Identifying the Detail

We received a telephone call from a person we thought was the Human Resources Manager of an organisation in one of Australia’s major cities, asking us to process thirty Extended DISC® Personal Analysis Reports for his firm.

He explained that he wanted the whole process to remain confidential and we were to report directly to him. During the process we noticed that twenty-five of the reports showed a tight Profile I and to have some 80% plus with this result was just too unusual to ignore.

So we telephoned our contact and asked him whether he had clear job descriptions for his team, or whether there had been a change in management…..and as an alternative, whether all the reports were being generated for job applicants as part of their recruitment process.

It was obvious that our client was very surprised to receive our call and we wondered whether we might have offended him in some way by asking the questions. He pointed out that the reports never mentioned any of these possibilities. We explained that we had drawn these conclusions from looking at the profiles. After a short silence on the telephone he simply said, “That’s amazing. I have just been appointed CEO of this organisation and I am completing new job descriptions for the thirty people who completed the questionnaire”. He was clearly very impressed!

The main point we learn from this experience is that when completing a series of reports it can be very valuable to:

• Look beyond the obvious
• Treat the project as a whole rather than just focus on individual reports
• Look for trends

In this case our client knew the answer because he was clearly involved in the process. He was looking mainly for job fit, but if, for example, the twenty-five reports had showed a tight Profile II and he didn’t recognise the significance of this indicator (insecurity) then he may well have missed something that was crucial information for management.

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