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Making Cents Businesses need all the help they can get in making sense out of today's economic climate. Wisely managing diverse human assets is vital to succeeding in a rapidly changing global marketplace. When I work with project and sales teams in our training programs, I stress the financial benefits of embracing their team's diversity. Every professional needs to be reminded of the massive economic benefits of unleashing every team member's potential by respecting their unique strengths and insights. It's not a "special" task assigned to certain team members or managers. Also, embracing diversity is not a single action; it is a process. It is not something you can put on your action plan in March and concluded it in June, and then forget about it. It is the key to greater effectiveness and high productivity. For example: A tremendous amount of human energy is used unproductively in conflict. Many employee disputes have to do with people talking past each other. Employees are failing to value each other because they are coming with a set of expectations, a set of behavioral preferences, that do not mesh with those of the person on the other side of the dispute. There is a failure to communicate because the understandings and expectations that people bring to the job are different. Effective communication strategies are paramount. Failing to establish these strategies will result in an ongoing and expensive recruitment program that is not supported by a successful retention program. One proven communication strategy is understanding and embracing the different behavioral styles with in a workforce. Doing so makes one better able to act with respect toward other persons, even those who are different and sometimes hard to understand. Learning the DiSC® model of behavior is a valuable tool that hundreds of businesses at every size level have used to help increase individual levels of understanding of behavioral tendencies and increase trust levels and keep communications open. DiSC represents four dimensions of preferred behavior: (D) Dominance, (i) influence, (S) Steadiness and (C) Conscientiousness. When employees understand how to respect behavioral differences in themselves and others, they put more energy into helping the organization. They get past judging how someone does their work and instead focus on the goals and organizational objectives. By the use of DiSC, teams have been able to explore their differences more openly from a behavioral approach rather than ethnicity, gender or lifestyle. Companies desiring to make the most of their diverse workforce need to ask themselves enlightening questions, such as: Does the company have effective leadership that is committed to embracing a diverse workforce? How has the company impressed upon its managers and team leaders the benefits that come from understanding behavioral differences and embracing diversity appropriately? What communication enhancement programs are in place to offer team members tools that can be used in understanding diverse behavioral strengths? By beginning to answer these powerful questions, team differences are harnessed for the good of the company rather than being used as wedges to drive employees apart. By creating inclusive communication programs that focus on team members' unique behavioral strengths, companies are maximizing every possible opportunity to discover how to utilize each person's unique strengths. And that makes a whole lot of Cents. Internationally recognized business development strategist, author, and speaker Dean Lindsay is the founder of The Progress Agents LLC – an idea studio dedicated to empowering progress in sales, service, and workplace performance.
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