Mastering Team Dynamics and Mental Health in the Workplace with Chris Collette's Expertise

Have you ever puzzled over the complex tapestry of personalities in your office? Join me and the remarkable Chris Collette, with his 33 years of military leadership wisdom, as we decode the nuances of team dynamics in the workplace. We'll share stories and strategies that have shaped our understanding of how to navigate and harness the diverse personalities you encounter every day, unlocking the potential for greater collaboration and productivity.

In this episode, we shine a light on the often-overlooked 'shadow' effect of our own behavior and its ripple effect on colleagues. With Chris's help, we dissect the DISC personality assessment tool, guiding you through a journey of self-discovery to better understand and align your actions with your team's needs. This isn't just a chat about theoretical concepts; it's an actionable guide filled with anecdotes and tips to help you be the change you want to see in your workplace.

We wrap up with a heartfelt discussion on the imperative of mental health in our professional lives. Creating a culture of empathy and support can lead to a thriving workplace, and we celebrate leaders who have exemplified this, like Sidney Jarry of 18 Platoon. It's a conversation that honors the courage and compassion that underpin truly great leadership, leaving you with a renewed appreciation for the human element in the art of management.

You can listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/828160/2951434

We would love you to follow us on LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/

Chapters

• 0:08 Understanding Different Personality Types in Teams
• 7:27 Understanding Your Impact in the Workplace
• 12:42 Understanding the DISC Personality Assessment
• 19:17 Understanding and Applying the DISC Assessment
• 33:19 Importance of Mental Health in Workplace

Transcript

Chris Collett: 0:08

Hi and welcome to Get Amplified, the podcast for tech industry leaders and aspiring leaders, covering topics from keeping up with the pace of change, staying fulfilled in your role, looking out for the wellbeing of your team and yourself, brought to you by the Amplified Group. So, as always, we're virtual. It's my turn to be up in Manchester, vicky. I'm assuming you're back in Deeper Star for Soxfordshire.

Vic: 0:29

I am Sam hi.

Chris Collett: 0:31

And Sha, as always in the Netherlands. Are you going to surprise us one day and pop in from Brazil or something?

Sam : 0:36

No, definitely the Netherlands, hi, sam.

Chris Collett: 0:39

Fantastic and we've got our guest today, chris, so you're joining us from an area that I know really well, so the Salisbury Plains kind of area.

Siaron: 0:49

Yep Deeper Star, which is Wilkeshire, but in particular Salisbury.

Chris Collett: 0:52

Yeah, great stuff. So, Sha, what are we going to talk about on this episode?

Sam : 0:57

Thanks, sam. On this episode we will reinforce the importance of the power of understanding different personality types, further explaining disk as a personality assessment and how disk is more than an individual personality assessment in the way it relates to teams, and I'm really pleased to introduce our guest today, chris Collette, who, with his expertise in this area, will help us to discuss the topic in more detail. Vicki and I met Chris a few years ago now at a conference, and not only did we get on immediately with Chris, we were super impressed by his expertise and experiences and, frankly, his general knowledge. This guy can quote books, authors and inspirational leaders better than anyone I know. So I'm going to hand over to Chris now and perhaps, chris, you could give us a little bit of a career history before we get started.

Siaron: 1:46

Yeah, yeah, thanks. Flattered by all of what you've just said there, I'm not sure it's all completely true, but yeah. So in terms of career history, I joined the Army when I was 16 as a very naive young man who didn't really know what was going on About 10 years ago.

Siaron: 2:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, if only 33 years I did in the end. It served all over the world and did what you'd expect me to do in the military. So in terms of what I do now, I deliver leadership management training and use disk as a profiling system, which we'll talk about later, I'm sure. But my time in the Army you deal with people on a daily basis and I think you very quickly come to realise that the more you understand about people, the more you understand about yourself, the greater relationships and more productive relationships you can have and you can get you know. If that works well, then people will work for you willingly, rather than certainly the initial, my initial time in the Army it was more about a big stick that people were beaten with in order to you know. That's what the so-called good leaders did at the time.

Siaron: 2:57

Now, yeah it was yeah, absolutely, and it wasn't a good thing. I realised straight away, at 5'5 and 10 stone went through, when you know there's no way I was going to be able to wield a big stick with anybody. You have to find a different way. So behaviour and personalities was an important thing, and I didn't really realise that's what I was doing at the time. It's only when I think about it now that you know the better leaders, the ones that I admired, were those who were able to get people to do things they didn't want to do but through force of personality.

