The DiSC Model of Behavior was first proposed by William Mouton Marston, a physiological psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard. His 1928 book, Emotions of Normal People, explains his theory on how normal human emotions lead to behavioral differences among groups of people and how a person’s behavior might change over time. His work focused on directly observable and measurable psychological phenomena. He was interested in using practical explanations to help people understand and manage their experiences and relationships.

Marston theorized that the behavioral expression of emotions could be categorized into four primary types, stemming from the person’s perceptions of self in relationship to his or her environment. These four types were labeled by Marston as Dominance (D), Inducement (I), Submission (S), and Compliance (C).

Walter V. Clarke, an industrial psychologist, was the first person to build an assessment instrument (personality profile test) using Marston’s theories, even though that was not initially his intent. In 1956 he published the Activity Vector Analysis, a checklist of adjectives on which he asked people to mark descriptors they identified as true of themselves. The tool, used by Clarke since 1948, was intended for personnel selection by businesses. The four factors in his data (aggressive, sociable, stable and avoidant) were based on Marston’s model.

About 10 years later, Walter Clarke Associates developed a new version of this instrument for John Cleaver. It was called Self Discription. Instead of using a checklist, this test forced respondents to make a choice between two or more terms. Factor analysis of this assessment added to the support of a DISC-based instrument.

For the past 40 years, the DiSC assessment has been used by over 25 million people to discover their tendencies and how to connect more successfully with others.

It has been a long time since I thought about my dreams and hopes.  Channeled strategic thinking.  Absolutely.  Free-form hopes and dreams.  Not since I was a kid.

Over the past few decades of organizational development consulting, training and leadership coaching, I have seen quite a few fads, masked as trends, come and go.  Who can forget the self-directed team movement?  Or the human resources as a business partner mantra?  What about the flat organization trend?  All came with great fanfare and a few bestsellers and all went quietly, and ineffectually, into the night.  Now we are looking at big data and neuro brain science as the next big things.  Undoubtedly, more bestsellers are on the way.

My hope becomes a bit more pragmatic and focused on a trend that began in earnest in the early part of the century and has continued down a robust path.  I hope that team member engagement continues to be an important part of all corporate and organizational cultures for years and decades to come.

The reasoning for this emphasis on engagement is twofold.  First, to the organizations that embrace team member engagement, there is tremendous documented value.  An engaged workforce will produce significantly higher levels of customer service and overall quantified results is much better than peer groups that do not place focus on team member engagement.  Quite simply, team member engagement will grow profits and most other metrics of success.

Secondly, engagement has tremendous value to individual team members.  Beyond the value of compensation and benefits, engaged team members will be happier and derive greater satisfaction from their job.  With that greater satisfaction comes increased self-worth and quality of life.  Less stress and greater happiness follows.  It evolves them from employees to partners in the venture very quickly.

To maintain the momentum that started the team member engagement movement, organizations have to make some strategic shifting beyond providing mechanisms for team member feedback and recognition luncheons.  First, and perhaps most important, organizations must look at engagement being attached to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  The old tried and true pyramid of motivation that is based with physiological needs and topped with self-realization must be used as the blueprint for team member engagement strategies.

In 1943, Abraham Maslow broke new ground in describing the pyramid of human needs.  His five tier approach may well be the most cited and used work related to needs, reactions, motivation and satisfaction.  Later, and after additional research, he added three move levels to his model.

For our purposes, we are going to apply the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs in a modern context and use it to drive a large part of an engagement strategy.

The original five tiers are presented visually in a pyramid.  This purposeful approach highlighted the need to build need fulfillment from bottom level to top.  Ultimate motivation, and therefore performance, would be achieved when all levels of need were satisfied.  The converse view is that performance and motivation is limited because needs were unmet or unsatisfied.

The bottom or base level of the pyramid is described as physiological needs.  This lowest level of need includes breathing (duh!), food, water, shelter, sleep and a few more bodily needs.   I have a couple of friends that would include beer, jet skis and credit cards to this list.  Quite simply, the bottom of the pyramid is the minimum amount of commodity and function needed to live.

The next level up on Maslow’s model is safety.  This is the most straightforward of the levels and the easiest to understand.  The descriptors for this level include security, law and order, stability and being free from fear.  As easy as this one is to understand, it is also the level that has changed the most in meaning and application.  More about that in just a bit.

The third and middle pyramid block is social needs that include a sense of belonging, love, affection, relationships, acceptance and connectivity.  Just as the safety level has changed a great deal, this level has changed very little in meaning and application to a healthy working environment.

One of the most misunderstood levels of the pyramid appears next.  Just the word ego tends to send a lot of people spinning in various directions.  Images of arrogance and aloofness often are created but this could not be farther from the truth.  Ego needs, the next level of need and motivation, relates to how we are validated and includes recognition, reputation, achievement and status.  These ego needs tend to be very powerful motivators.

