you are on right now, wherever you are, there's something for you in this process. It just doesn't matter where you are.

You're, you know, from this level of discussion today, our folks that have been doing this a long time, there's so much growth to be had and folks that are on the, on the beginning, this is where you can get to, you know, if you, if you choose, if you choose to make this important in the growth of your team and the growth of your business, not only you're going to see phenomenal results in, you know, the way that your people communicate, the way that your bottom line exists, the way that your salespeople are understanding the person.

Instead of trying to sell a product, they understand a need. And you're going to see so many different things through this process. But what you're also going to see is you're going to enjoy coming to work every day a heck of a lot more.

Yeah, you're going to enjoy coming to work when people can communicate together, when you don't have people clashing, you know, when you don't have victim mentality running amok, when you don't have just, you know, champions thinking that other champions think that, you know, thinking that they're crap.

And yet they are champions in their field. You know, in the personality style video we do, I talk about a DNC who just clashed so hard, and they were both champions in their areas.

And as I worked and worked and worked to get them to understand each other, they actually became friends afterwards. And it was just not understanding. It was having to get them to a place of, you don't have to get the other person.

You just got to get the other person. And if you can get there, then we can make any change. So, Bryan, this has been fantastic. We probably need to do more of this in the future.

We'll figure something out. But just thanks for joining me today. It was such a powerful, powerful conversation, man. I really appreciate this. I appreciate you, man.

It's been fun to, you know, be, be able to watch and observe how much good you're doing in so many different places.

So it's an honor. I learned from you. I appreciate it and thank you so much, man. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, folks, leaders, if today's episode resonated with you, share this.

Help other business owners. Help other team leaders who you know, need better communication in their business. Right? And if you're ready to unlock better leadership, stronger teams, more productive communication, do not wait.

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Well, folks, that's all we have for today. That was quite a bit. That's a fire hose there. So, so glad you joined us. As always, take this information. Change your leadership, change your business, change your life.

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