Chris Collett: 3:28

Sounds like fantastic experience.

Vic: 3:31

We said on the first podcast that we did that. We wanted to share things that we wish we'd known 20 years ago. And certainly this is something that the aha moments that went off in the training when we figured out really why things were like they were in work. And there's one particular example I want to give, which is when I was working at the MWM.

Vic: 3:56

My job was to bring the new stuff to market in Europe and I had a colleague, who let's call Klaus, who his job was to keep the lights on on the old stuff and out of work we would get on absolutely fine, but you put us in a meeting together and try and get us on the same page to move things forwards or to change direction, and it was like one of us was talking Chinese and the other was talking Russian and we just could not get on the same page at all. When I went through this training the aha moment of now I can completely understand why Klaus and I couldn't speak, and it was because I was big picture and being my dominant self and trying to pull everybody along without giving him who was more detail and more conservative in his approach. He wanted to have fact and detail and proof that what I was recommending was going to work. And just not having that and not being able to communicate that with him was the reason why it wasn't anything personal against me, it was I. This isn't.

Chris Collett: 5:11

This isn't making sense to me, but I didn't understand that you were almost the opposite ends of the spectrum. A class was almost inevitable.

Vic: 5:19

We were and I couldn't understand it. And yet Sharon would go and have a conversation with him about something and they'd be on the same page immediately. Why can this not work? I've since gone back to him and said I think this could work now and we've talked it through and we both absolutely agree that now we can understand each other's personalities and how we need to approach it. He said you know, it was as much him as it was me, it was both of us just having completely different approaches and not really understanding it. So this is really powerful and I'm absolutely thrilled that Chris is on here to share his wisdom with us, because he's got so much experience of this and can explain it so well and have so many stories to tell. So it's great to have him here.

Chris Collett: 6:04

Fantastic. I mean, I'm looking forward to learning a bit more about this as well as we go through. So, chris, if it's okay, I'll ask you a few questions and we'll try and tease out some of the details of what this disc stuff is. Yeah, absolutely, I'll certainly try and help, fantastic. So what impact do you think using the personality assessment in the workplace will have? I mean, vicky's kind of highlighted one particular example, but it must go deep in on that, presumably.

Siaron: 6:30

Well, I think, fundamentally it goes back to exactly what Vicky said there, where it fast-forward 20 years from the issue when it first manifests itself to having a conversation. That's fundamental to it all, I think, and gender's a conversation. It opens people's eyes and hopefully their ears. So it opens people's eyes into you. Know, what am I like, what makes me tick, what are my motivators, what are my stresses, if you can understand what they are, you know it's all part of this. You know emotional intelligence and understanding yourself better. But then so if it opens my eyes to me, then hopefully it opens my ears to other people, and that's calling the most important thing. What's it like for other people? What's it like to be you? What's it like to be you on a daily basis? How do I impact on that, both positively and negatively, and how can I improve the positivity and reduce the negativity?

Chris Collett: 7:17

so so for big picture people like me and Vicky it's seeing how it feels to be on the receiving end of that sort of approach.

Siaron: 7:25

I suppose, yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you could look inside yourself and say, okay, well, what shadow do I cast? We walk in the room, do people go I'm dreading this because they're big, bold and brash and they're going to dominate and I'm not going to be able to get a word in edge ways. And if you can think, actually, do you know what do I? How do I make other people feel? How do I have another? Is there a brilliant young person sat in that room who never says anything because I'm so big and bold and brash that they don't feel they can? And vice versa, if I'm a shrinking violent, how do I get my voice heard? So there's some effort to be made on both sides there. But yeah, first of all, it starts with a little bit of introspection. What am I like?

Chris Collett: 8:06

It's really interesting, isn't it? Because you know, having done 20 odd years of work and business, you start to intuit some of that stuff. But wouldn't it be really useful to know it up front, early days?

Siaron: 8:19

Absolutely. If we go back to what Vicky said, if you didn't know, 20 years ago. Actually, let me have a look at myself. How do I come across? Is that having an impact? Are we clashing because we're two P's in the same pod and we're competing for airspace and I want to be the one who says everything and we make some allowances for one another? Then that's got to create better workplaces and then better relationships and more productive work spaces.

