Using DISC to defuse team conflict (not resolve it)

We’ve all been there, joined a new company, and a few months later are asked to fill a behavioral questionnaire with hundreds of questions. Then we get a very nice report about ourselves, some things match, some don’t. We read it, and go back to writing the next feature.

I did the same, more than once. A few years later, in a big company that ironically didn’t have any of these questionnaires, I saw how useful it can be when managing different people.

The same complaint, from both sides

I was managing a team of software engineers, having frequent 1:1s with the team. One day at the 1:1 with Employee A, the conversation was as follows:

• A: I think that Employee B is reckless.
• Me: Why? What happened?
• A: They usually break things and don’t spend enough time testing features. This is very risky.
• A: They usually talk too much in meetings and share too many personal stories. This is distracting.

A few days later, I had a 1:1 with Employee B, which went as follows:

• B: I think that Employee A is too slow.
• B: And, they are too quiet in meetings, never share their opinions.
• Me: Why do you say that?
• B: Every task drags on for too long. Even a simple task can take a long time to get done.

This same pattern of conversations happened a few times. After thinking about it for a while, these personal reports came back to me, and I realised something: they were describing two different DiSC profiles.

DiSC

DiSC stands for dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. These describe 4 different behavioral styles, with the relevant characteristics. For this example, we’ll focus more on two styles: influence and conscientiousness, which are opposite styles.

What they were actually describing

When Employee A mentioned recklessness, they were describing an I-style behaviour. Employee B is energetic, outspoken, communicative, and enthusiastic. They are not reckless and care a lot about code quality, lowering production errors, and having good tests in place.

On the other hand, when Employee B mentioned slowness, they were describing a C-style behaviour. It is not that Employee A is slow; they are methodical, they consider every possible scenario before writing the first line of code, and usually catch edge cases that the whole team missed.

The delivery speed is roughly the same between them. Employee A will spend more time analysing and delivering in a single iteration. Employee B will deliver the first iteration faster, but will most likely miss some edge cases, which will lead to further iterations. None of them is right or wrong; they just think and behave in opposite ways.

When talking about it wasn’t enough

Just speaking about it was not enough; the patterns continued to happen, and the conversations continued to be the same. So I decided to bring the whole team together for an exercise since there were no official tools available.

I asked the whole team to come to the office in person for a DiSC session on the same day that we had a team event in the evening. Combining both was an intentional move, getting to know each other better with a more relaxed setting afterwards. I laid a sheet of paper with a circle in the middle, following the DiSC pattern, with every corner of the paper describing each style. Team members stood in the quadrant they identified with most. I explained you could stand between two; I’m a Si myself. On the other side of the sheet, there was a brief description of each style’s strengths and how to better work together.

After standing up in each place, we all had a very productive conversation about the exercise and how it is to work together. I used myself as an example and shared what it was like working with an opposite style, a very pushy D-style PM. This PM and I work very well together, even though we are on opposite sides. We both compromise when communicating with one another.

After this exercise, and a lot of conversations in 1:1s around this theme, Employee A and Employee B started to purposefully change their behaviours and communication to work together. One example, Employee B was always the first to speak at any discussion, and would push their ideas strongly. Now they give everyone space to talk, sometimes being the last to share. They are also being more open to other engineers’ ideas.

The reframe

After knowing my DiSC profile for a few years and not seeing a lot of value in it, I had the chance to use it to defuse a conflict in the team before it escalated.

Now, I’m constantly trying to read the people I’m working with and adapting my communication style accordingly. Sometimes we tend to overlook these tools as they are not technical, but they can help us to do our technical work better.

The most useful thing a manager can do in a team conflict is often not to solve it, but to change the framing.

Further reading

The DiSC framework is explained in more detail at https://www.discprofile.com/. The book “Surrounded by Idiots,” by Thomas Erikson, also covers these topics in more depth and it’s a very good read.