The final and top level of the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs is self-actualization.  When describing this need in leadership development programs, I have seen more head-scratching, eye-glazing looks than with any other discussion point.  Maslow did us no favors when you used the title “self-actualization”.  This final tier of need and motivation relates to how you see yourself and where you are at.  The description words he used include development, personal growth, challenge and new experience.  As it is the highest point on the pyramid, it will be the most elusive of the motivational factors and needs.

As noted previously, Maslow added three more levels after his initial findings.  Those levels are cognitive needs, aesthetic needs and transcendence (sounds like this will make your head explode).  The cognitive category includes our intellectual and knowledge acquisition needs while aesthetic is concerned with our need for beauty and pleasing surroundings.  Transcendence is not as mind blowing as it sounds.  It is the need to guide another person through self-actualization.  This is often seen in the role of parent or mentor in a working situation.

So what the heck does all this classic psychology and needs mean to a healthy working environment?  That is the most simple of all responses.  Many organizations fail to meet the needs of their team members and therefore impact, in an adverse manner, the engagement and motivation of their organization.  Meet more needs and your organization will be healthier.  Stymie the meeting of needs and you will have an unhealthy working environment.

Beyond matching engagement strategy to Maslow’s work, organizations must make a strategic shift in how they manage talent on the front end.

No job interview should be a recap of someone’s resume’ or application.  In fact, the items listed on those document should be rarely discussed or referenced.

To make a dent in overall organizational health, leaders and talent managers must use behavioral interview questions related directly to those behaviors desired for a healthy environment.  You will want to test for communication desire, ability to work well with others, willingness to provide internal and external service, skills associated with working through difficult and changing situations and problem solving competencies.

You also want to get the pulse of a job candidate’s attitude.  This can be a little slippery at times but it is doable and must be done.  Do you want consistent upbeat and engaged team members or do you want another of your thick-file team members?

In an age of extremely well prepared job applicants, throwing a curve in a behavioral interview is more difficult.  Consider using some of the following questions to connect a candidate’s skills to your desired outcomes in organizational health:

•  Describe how you would work with and diffuse a difficult customer.
• Talk about how you have worked successfully with difficult or challenging co-workers.
• Tell me what kind of things you do to insure a high level of internal service to other departments and fellow team members.
• Describe your desired approach to communication during a project.
• What are the things that you do to work well with others?
• How do you build consensus among team members or when competing deadlines exist?
• How do you manage your own attitude and approach?
• Describe, in some detail, your demeanor under pressure and when deadlines and customer demands are looming.
• How do you react and respond when priorities change or when you have to manage multiple priorities?
• How do you stay upbeat and positive when times are challenging?
• When faced with a difficult co-worker, please describe your approach to working with them.

This is not an all-inclusive list but rather a set of examples that you can use to build your own questions.  In each of the examples above as well as behavioral interview questions that you construct, the importance does not rest with textbook answers.  The importance is found in an applicant’s comfort in discussing these situations and whether or not they appear uncomfortable with the subjects presented.  A great organizational health fit will answer these scenarios with ease while someone who is engagement challenged will struggle finding the words and concisely expressing their approach.

While we are talking about interviews, we may as well take a poke at some organization’s sacred cows:  the group interview.

Quite bluntly, group interviews, even the two-on-one variety do not work.  They become an exercise in presentation skills and not a good approach to finding good organizational fit candidates.  If you are looking for someone who will be good presenting to groups, great.  If you are looking for a more balanced score card of skills and competencies, kill the group interview process and replace it with multiple interviews with different people who will all be asking the same questions.

Another important facet of engagement driven organizations and those highly concerned for organizational health is that they never compromise their standards to get a position filled.  When organizational health is foremost as a business strategy, you will never hear “he was not perfect but we need to get that job filled”.

No compromise means that you will not take a warm body or a pulse no matter what other pressures you face.  A bad hire decision or a knowing compromise today will create organizational health issues for you for years to come.  Again reference back to your problem team members.  How many of them would you hire again or how many would you like to re-interview and test those engagement and organizational health competencies?

On an operational level, you will need to take a stand.  You will need to tell your human resources department that you need more candidates.  You will need to rerun your job advertisement.  You will need to tell your boss that you haven’t found the right fit yet.  All difficult but all extremely necessary to guard your existing organizational health and insure team member engagement is not harmed.

And finally, organizations must come to grips with the equation that engagement requires engaging leaders.  Leaders with people skills.  Leaders that care about team member and communicate frequently with them and build relationships with them.  Leaders that are engaging and not hiding behind a stack of big data.

My dream is that engagement remains a reality and evolving strategy for the year 2015.

While balancing a couple of competing career paths, I started to work at Rocky Mountain Federal Savings and Mr. John Dilday.  Fresh out of college, John was my first “real” boss away from my hometown.