Chris Collett: 8:45

So how would you most effectively use this program in the workplace then?

Siaron: 8:50

Fundamentally need high-level buy-in from people. I think there's definitely some merit in leaders set the tone for other people. So if they buy into it, if it's not just seen as another tick box, it's just another exercise that they're going to go through to satisfy you know a check list. I think a weakness in these kind of things is that people will do the report or the profile, they'll read it and then it gets consigned to the sideboard forever. More is never used again. Actually, it's something that should be brought out quite regularly, should be used and as a learning tool that's for continuous improvement and not just something that you read once and then throw away. So it requires work and effort and commitment on behalf of everybody, both the team, the individual.

Chris Collett: 9:36

I guess it requires a degree of introspection, which people aren't necessarily keen to do, to look at themselves in the mirror. Not necessarily from a negative standpoint, but just to understand themselves better.

Siaron: 9:49

Yeah, but a profiling system of any description offers the opportunity to do that, for it does the work for you almost, because you answer a series of questions. Then it produces something for you to read and that holds a mirror up. But yeah, you're quite right, it starts from a standpoint of what am I like? What's the shadow I cast? What impact do I have on other people? Do I like it? Do I like myself? Do I like the way I? You know, is it a reflection of me and do I like what it says?

Chris Collett: 10:17

I like that. What's the shadow that I cast for it? That sums it up for me, I think. Yeah, yeah, and it should almost be the subtitle for the podcast.

Siaron: 10:29

Well, I think it's you know. It's not the Jungian shadow. You know your dark side. It's necessarily. It's more about you know so before you walk in a room and when you leave that room, what stories do people tell about you? That's your shadow. For me, no is it?

Siaron: 10:44

Yeah, and when you do that little piece of introspection or if you're looking at yourself in it, you know, when you're in those moments where I guess everybody does it every now and then has a quick look do you like it? If you think the stories people tell you about are positive and they like them, well great, enhance them. If they're not, what you're going to do about it? So that's the sort of first step yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, makes a lot of sense.

Chris Collett: 11:08

So is there any potential for misuse with this stuff?

Siaron: 11:12

Yeah, I like anything like this. If I don't. If it's not, I use the word sold. I don't mean this in a fiscal context, but if it's not sold to people or something that's worthwhile, they can be flipping about answering the questions. Therefore, like any data input, the data is only as good as the input, or the output is only as good as the input. So if you put rubbish information in, you get rubbish information out. So if people approach it with a, I'm not really bothered by this, I just need to get out of the way. I'll answer BBB all the way through. Well, the information is going to be skewed slightly.

Chris Collett: 11:46

So, yeah, a lack of buy-in, so people need to actually properly commit to it.

Siaron: 11:50

Yeah, and if we go back to an earlier question about how you best deploy these, well, through a little bit of education at the start. This is what we're using, this is why we're using it and these are the potential benefits. If we all buy into it Makes sense.

Chris Collett: 12:02

So the tool set that you use is called disk. Yeah, do you want to maybe give us a bit of background on the tool set itself and the science behind it?

Siaron: 12:12

Yeah, yeah. So disk has been around for a long, long time, or certainly the understanding that there may be something, either environmentally or internally, which motivates us to behave in a certain way. But if you fast forward then into the 20th century, carl Jung was talking about thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition, which MBTI, another system, is largely based on. So you know, people who were recognizing thousands of years ago that there may be some things that influence our behavior, our thinking. Then modern day disk was first sort of conceived of by a gentleman called William Maston, although he was never really interested in creating a profile link system. It wasn't until 1940 that the first disk profile was produced. Walter Clark was the first person who just created disk profile and the profile is based on two dimensions, if you like, two axes, if you call it a north and a south axis and an eastern west axis. And the north and south axis looks at, if you think of the north, it's people who are fast paced and dynamic, and then the southern end, if you like, is the people who are more moderately paced. And then that's divided across the east and west by the west, a skeptical, questioning, cynical and more likely to challenge other people to those in the east who are a bit more accepting, trusting, receptive. So what that does, that if you imagine a circle, or it's described as a circumplex by a circle it divides it into four quadrants and then the disk profile is born out of those four quadrants. And the four quadrants that are described are influence, steadiness, conscientiousness and dominance, and that's the sort of basic model of it.

