DataDome Blog

Art Schoeck recently presented to a gathering of leaders at the exclusive CEO Central 60 organized by the Georgia Center for Non-profits. The prestigious gathering included top executives from several companies including Covenant House Georgia, Southern Arts Federation, Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, Athens Community Council on Aging Atlanta, Atlanta Youth Academies, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, CETPA, Inc., Must Ministries, Operation Homefront Georgia, The Salvation Army, Arthritis Foundation Georgia Chapter, Gateway Center, Project GRAD Atlanta, Inc, Butler Street YMCA, Open Hand Atlanta, and Enrichment Services Program, Inc.

CEO CENTRAL 60 is designed for an elite group of 20-30 top executives who are proven nonprofit leaders. Participants typically come from organizations with annual revenues of $5 – $100 million and have substantial work experience at the senior level.

About Georgia Center for Nonprofits
The Georgia Center for Nonprofits is Georgia’s association for nonprofit, charitable organizations. Our mission is to serve, strengthen and support Georgia’s nonprofit community. The Center advocates to improve the environment in which nonprofits work and helps nonprofits manage better by offering information, training, consulting and nonprofit jobs services.

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Later this month, Behavioral Style Strategist and President of Data Dome, Inc. Art Schoeck, will once again be bringing his expertise to the Scarlett Leadership Institute’s Signature Executive retreat. Participants will receive advanced training in leadership applications and strategies using the insights of DISC behavioral style analysis. Attendees include executives from HCA, LP Bldg Products, Tristar Energy, Brisgestone Americas, HealthSpring and Ingram Barge amongst others.

About the Signature Executive Program
The Scarlett Leadership Institute, located at Belmont University in Nashville Tennessee, hosts the Signature Executive Program, which offers a unique and engaging means of transferring leadership experience to the next generation of business leaders. Open only to high potential individuals nominated by senior leadership in their organizations, the Institute brings together world-class business minds from Fortune 500 companies and successful leading-edge organizations to interact with a selected class of participants. This “for-leaders by-leaders” executive education program was designed by leading business minds to develop the people and talent they most need to support the continued success of their organizations. It offers a unique opportunity because it asks for a unique commitment: a written pledge from both the participating individual and a senior on-the-job mentor in the sponsoring organization.

Last year’s participants were asked to complete an evaluation – many indicated that Art Schoeck’s seminar was their favorite piece in this exclusive and sought-after week-long leadership program.

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A training manager recently asked the following question via our Ask the Expert form:

“I have some questions about the Employee-Manager profile version. For some reason, I have been receiving more and more questions about the Circle Graph on the back…must be having more C’s in the classes lately! At any rate, I want to know what the numbers mean around and inside the circle, as well as to have a better explanation of what the circle graph even means. Right now, I tell the participants that the closer together their star and their dot are on the circle graph, the less they are having to adapt/change between their natural and their adapted style.”

Art’s answer:

The Success Insights Wheel can be an intimidating diagram the first time you see it. The Style Insights assessment generates 384 different graphs and the Wheel showcases 60 of them (48 basic graphs with 12 exceptions).  The quadrant in which the graph appears is determined by the assessment taker’s individual high factor. To understand the Wheel it is important to identify its eight different spokes, which are:

• Relater Core I,S
• Supporter Core S
• Coordinator Core S,C
• Analyzer Core C
• Implementor Core D,C
• Conductor Core D
• Persuader Core D,I
• Promoter Core I

Each person has a Natural Style, Adapted Style and a preferred Work Environment. The Success Insights Wheel uses a star to indicate the subject’s adapted style and a circle to mark the natural style, so yes, if the circle and star are close together then the Natural and Adapted styles are closely aligned.

In addition, when profiling a team, the DISC practitioner can see the team’s behavioral composition and potential conflicts at a glance with the Wheel.

The word Cross or Flex often appear at the bottom of the Wheel Page. The definitions are as follows:

Cross: Two or three factors above the line, with the core factor’s opposite also above the line. This means that the person potentially has some type of Me-Me conflict. Numbers 57, 58, 59 & 60 are examples of potential Me-Me conflicts.

Flex: Three factors above the line, with the core factor’s opposite below the line. This means that the person is adaptable.

What’s your question?

Data Dome founder, Art Schoeck, often receives questions through our Ask the Expert form. We try to answer questions here on this blog that are representative of common questions regarding DISC and other assessment tools.

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Spring is coming, and with it the return of our popular Align to Thrive workshop.

This workshop, which will be held on April 14th, will show you strategies designed to strengthen businesses and increase profitability… despite the uncertainty of economic and market conditions.

Organizational Alignment is an empowering concept for realizing full business potential. An aligned organization is a fine-tuned machine driving forward with focus, discipline and responsiveness to customer values.

In this workshop, through theory and practical application, you will learn new tools to measure and achieve organizational alignment. Simple, intuitive and quantitative measurements can show you how well your organization is aligned to your customers? and employees? constantly changing needs. This is the vital data needed to make the critical decisions for success.

You can find more detailed information and request your seat by visiting http://www.datadome.com/align2thrive.php or calling 404-814-0739.

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It’s the classic maxim that we all grew up with, the proverbial Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” however, does it always apply?  If we are all individuals and we all have different communication and behavioral styles then perhaps what works for me might not go over so well with you.

What if we were to rethink this idea and turn it into “Treat people not as you want to be treated, but instead, as they want to be treated”?  This opens up a more expansive and empathetic idea, and if we look at the diversity of interaction styles that we can recognize through our study of DISC profiles then it is possible to adapt our communication approach to better serve the preferences of someone who is likely to have a different behavioral profile than ourselves.

