Going it alone…
Elżbieta and Katarzyna met while working together at a large advertising agency specialising in organising events, especially various conferences and congresses with a strong team-building element done „in style” (balloon flights, parachute jumps, or at the very least paintball).
The two women worked on the same team and became very fond of each other. Seeing the value of the contracts they were working on and how it compared to their own earnings, they decided to set up their own training, conference and event agency. They were joined by Łukasz, who until then had been handling public relations at their employer’s company.
The division of tasks the team agreed on among themselves largely mirrored what they had done at their previous company. Elżbieta was to take care of the event and team-building side – especially unusual, premium-class activities; Kasia handled the conference area and, as CEO, tied together the whole of the company’s operations; and Łukasz was responsible for publicising the work of both their young agency and their clients – in other words, PR in the broad sense.
Unfortunately, running their own business didn’t turn out to be as rosy as everyone had first imagined. Kasia focused on winning contracts through tenders, and Łukasz publicised every event as best he could – except that… there wasn’t much to publicise. From the very start of the company, Ela hadn’t sold a single event. Nor did they win any tenders, because they had no track record, and experience organising similar projects was often a basic condition for taking part in the process. Their only income was brought in by Kasia, who, thanks to her many contacts, secured contracts to organise two conferences.
Łukasz publicised them effectively in both traditional and social media. Perhaps even – in Kasia’s opinion – too effectively, because he arranged interviews in which he himself took part alongside a representative of the conference’s substantive organiser. This irritated Kasia more and more. After all, she is the head of the company and she is the one who gives it its face; any interviews should be with her, not with Łukasz, who hadn’t even asked whether she wanted to take part in any of them. He didn’t consult her. What’s more, he hadn’t told her anything about these interviews at all! So Katarzyna decided that she would monitor Łukasz’s work and question him closely about his current activities. This behaviour on the part of their boss angered Łukasz: „Stop constantly checking up on me and questioning me as if I were a kindergartner. It’s unbearable! I’m doing everything to promote our company, and I’m good at it,” he said. Kasia was about to say that what he was best at was self-promotion, but she bit her tongue. It might have sounded petty, and Łukasz might have thought she was jealous of his media activity. And being jealous and petty, in Kasia’s view, didn’t befit her as the boss. She couldn’t risk losing face.
Then there was Ela. Always calm and composed – something Kasia had greatly valued in her back in their corporate days – now so quiet that she was almost absent. She spent whole days hunched over her computer, yet without bringing the company any benefit from it. This „mental absence” of her friend irritated Kasia and, at the same time, worried her. Maybe she had some problems? Kasia remembered that Ela was a single mother, but surely that should make her even more keen to earn money and provide her children with a decent life. Instead, Ela behaved like a zombie. Her body was in the office, but her mind was somewhere else entirely… Kasia decided to give her time to get her family problems under control, and as soon as she noticed that Ela had returned to her old form, she would talk to her about the low effectiveness of her work.
Meanwhile, the company’s problems were mounting, and the partners were drifting further and further apart. The atmosphere was becoming increasingly tense and could erupt at any moment, resulting in the dissolution of the company…
Before it came to that, Kasia sought advice from a MaxieDISC® consultant she knew, and on his recommendation ordered MaxieDISC® tests for everyone.
What came to light?
Elżbieta is a person with an S style – kind, likeable, helpful, trustworthy and someone who completes her tasks, provided she knows what she is supposed to do! Katarzyna, however, never told Elżbieta what she expected of her, assuming that she knew it herself, since she was, in theory, doing the same thing she had done at their former job. Back then, though, both Kasia and Ela had had their own superiors. And Elżbieta’s superior used to inform her precisely of the tasks she was to carry out, and sometimes even instructed her on how to complete them and what the desired results of her work should be. Kasia had completely forgotten about this! It seemed to her that now, „on their own”, each of them would simply know what to do and would just do it – without any reminders, prompts, instructions or oversight. And yet, despite this, Kasia started to monitor Łukasz, which annoyed him greatly.
Łukasz, you see, is a person with an ID style – a sociable extrovert with a thousand ideas a minute, who makes contact with others easily, acts quickly, likes movement, buzz and the glare of the spotlight, and can’t stand being monitored, having someone look over his shoulder or stand behind his back. These are behaviours and preferences typical of people with a dominant I style. However, in Łukasz’s MaxieDISC® profile, the D style is also strongly represented, which means he isn’t in the habit of consulting anyone about his ideas and decisions. Like a born boss, a person with a strong D takes risks on their own responsibility and acts without asking anyone for their opinion. He also doesn’t like to consult his ideas, because he takes criticism badly.
Kasia, on the other hand, is a person representing as many as three styles:
D – which makes her the natural leader of the group, but also exposes her to conflict with Łukasz, who also has a strong D;
C – thanks to which she moves efficiently through tender procedures, effectively administers the company, including managing the budget, allowing the company to keep functioning despite many difficulties; and
S – which makes Katarzyna show people trust, but also worry about them and, striving for a good atmosphere in the company, often avoid actions that might be poorly received by others. Kasia is fair, wants to be fair, and expects that others are and want to be fair too.
So what made Katarzyna decide to monitor Łukasz? It was her „high C” at work, this being the style most opposed to I. It should be stressed here that Kasia herself has no representation of the I style in her profile, which means that Łukasz’s actions and behaviour may have been completely incomprehensible to her…
MaxieDISC® – effectively improving communication within a team
By getting to know their own operating styles and discussing them together with a MaxieDISC® consultant, the partners understood how their dominant styles set them apart from one another, how they affect their way of thinking and perceiving the world, and, as a result, the actions they take. After the consultations and a discussion of all the results, Katarzyna, Elżbieta and Łukasz decided to:
- Hold regular management meetings twice a week (Monday, Thursday), in order to agree and divide up the tasks for the given week (Monday) and to verify the state of their completion (Thursday). To streamline the completion of tasks, the company implemented a project management system based on free online tools, allowing them to monitor the progress of work, add tasks, mark the stage of their completion, the people responsible, and so on. The team also jointly developed procedures for carrying out particular activities, including those within Elżbieta’s area of responsibility, so that she would have a clearly defined course of action;
- Hire someone (ideally an intern), preferably with an SC or CS style, to take care of office matters – above all, preparing tender documentation, which would take some of the load off Katarzyna. Such a person would report to Łukasz, which would satisfy the need to lead others that is natural for a D;
- Give themselves the right to ask questions and consult one another whenever they felt the need and had any doubts about the direction or manner of their actions;
- Have Łukasz fulfil his creative side on social media – running the company fanpage and blog, as well as a YouTube and Snapchat channel, plus ad hoc activities such as live streams on Facebook, etc. The aforementioned activities are signed both with his name and with the brand of the agency he represents as its marketing and PR director. For television, radio and press interviews, however, he books Katarzyna;
- On top of all this, of course, being fully aware of their own and their partners’ MaxieDISC® styles, Kasia, Ela and Łukasz added mutual understanding and acceptance of their differences, which stopped dividing them and instead created new possibilities for their work.
The company caught the wind in its sails. The MaxieDISC® diagnosis allowed it to strengthen and unite a team that was already on the verge of falling apart, to gain new perspectives for action and to modernise its brand through activity on social media and the implementation of project management tools.