Siaron: 13:54

So a way that I do it is I imagine a lift scenario. So if you conjure an image of your mind that you stood outside of a lift and there's somebody stood in front of the lift and they are frantically pressing the lift button like he's going out of fashion and almost damaging it. They're hitting it so hard and muttering under their breath. Where's the lift? Where's the lift? You could say that somebody is coming from the D style and their results are oriented, action oriented, and they want it now and I'm pressing the button. Why isn't the lift here?

Siaron: 14:23

So then the lift arrives and the door opens and the lift is absolutely jam packed full of people and there's no room on the lift and inside there's somebody at the back and they jump in and we're down to hey, this is a great place to be, come on in, come and join us. This is brilliant, we're all having a great time in here. And that's somebody perhaps from the influence style, whose people are oriented, they're enthusiastic and optimistic and there's plenty of room. Come on in and even though the lift is full, there's somebody stood inside the lift who's sort of looking a bit more quizzical, thinking actually the lift is very full, and there's somebody stood outside and there's no room for them. I'll tell you what. I'll get off, I can get the next lift, it'll be fine. And so they get off and they offer their space to you waiting outside the lift.

Siaron: 15:02

And that's somebody from the steadiness style who wants to be accommodating and help someone else. And then finally, stood outside the lift. You've got someone with a clipboard and a calculator and they're looking at the lift and it's actually jam packed and they just noticed the safe working load sign on the side of the lift that says it's a thousand kilograms and they're working out the average weight for person and deciding do you know what? I'm not going to get on that lift because I've analyzed the data and it suggests there's a little bit of risk in there. And that's the way I kind of remember off-pat, if you like, the four key styles and some of the traits.

Chris Collett: 15:38

That's brilliant. That really brings it to life. Absolute genius.

Siaron: 15:42

What this suggests is that we're an amalgam of all of those four areas. One of the nice things about this, I think, is it doesn't say, it doesn't pigeonhole. One of those four, or a combination of two will provide a preference for us, a starting point from where we see the world and how we interact with it.

Chris Collett: 16:00

Sure, so to give our listeners some sort of an idea, maybe let's take a well-known figure or two and sort of guess at where they might fit in terms of the disc quadrant. So I'll put you on the spot there. So please don't feel that you have to, but could you take Bill Gates and say that he fits into the one particular quadrant? Or where is Steve Bulma fitting? Fits into another, just to use common examples. Or is that a rubbish idea?

Siaron: 16:30

Well, it's not a rubbish idea, but I should have thought of that before. I just don't think.

Chris Collett: 16:37

We didn't give you any opportunity.

Siaron: 16:40

Just thinking Donald Trump. Where would I put him?

Chris Collett: 16:43

Yeah, that would be interesting. Where would you put him on the disc set?

Siaron: 16:48

My first thought would be he'd be somewhere in the dominance scheme there.

Chris Collett: 16:53

I think that probably makes sense for better or worse.

Siaron: 16:55

Towards the left-hand side of it, towards the skeptical and questioning, the cynical piece as well. But actually, donald, he comes across as someone who is fast-paced, he wants things to happen very quickly. He is pretty skeptical and questioning about the rest of the world and the people around him. You've got to look him out of people that the attrition rate of his staff would suggest he lacks a little bit of trust in the people around him. So, yeah, I'd say he was in the dominance, but that's not to say that everyone in the dominance sphere is a Donald Trump. He's just a type of person.

Chris Collett: 17:31

Being dominant isn't necessarily a negative trait. You just need to understand how to use it and work with it.

Siaron: 17:36

Absolutely not. Without casting any aspersions on Donald Trump in particular, disc isn't an excuse for poor behavior. Poor behavior is poor behavior. It doesn't matter which of the four quadrants you find your starting point, poor behavior is poor behavior. Bad manners are bad manners, and disc doesn't seek to excuse any of that. So you know, whatever your opinion is of Donald Trump or anybody else who might form in that space, it doesn't excuse poor behavior or explain it.

Chris Collett: 18:04

Indeed, Vicky, did you have something to add there?

Vic: 18:10

I was being restrained, knowing my behavior type, that I need to be quiet, and I am working really hard on these podcasts to be quiet, and I think that's actually quite a good example.

Chris Collett: 18:25

That is a good example and you're doing magnificently well. So, chris, why did you choose disk, particularly Because you mentioned them in Miles Briggs and other similar programs? What attracted you to disk per se?

