True Competitive Advantage With the Eagles
Knowing your preferred communication style and understanding how you think and like to receive feedback is critical. It is a key component in striving to be your best self, both personally and professionally. A DISC profile provides individuals with a window into likely behaviors and interpersonal style. DISC is the leading behavioral assessment tool used in organizations to promote communication and productivity for individuals, teams, and leaders.
DISC is an acronym for the four behavioral styles (dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness) founded by William Moulton Marston. Each of the four styles is marked by different characteristics, communication preferences, strengths, limitations, fears, and motivations. Understanding our own style brings us self-awareness for how we work and communicate best. It enables us to build our lives around our strengths and better manage our challenges. It also helps us understand how we can adapt our styles to better communicate and interact with others. Understanding others is the foundation for strong relationships, better results, and a more fulfilling life.
In this first part of a four-part series of blogs we will take a closer look at the Dominant style in the DISC model. Velocity Advisory Group works with organizations to determine the hidden genius of each style and how to surface these powerful abilities in others. Based on Daniel Silvert’s book The True Competitive Advantage, they bring these styles to life with birds, recognizing Eagles, Parrots, Doves, and Owls in individuals. These colorful metaphors are illuminating, memorable representations of the four styles. The Dominant style is represented with an Eagle. Eagles are results-oriented, direct, and decisive. Let’s take a closer look at Eagles in the areas of flexibility, quality, pacing, and focus.
Flexibility
Eagles are often slow to listen or adopt other points of view. They like to shake things up in an organization. They are competitive and love change. They do not enjoy the status quo. Their confidence and driving ambition makes this style most likely to rise into management roles.
When dealing with an Eagle, be brief and authentic. Use action-oriented language and declarative sentences. Keep your energy high and avoid ambiguity.
Quality
Eagles avoid drilling down into the details. They are guided by a long term, big picture vision of what can be accomplished. These self-starters trust their intuition and they are not afraid to boldly place their bets while others waiver. Eagles have a sink or swim energy.
Their task focused and terse communication style should not be misconstrued as being impersonal. They care about people a great deal. They appreciate candid human connection with others and they prefer issues to be addressed up front. They strive to achieve results each and every day.
Pacing
Eagles are fast paced thinkers. They have little patience for things that stand in the way of progress. They choose decisive action over planning. Eagles are able to quickly size up a situation and decisively determine a course of action. They would rather decisively make a mistake than endlessly circle a situation waiting for perfect circumstances to arise before acting.
Eagles are often mischaracterized as having big egos because they cut to the chase, but the reality is they believe brevity combined with clarity leads to faster results. The quicker you can provide clarity around what you need, the faster the Eagle can summon their problem-solving abilities to help you. When an Eagle answers your questions or concerns with a brief reply, it is not a sign of dismissing the issue or your feelings. They are just giving you the information necessary for you to take action. They trust you are smart enough to figure out the rest by yourself. That is a sign of respect.
Focus
Eagles are self-confident and bold and they challenge themselves and others. They strive to get things done. They like to win and achieve successful outcomes. Eagles prioritize tasks over people. When working on a project with a team, an Eagle will often ask, “are we performing at a high enough level? Are we missing an opportunity? Are we going to win? They do not worry about mistakes, challenges, setbacks, or obstacles.
The workspace of an Eagle is busy, formal, functional, and efficient. They are always focused on the task at hand and striving to get bottom line results. They prefer to work in an environment free from controls, supervision, and details. They are always seeking innovation and a forum to express their ideas and viewpoints.
How can we identify an Eagle personality in a workplace?
There are many observable signs of a dominant style. A person that exudes the confidence of an Eagle will stand tall and have a firm handshake. They will maintain eye contact and have an assertive and direct tone of voice. They often come across as experts.
Eagles provide excellent direction and leadership to an organization. They are able to push groups to make decisions. They function well with heavy workloads and they are innovative in getting results. Eagles are the most forceful and assertive of the four DISC styles. They are direct and straightforward when communicating and they seek authority and control over most situations. They have a strong desire to win, so they are decisive. They focus on the ultimate prize, are quick to assess a situation, and are willing to take risks. The Eagles generate momentum and keep others moving forward to ensure a successful result.
How can assessment of DISC styles support any organization?
The DISC assessment is meant to provide people on a team a common language for understanding and discussing each other’s tendencies and preferences. This tool has been around for over 20 years and been used by millions of people worldwide. It is most effective when paired with DISC training so team members can understand what their assessment means and how they can use it to communicate and collaborate with others more effectively.
The True Competitive Advantage, and the use of bird styles, helps us understand why people say and do the things they do. Each team member brings perspectives and habits that may cause friction with others who are brain-wired differently, particularly when under pressure and stress. The behavioral style make-up of your team will reveal how strengths and blind spots play out day-to-day and reveal what you can do to improve the group’s communication and productivity. You will see yourself in a whole new context of collaborating with others.
Velocity Advisory Group brings extensive experience in strategic consulting, executive coaching, and developing the people side of the business. We partner with clients to accelerate performance by helping them achieve clarity and make better decisions by empowering teams and organizations. Want to create a company culture roadmap, align your executive team, or put together a strategy for the future? Let’s start a conversation that will lead to success.