John was self-made and a master of self-promotion.  John was his biggest fan.

He was also a master motivator before such a category existed.  He praised, thanked, recognized and encouraged.  He mentored.  He shared knowledge.  John was also able to use threats, cajoling, ridicule and shame with the same frequency and without even a noticeable shift of gears.  He could press buttons that I didn’t even know existed.  And it worked.

But above all of that, John Dilday was a challenger.  He did it every day.  Asking about what you could do a little better, making sure I was not sitting on the laurels of a good month or even a good year.  He promoted me to manager; not because I deserved it but because he could challenge me more then.  I was nothing special to him, he challenged everyone equally and constantly.  Always pushing for better in his team and in himself.

To this day, I still summon some Dildayisms when challenging others to be more than they are now.  May use a little different language pattern than John did but the context is still the same.  And also to this day, I credit John with a big piece of my drive and internal motivation to push myself and others forward.  And finally, to this day, I would still stretch myself and my performance for that man.

Status quo is a curse phrase for effective leaders.  They find themselves in the position of appreciating today’s effort and performance while constantly striving for more.  Effective leaders recognize the near endless capacity of human performance.

To add some more challenge to your team and guide them to the performance in which they are capable of delivering, work on:

1. Asking the team what the potential is and how high can they grow their performance and skills.
2. Watching diligently for signs of comfort and complacency in team members.
3. Understand the individual motivating factors of team members and appeal to each one of those on a very personal level.
4. Help team members set targets and track results to build self-challenge mechanisms and systems.

Las Vegas is home to a couple of University of Wyoming alumni.  I am one and Robert Rippee is the other.  We didn’t know each other in school despite having similar majors but we became fast friends through a common professional connection; his employer and my customer.

During our time together, I have never seen Robert stop learning.  He is a passionate seeker of knowledge and hones his skills constantly.  Conferences, classes, articles, books, sharing with others; Robert is constantly learning.

As some people with Robert’s tenure are fighting to remain relevant, he is on the cutting edge of his craft and considered a subject matter expert in the constantly changing world of marketing.  Beyond his core expertise, Robert has added new levels of knowledge in big data, destination management, luxury brands and content development.  All self-learned through his passionate pursuit of knowledge and growth.  As of this writing, Robert is a widely sought after presenter, consultant  and panelist because of his life-ling learning passion.

Far too often success becomes intoxicating for a leader and the learning stops and stagnates.  A few promotions, a great review, a bonus and a raise will create no impetus for a leader to continue to learn and grow.  That type of leader will often be fighting obsolesce and organizational obscurity.

The effective leader, like Robert, will be in a constant state of learning, growth and evolution.  There will be no need to stop to sharpen a saw blade because it always honed to maximum cutting edge.

Restarting the desire to learn and in some cases, relearning to learn may require you to begin:

1. Read an article a day related to something you want to know more about and applies to your abilities to lead in your organization. This is one of the great values of social media.  These types of articles are everywhere on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
2. Start a classic book that challenges your knowledge, vocabulary and comprehension of complex concepts.
3. Take a class or refresh a skill through some online learning. I know this sounds a bit self-serving but it works.  Stimulates the mind and encourages future learning.

A senior leader in the convention services industry effortless and constantly delivered “great job” on top of “thank you” in addition to “you got this” on a daily, all the time basis.

Also on the top of her list were creating opportunities for her people to connect socially and receive the recognition they had been lacking during her tenure.  She created rituals for social interaction and celebrations.

She delivered it sincerely, timely and with an unwavering upbeat demeanor that made her the organization’s cheerleader.  The consummate cheerleader.

I always wanted to use one of those tick counters and follow her around for a day or so and see what the daily tally was but never did.  Suffice to say it happened a lot and every day.

And how did her people respond?

With unprecedented production, commitment to quality, organizational loyalty, embracing of mission and a quantum leap in customer service levels.  End game.  It played out over seven years.  Some of her peers ridiculed her for the constant praise, encouragement and appreciation.  Some of her own team members suspected her motives were not good.  But at the end of the day, the results spoke for themselves.

This is one example that we have had the privilege to work with in the past 20 years,  There are hundreds more.  Maybe thousands more.  When leaders put time and effort into positive feedback, thanks and encouragement, the results grow dramatically and pretty quickly.  Toxicity is reduced.  Turnover goes down.  Benefit after benefit.

Great leaders understand this and have for quite some time.  As their peer leaders are working with metrics and working through a politicized corporate culture, the great leaders are investing time and energy in building their team morale and replicating valued behaviors and performance.

Any leader can achieve what she did by adopting a few simple strategies.

1. Say thank you when someone does something for you or the organization.
2. Tell people “good job” when they meet or exceed expectations.
3. Encourage people to grow, stretch, make decisions and take risks.
4. Do these consistently and beyond the limits of your current comfort level.