Siaron: 18:40

I think one of the issues I've had with profiling systems that I'd been exposed to in the past as a subject, if you like, during the military was that they were quite complicated and difficult to remember. Disk is not simplistic, it's pretty simple and it's easy to remember, and that was sort of its key thing. I needed something that AI liked B. When I did it, it just was a revelation to me. I was really taken by it, but also taken by its simplicity and also like the fact that it's adaptive. Not all systems are adaptive.

Siaron: 19:17

So just to explain all that beings in terms of disk, it asks a bank of questions in order to try and discern exactly where it thinks you're going to sit in the four profiles and it subdivides that into 12 to become even more accurate. However, if you answer questions consistently, the system, in simple terms, will say OK, I know where Chris sits, I can place him on the circumplex at this point here. However, if I start to answer questions in an inconsistent manner and it puts some doubt in the system's mind, I say OK, I thought this person was steadiness, and now they've answered a couple of questions I'm not sure of. It now adapts to questions and it adapts to questions to say, ok, was that just an anomaly? Was that just an accidental press of the wrong button or whatever? Or is this person consistently answering inconsistently for the style I thought they were and it will do that until it's satisfied?

Chris Collett: 20:16

And a very amplified group of clearly embraced disk as a concept and as a tool that you use in your consultancy. Have you got anything to add to that? Maybe?

Vic: 20:27

We trained in MBTI and disk, but we always recommend and prefer disk because it is so simple to use and it's very memorable and it's easy for our clients to put it into practice, because we don't want to provide workshops where everyone has a good day out and then they go back to work and get on with their day job. It's got to be practical and usable and you know we're not HR experts with business people and the fact that we can take this, understand it and apply it is the power of disk. So that's that's really why we prefer using it.

Chris Collett: 21:05

Brilliant, and I guess to both of you, probably Chris first, I suppose, what makes it different?

Siaron: 21:14

All of those things. Really, I think fundamentally because it's simple but not simplistic, and also it's an individual profile that has absolutely obvious application to the team and other people. It's because you're learning about yourself. But then the report and the online stuff goes into that. Well, how can you better, how can you create a better workplace, how can you deal better with people from other styles? And it gives you hints and tips of what you can do and what to expect from those other people, because once you've done the profile, you've got the advantage. You know, if everybody's done it well, then you kind of meet everybody's got the advantage.

Siaron: 21:52

Absolutely yeah. So I mean, perhaps a useful example is when I first left the military, my boss his name was Darren Superblok and we were friends before anything else and it's him who sort of coaxed me out of the military. We got on well at work and we worked well together and we kind of recognised we were different and there may be some strengths in the fact that we were different, but we hadn't realised how different we were until we both did the disc profile. Now I sit right in the S, in the steadiness quadrant, and I couldn't be any further into it. That's where I sit comfortably. Darren, by contrast, much like Vicky, sits right at the opposite end of the scale, if you like, in the deep, and he comes from the D-style.

Siaron: 22:41

When we sat down and worked out, okay, well, how can we make it so we meet in the middle, I realized I talk too much. I realized that he wanted fast-paced, quick decisions, he wanted enthusiasm and by contrast, he realized actually, for me, I need time to make decisions, I need time to go away and read, I need somebody to approach me with a cup of tea and chat about things before they get to the hub of the conversation or the number of the conversation. So what we did we both without talking about it too much, really we both realized there was a point in the middle at which we were better. We met somewhere there and that would make us even more productive and create a better environment. So I did things. I would go in my mind when I had a conversation with Darren, I would go with a bullet point conversation in my head. So you know, this is the issue. These are the three options. This is my preferred option, but can you let me know by tomorrow? And so he's getting that diner that he wanted and by the same token, he would come with a cup of coffee and he would chat and then he would get to what he wanted me to do.

Siaron: 23:48

So we met in the middle and it created a much better working environment. But, most importantly, what it did, it got us around the table talking, and so, in terms of a micro team, we worked much, much better together and we not made allowances, we just recognized the differences, that we had the benefits in those differences as well. So he would come rushing in with these great ideas and fantastic projects and he was bubbling over with enthusiasm and I'd be almost overwhelmed by it, not say a great deal, because that's how I am. He would go away and then I would think, okay, well, I think he's gonna need X, y and Z, so I'll just prepare this on the back of it and then two or three days later he might come back and say oh, actually I think we need X, y and Z and because of the nature of the way I deal with things, I've done it already.