To further explore these ideas you may like to read Art Schoeck’s article: Adapting the Golden Rule for Better Communication

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We’re very proud of our founder and CEO – Arthur Schoeck has been given one of the top honors in his industry: He has been appointed to The International Faculty.  TTI created The International Faculty in 2004 as an elite  group of professionals in the business consulting, coaching and training industry. International Faculty members are hand-selected leaders in their field and each brings a unique expertise to the Faculty. From every corner of the globe, they collaborate to provide global organizations with timely solutions that surpass the challenges of geographical boundaries.

When asked to comment Art Schoeck replied, “It is a privilege to be accepted as a peer amongst such distinguished experts.”

For more information visit Data Dome’s Awards page.

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Congratulations to our founder!

Data Dome’s own founder and CEO, Arthur Schoeck, was recently honored again for the second year consecutive year by Target Training International (TTI) as the recipient of the Chairman’s Award for Services to the Community at the TTI Winners’ Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Echoing last year, TTI presented the award to Schoeck for his continued dedication to community service initiatives. Schoeck has offered his time and expertise to mentor college students, helping them identify their skills and behavioral styles and guide them toward alignment with their career goals.

For more information visit Data Dome’s Awards page.

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It seems that everywhere you look these days there is a lot more emphasis on understanding our behaviors and how they influence numerous fields of study. From economics and buying behaviors to drives and motivations in the workplace, we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what the science and study of behavior can teach us.

Take for instance Daniel Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational – Ariely puts forth an entertaining, often humorous, introduction to the field of behavioral economics and sheds lights on some of the stranger things we do depending on the situations we’re placed in – like why we might like vinegar in our beer if we try it before we’re told it’s there, but almost always dislike if we’re told it’s there first.  Ariely seems to spend much time in the field comparing patterns of behavior from one group to another to make blanket, statistical conclusions of how we will predict in similar scenarios.

Aubrey Daniels’ book Oops! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time & Money also examines behaviors in a business context, but here frames the discussion around common management tools and practices that don’t actually produce the desired results. Daniels explores a spectrum of positive and negative reinforcers that influence (or fail to influence) performance.  A full palette of near and long-term views, certain and uncertain rewards and punishments and our reactions to them become the foundation for advising businesses how to get practical performance improvements.

Somewhere between these two books lies Drive by Daniel Pink.  Pink posits that there are 3 iterations of motivational “operating systems” that humans have evolved. Motivation 1.0 is based on basic, animalistic needs, drives to survive and procreate and not much else. Motivation 2.0 represents the fabled carrot and stick – using rewards and punishments to encourage desired behaviors and discourage unwanted ones.  Motivation 3.0 has just begun to take root – an understanding that humans are governed by both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.  Some things we do for passion and intellectual curiosity, other things we do for money, or to avoid being fired. As our world gets more complicated and our tasks more intellectually sophisticated so too does the complexity of our motivational drives. But Pink contends that as Motivation 3.0 is better understood we will see new paradigms in the workplace.

All three of these books offer fascinating perspectives on how we behave, how predictable we can be, and how to reevaluate motivational strategies. However, all of these books tend to lump human behavior together with little granularity regarding natural styles.  Pink does put forth the idea of Type I’s and Type X’s to connote persons more intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, while Ariely and Daniels tend to pay more attention to the external circumstances and stimuli and their impact on an entire group rather than the individual’s. It would be fascinating to explore all of these concepts through the lens of DISC and the study of Passions & Priorities to provide other vectors for understanding individual’s reactions and behavioral dispositions rather than just focusing on cumulative results.  There are excellent tools already available like Workplace Motivators which were specifically designed to analyze and define the very factors that mesh so well with Pink’s definition of Motivation 3.0.

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It happens a lot in this world of assessments and behavioral information, the high side of the scale seems to get all the press.  We spotlight the characteristics of the high D, we round up discussion samples of high I’s, S’s and C’s, but the low end of the scale is no less meaningful than the high end.   A low D, I, S, or C is just as indicative of behavioral style as are  their high counterparts.  So for today, here’s a little attention to the low D.

You might be a low D if…

• you always drive in the right lane
• when you and someone else step into a line at the same time you tend to let the other person go first
• your friends describe you as someone who “goes with the flow”
• you’re the one who holds the elevator’s “open” button while waiting for everyone else to get out. You might be an even lower D if you’re the one who stays in the back of the elevator and tells the person holding the door to go ahead.
• you’ve never asked for a raise
• you usually wait for others to stop talking before you join the conversation

Remember even people whose behavior in one quadrant is at the top of the high or at the bottom of the low is still also exhibiting a range of behaviors measurable in the other 3 quadrants. Further, motivations and environmental influences can significantly impact circumstantial behavior.  None of us are “one-trick ponies” when it comes to our behavioral styles.

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Do you have the habits of a leader? Let’s take a look at some of the ways leaders react and the qualities they exhibit in certain situations:

When a leader begins a project she looks first for clarity on what needs to be accomplished, not what’s in it for her.

Once the objective is understood the true leader will examine her skills, strengths and resources and compare them to the needs of the project.  That way she can assess how best to approach the project and what gaps need to be addressed to ensure success.

A leader focuses and refocuses on his organization’s mission and goals.  He keeps the bottom line in mind while communicating the performance expectations for success.

A leader understands that he can’t do it all himself, that he’s not the best at everything. He is confident in his own abilities and values those who surpass him in specific skills or strengths.

When it comes to developing a team, a great leader knows that copycats and “mini-me’s” won’t give her the balanced perspective and diversity of skills she needs to come up with winning solutions.

A leader doesn’t allow positive or negative personal biases to cloud judgement when it comes to an individual’s positive or negative performance.

“Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.” ~ Warren G. Bennis

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