The Everything DiSC Work of Leaders uses a three step approach to explain the leadership process – crafting a vision, aligning people towards the vision and championing execution for making the vision a reality. Though the onus may be different for each leader, depending on their functional area or level in the organisation, the model believes that these three steps can broadly define what most leaders do to get to their objectives.
Each of the steps is then associated with a set of three drivers which are the factors that act towards helping the leader successfully complete each step. For Eg: the model identifies three drivers – exploration, boldness and testing assumptions for building a vision. This indicates that a true leader would want to explore into every possibility, be bold in travelling through never explored avenues but would never shy away from validating their assumptions.
With every driver, there is a combination of two behavioural continua. The behavioural continua are basically two diametrically opposite behaviours placed at either ends of a scaled continuum. The one at the right hand side of the continuum is the preferred leadership best practice. For Eg: Under the driver for vision – exploration, the behavioural combination is “remains open” and “seeks closure”. The former is to the left hand side and the latter to the right hand side of the continuum. Since for exploration it is ideal that the leader remains open, that is seen as the ideal leadership practice in this case.
The Everything DiSC Work of Leader,provides a basis for understanding the leader’s behaviour. The leader’s behavioural choices are predicted using the DiSC model, and like in every other tool in the Everything DiSC suite the circumplex model is used here. The location of the dot indicates the strongest behavioural priority while the shading indicates the extent of flexibility into other DiSC Styles.
The behavioural priorities that shape the individual’s leadership priorities are explained in terms of the eight dimensions of leadership. This assessment works as the foundation for the Work of Leaders Report.
Using the leader’s preferred DiSC styles as a reference; the leader is positioned on the behavioural continuum. A dot is used to indicate the position of the leader in the continuum, based on his most repeated behaviour . For Eg: if a leader prefers to be open as against seeking closure then the dot will be closer to the right extreme of the continuum and vice versa. Similar continua are built on 18 such behaviours which are diametrically opposite.
This is then used to identify leadership strengths which can help the leader successfully complete each of the three steps in the leadership process. Conversely strategies are also recommended for improvement in specific areas which are again derived from the same continua.
The Everything DiSC Work of Leaders Report can be used to build strong leadership cultures in organisations that rest on the firm foundation of open dialogues, trust and accountability. The cues that leaders receive from the report are highly practical and can be immensely helpful in increasing their effectiveness. As businesses struggle to find the right leaders using Everything Work of Leaders for assessing aspirants or future leaders may help them uncover the pearls inside the mollusc.
