Connecting Self-Awareness to Profits

Over the past 20 years, a proliferation of research has identified Emotional Intelligence (EI) as a key component of career growth and organizational effectiveness. Essentially, the higher your EI, the more effective you will likely be in advancing your career and facilitating the success of others. While EI is increasingly accepted as an important leadership competency in corporate settings, the legal world has yet to embrace its potential for enabling firms to attract and retain top talent.

A logical place to begin improving one's emotional intelligence is with self-awareness. The ability to accurately identify your temperament, strengths, expectations and challenges is an essential skill in accurately assessing the impact you may have on others. One highly effective and widely used behavioral style assessment tool is called DISC. Its simple, practical approach enables people to better understand the internal motivations that drive human behavior.

The DISC Model

In the DISC model, D stands for dominant, I represents influence, S represents steady, and C stands for conscientious. Most of us have a primary and secondary style that blend to form how we perceive and react to the world around us. Our behavioral styles reveal many aspects of our nature including: whether we are gregarious or reserved, favor analysis or emotion in decision making, value structure or freedom, internalize or externalize stress, and welcome or avoid change.

One way to make a behavioral style system like DISC more intuitive is to use metaphors, in this case birds, to symbolize the traits of each style.

Eagles (D)

Eagles are the most results-driven of the four styles. Their central focus is to accomplish goals, and they deploy a wide range of behaviors toward this end. Eagles communicate directly (to achieve clarity), act decisively (to make progress), and prefer that others “cut to the chase” (to understand the purpose of the conversation). A common mischaracterization of eagles is that they are poor listeners. In fact, eagles excel at listening when they believe it will solve a problem. Present a compelling challenge to an eagle and he will listen intently.

Parrots (I)

Parrots are animated by positive emotions and social interaction. Parrots love to combine innovative ideas and optimism with a network of people who are motivated to create something original and exciting. Easygoing and approachable, they are the most socially adaptable of the styles. A common mischaracterization of parrots is that their fun-loving nature suggests they are not as serious about their work as other styles. In fact, parrots utilize enthusiasm as fuel to work as hard as anyone. They simply prefer to smile while doing so.

Doves (S)

Often characterized as the strong, silent type, doves are calm, patient and especially valued for their listening skills, which combine empathy with being present in the moment. Even-paced and reserved, doves prefer environments where dependable processes and low levels of conflict are the norm. A common mischaracterization of doves is that their soft-spoken nature signifies a lack of ambition. However, their ability to foster group harmony and trust is often lacking in more extraverted executives.

Owls (C)

Owls have a strong need to achieve accuracy in every aspect of their lives. Deploying their natural gifts for detail orientation, systemization and analysis, owls are adept at questioning their way to a logical conclusion, all of which makes their disposition a natural fit for the legal world. A common misconception about owls is that they don't care as much about the emotional state of others. But while owls may not demonstrate emotional intensity, this does not mean they are indifferent. They simply express emotions, both their own and when interpreting others, through the prism of facts and analysis.

Why Does This Matter?

At this point you may be asking yourself: So what? Why should this matter to my firm? Here's why: Understanding the four styles enables people to build healthier relationships, which in turn is a key driver for both individual and collective success.

In fact, understanding each style's preferences around leadership, time management, delegation, and giving/receiving feedback equips people with a much clearer lens for interpreting the intent behind the behaviors of colleagues and clients. Multiply this one interaction by the number of daily potential communication misunderstandings that take place in an average day, and one begins to recognize how behavioral style awareness can deliver significant benefits to the culture of an organization.

A number of recent studies have looked at how the social habits of employees can impact not just individual success, but drive organizational growth. In 2009, MIT researchers tracked and analyzed the social interactions of 2,600 IBM employees over the course of a year. As Shawn Achor writes in The Happiness Advantage, citing the study, “They found that the more socially connected the IBM employees were, the better they performed. They could even quantify the difference: On average, every e-mail contact was worth an added $948 in revenue. There in black and white is the power of social investment.”

So, which style are you?

Daniel Silvert is the CEO of Intellity Group and the coauthor of “Taking Flight!” He can be reached at [email protected].

