What Style Combinations Work Best for Specific Office Roles?

I think we would all agree that one of our main goals in our office is to build a fully functioning team that serves our patients well. We’ve discussed the huge benefits in previous posts:

• Personal satisfaction for team members
• Everyone can succeed
• Minimal turnover
• Minimal rehiring and retraining costs
• Much less stress on everyone

Years ago, when we first started hiring staff, we only knew we were short-handed and needed to get “more hands on deck”. Our first hire was just for “more help” and we brought on a nice young woman from a local farm family who we thought would be a hard worker and help carry the load. But we were “hiring blind” and ended up having to let her go… to everyone’s relief.

Once we learned how to use the DISC Styles to place people in our office, our process improved. In last week’s post, “So Where Do the Best DISC Styles Fit in Our Office”, we focused on general guidelines for which Styles are best for which staff positions.

This week, I want to take this process to the next level. Remember, we are all combinations of the four DISC Styles. As examples, in the diagram below, I’ve listed some office roles and the combinations that we found work the best in each of them:

• If the Business Office staff also handled keeping accounts current, not only would they need the High C for details, they also needed a fairly High D.
• The Front Desk people required High I profiles, but also some S-Style for patience with their constant challenges and some C as well to keep the schedule running on time.
• As we saw in the example in last week’s blog post, it certainly works better for the Lab Staff to have an abundance of C-Style, but also to be a Low I-Style, so they are content to work alone without the people interaction.
• The person who did the New Patient Exams (that was ME!) needed some strong S-Style to warmly welcome people and patiently persevere with the thorough New Patient process, but also some C-Style since it was critical to get those initial details right.

Your combinations may look different than ours – each office divides up their roles to best fit their situation and practice style. But whatever the best combinations are, we found it was a huge plus to the people on our staff to have them fit where they were asked to work and could contribute in a way that fit their strengths.

I want to encourage you to begin making some notes about your Office Roles. Then notice what Styles are needed in those Roles. Both you and your staff will love having a Fully Functioning Team!

Coming Soon: My goal is to put together a workbook for the process of placing the best DISC Styles in different roles in an office. I’ll keep you posted!

QUESTION: What Style combinations would work best for the different roles in your office? I’d love to hear your thoughts and observations. Please share with me in the comment section below.