5 Step Personality Assessment Team Building Plan Free

As companies continue to work remotely many of us are faced with the question of how do we work with our teams remotely better? 

• How can we still do team building activities? 
• What are the right team building activities for a remote team? 
• How does remote work impact each team member differently?

Today I am going to share what we are doing using the DISC Assessment for Team Building purposes. This works directly into our system for how to manage staff remotely.

Some people on our team really enjoy the small chat, sharing jokes while others just want to get to work and be left alone. 

It is not JUST up to the leadership to understand everyone but if the team works with each other we all have a responsibility to understand how each of us are most effective. 

So… how are we going to go about improving our teams performance with a personality assessment? 

We are using the remarkably accurate DISC Assessment tool, create a personalized action plan off of the results and share the findings with the rest of the team. 

What is the DISC Personality Assessment?

Here are the steps to implement this assessment we are using with our team… 

DISC Assessment for Team Building Steps

Step 1 – Prepare the Team DISC Assessment Plan

In this step decide on the following items…

1. Who on the team is going to complete the assessment
2. How is the assessment going to be completed?
   1. Free Online Options – such as my favorite https://www.16personalities.com/
   2. Paid Consultants or Paid online options
3. Is taking the assessment required? In my case I have decided to not make it required although encouraged. 
4. Setup Google Sheet to share results
   1. See example here

Step 2 – Introduce the Team to The DISC Assessment Plan

Share with the team why we are doing this and how it is going to get done.

/// my email ///

Hi Team

As mentioned on the morning call I continue to be impressed with how the team is performing remotely. 

The purpose of this email is to layout the plan for taking the personality assessment discussed so we can work even better together. The team we have now is crushing through work and we definitely have the core team to keep building from.  

Through this process, we might even finally find out what is wrong with all of us 😉

2 parts in this Email:

• ONE – The Plan
• TWO – My Experience and the Why

ONE – Create The Plan

1. Go to this site – https://www.16personalities.com/
2. Take the 10 min survey
3. Read your results and see if you agree with them
4. Optional – Add a link to your results in this google doc – LINK
5. Add your direct reports to the sheet and share this email with them
6. Review each of the entire team members summary with a focus on your direct contacts (manager and reports) – read post at AWI on debrief process
7. We will discuss one persons results at each of the morning meetings (with myself going first) – read post at AWI on sharing process

The end result is every person will have taken the DISC assessment, shared with the entire team their results and created an action plan adjusting work to focus on strengths and mitigate weakenesses. 

This will also allow us to better understand how to work with each other most effectively.  

TWO – My Experience and the Why

As you can guess I am usually fairly dismissive of this soft stuff. However, when I completed it I was like holy shit this is spot on. Get out of my head computer! 

I am a big believer in doubling down on strengths and putting systems/people in place to mitigate weaknesses. 

The level of accuracy of the assessment certainly supported what were strengths and weaknesses. As a result, I am putting more effort into systematizing parts of the business. 

For example… this very effort is a systematic way to put in place an efficient way for us to better understand our differences and allow each of us (myself included) to work more effectively with everyone. Ideally leveraging a strength of mine (systems) to mitigate a weakness of mine (communicating I care about the team).

I welcome feedback and look forward to this process. 

Cheers

Jon 

Step 3 – Everyone Completes a DISC Assessment

Each person goes in and completes the DISC assessment entering their results into the spreadsheet. 

• Go to https://www.16personalities.com/
• Complete the assessment
• Read the results
• If you agree with them and are okay sharing with them team enter into the spreadsheet

If you want you can add in a comment if there is anything you think is worth noting.

Step 4 – Debrief at the Weekly 1:1 Meeting

At your weekly 1:1 with either your manager or a direct report review the summary of the assessment and debrief. 

Consultants have gone in DEPTH on this debrief process – http://discmastery.com/media/DISCDebriefingGuide.pdf

For our purposes, I believe a shortened version consistent with an OODA loop is sufficient…

• Observe
  • Any issues taking the assessment?
  • What did you think of the assessment?
• Orient
  • Did you find it “fit” you?
  • What parts did you relate to the most?
  • What parts did you disagree with the most?
• Decide
  • What changes to your work would play to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses?
  • What changes to how you work with the team would play to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses?
• Act
  • Add a list of action items to the weekly sheet (or Trello board if used) for tracking to completion

Step 5 – Team Building Share at the Morning meeting

At the morning meeting, I would like to have one person each morning share their findings. 

5-10 min and some version of the agenda (your time to share):

• Personality according to the tool – abcd
• My thoughts on if it fits me
• Any insights
• How I am adapting my work to play to my strengths and mitigate weaknesses
• How I am adapting how I work with others to play to my strengths and mitigate weaknesses 
• Comments from the team

My hope is this team-wide, efficient approach to personality assessment will have a positive impact on both the quality/quantity of individual output while also providing a framework for helping us work better together. 

I am looking forward to the process and seeing how it goes. 

If anyone has had experience with this process in another organization comments below would be greatly appreciated!