Over the past 20 years, a proliferation of research has identified Emotional Intelligence (EI) as a key component of career growth and organizational effectiveness. Essentially, the higher your EI, the more effective you will likely be in advancing your career and facilitating the success of others. While EI is increasingly accepted as an important leadership competency in corporate settings, the legal world has yet to embrace its potential for enabling firms to attract and retain top talent.

A logical place to begin improving one's emotional intelligence is with self-awareness. The ability to accurately identify your temperament, strengths, expectations and challenges is an essential skill in accurately assessing the impact you may have on others. One highly effective and widely used behavioral style assessment tool is called DISC. Its simple, practical approach enables people to better understand the internal motivations that drive human behavior.

The DISC Model

In the DISC model, D stands for dominant, I represents influence, S represents steady, and C stands for conscientious. Most of us have a primary and secondary style that blend to form how we perceive and react to the world around us. Our behavioral styles reveal many aspects of our nature including: whether we are gregarious or reserved, favor analysis or emotion in decision making, value structure or freedom, internalize or externalize stress, and welcome or avoid change.

One way to make a behavioral style system like DISC more intuitive is to use metaphors, in this case birds, to symbolize the traits of each style.

Eagles (D)

Eagles are the most results-driven of the four styles. Their central focus is to accomplish goals, and they deploy a wide range of behaviors toward this end. Eagles communicate directly (to achieve clarity), act decisively (to make progress), and prefer that others “cut to the chase” (to understand the purpose of the conversation). A common mischaracterization of eagles is that they are poor listeners. In fact, eagles excel at listening when they believe it will solve a problem. Present a compelling challenge to an eagle and he will listen intently.

Parrots (I)

Parrots are animated by positive emotions and social interaction. Parrots love to combine innovative ideas and optimism with a network of people who are motivated to create something original and exciting. Easygoing and approachable, they are the most socially adaptable of the styles. A common mischaracterization of parrots is that their fun-loving nature suggests they are not as serious about their work as other styles. In fact, parrots utilize enthusiasm as fuel to work as hard as anyone. They simply prefer to smile while doing so.

Doves (S)

Often characterized as the strong, silent type, doves are calm, patient and especially valued for their listening skills, which combine empathy with being present in the moment. Even-paced and reserved, doves prefer environments where dependable processes and low levels of conflict are the norm. A common mischaracterization of doves is that their soft-spoken nature signifies a lack of ambition. However, their ability to foster group harmony and trust is often lacking in more extraverted executives.

Owls (C)

Owls have a strong need to achieve accuracy in every aspect of their lives. Deploying their natural gifts for detail orientation, systemization and analysis, owls are adept at questioning their way to a logical conclusion, all of which makes their disposition a natural fit for the legal world. A common misconception about owls is that they don't care as much about the emotional state of others. But while owls may not demonstrate emotional intensity, this does not mean they are indifferent. They simply express emotions, both their own and when interpreting others, through the prism of facts and analysis.

Why Does This Matter?

At this point you may be asking yourself: So what? Why should this matter to my firm? Here's why: Understanding the four styles enables people to build healthier relationships, which in turn is a key driver for both individual and collective success.

In fact, understanding each style's preferences around leadership, time management, delegation, and giving/receiving feedback equips people with a much clearer lens for interpreting the intent behind the behaviors of colleagues and clients. Multiply this one interaction by the number of daily potential communication misunderstandings that take place in an average day, and one begins to recognize how behavioral style awareness can deliver significant benefits to the culture of an organization.

A number of recent studies have looked at how the social habits of employees can impact not just individual success, but drive organizational growth. In 2009, MIT researchers tracked and analyzed the social interactions of 2,600 IBM employees over the course of a year. As Shawn Achor writes in The Happiness Advantage, citing the study, “They found that the more socially connected the IBM employees were, the better they performed. They could even quantify the difference: On average, every e-mail contact was worth an added $948 in revenue. There in black and white is the power of social investment.”

So, which style are you?

Daniel Silvert is the CEO of Intellity Group and the coauthor of “Taking Flight!” He can be reached at [email protected].