Chris Collett: 24:39

You've done that already for it, yeah.

Siaron: 24:41

Yeah, so we complimented one another. But the complimentary element elementary was vastly enhanced, one we both understood where our preferences lay, and it creates a stronger team, if you do that Absolutely. There's the opportunity for a great deal of misunderstanding. So if you come to me with an idea, I might say, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Well, that doesn't come across as birringing over with enthusiasm. I am enthusiastic about it, but the way I show it- your enthusiastic is different from somebody else's.

Siaron: 25:12

Absolutely yeah. It's not right, it's not wrong and it's just the way that I do it. And once you come to understand how other people deal with things, how they process information, the team becomes much better. Absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Chris Collett: 25:28

Talking about enthusiastic Charles waving at me enthusiastically.

Sam : 25:32

I think she has something to add at this point, I am and, funny enough, I'm exactly as Chris just described. I'm not the one that sounds enthusiastic, even if I am inside, and I just wanted to really strengthen the point that Chris has made there. From a complimentary point of view, vicky and I are very much on different sides of the disc, so Vicky is a DI and even though I have D, I'm a DC. So Vicky comes bounding in with all of these great ideas and I'm just I just actually recoil a little and think right, how can I turn this into something practical? How can I actually structure this? And, yes, I have some skeptical in me. So how is this gonna work? Will it work? So we very much compliment each other with our personality types, but before we had this understanding, we didn't know why that worked so well. But now we do. So it's just such a powerful tool to have the knowledge, that whole thing. Francis Bacon, knowledge is power, goodness me in this situation.

Sam : 26:42

it so is because it can help when you're in a team. I have an example where somebody who was very much in the S like Chris is we never actually turned around and said what do you think? But goodness, they have so many great ideas that could have made and accelerated the projects we're working on enormously, but we didn't take the time to think, well, why is this person not saying anything and what can they contribute? So that's where the power of this tool comes in. So I just kind of wanted to make that point and I was jumping up and down, as you say.

Siaron: 27:17

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Collett: 27:18

That's great to make that point, that's as enthusiastic as I think I've ever seen.

Vic: 27:21

There we go. Sam, you asked me the question earlier why do we like disk? We like disk because of how powerful it's, everything we've just described there. But also to Chris's point, it's about the power of disk within a team, because you do a team disk map and you see where everybody else is around the disk. The penny just drops. That you can understand why people behave like they do in the team. And so many workshops we're doing In fact I've got one coming up on Thursday and I can tell from the way that they filled in their assessment it's gonna be a team of two halves I've not even observed the meeting yet because we've got people that come from the D-style who are very happy. They think that their team is working wonderfully. And then you've got people that are esters and eyes or coming from those styles and you can feel the frustration because they're not able to voice their opinions, because they're being dominated by the people that are talking too much, that are Ds, and we've seen this over and over again.

Chris Collett: 28:30

One observation I'd make from sitting here. From my point of view, I would probably consider myself to be coming much more from the dominant side of things. In a team context, you can use that dominant characteristic to make opportunities for those who are less forthcoming to speak by, I suppose, almost chairing the meeting or managing the meeting in such a way that you make sure that there's airtime for those who wouldn't be so confident in chairing their opinion. I guess that's maybe a reasonable example of the team dynamics of the disc profile.

Vic: 29:01

It's a brilliant example and it is one of the things that I think we bring more benefit to teams, because part of what we're trying to do is give everybody around the table a voice. You know the work that we do in the boardroom. We talk about robust debate and diversity on teams. That's because everybody around that boardroom table needs to have a voice. It can't just be a dominant character, and actually that's called out in the code of governance. So if you're absolutely bang on with saying that that is the role of a chair, yeah, exactly.

Chris Collett: 29:35

Yeah, even if you pick a board that is of incredible diversity, if you don't give everybody within it airtime, you're failing.

Siaron: 29:42

Can I just pick up on something that could lead people down a pathway? Not all leaders come from the dominant style. There's a danger that people think actually that's where leadership emanates from and that's clearly not the case. We look throughout history. There are people who come from all over and I guess we would have all worked with and for people who come from one of the other three styles. But there is a tendency to think actually that's where leaders will come from and that isn't the case.

Siaron: 30:09

The skill comes in whoever the leader is. If they are, if they emanate from the dominant style, is recognising. Actually I need to keep my voice down a little bit. I need to, exactly as you just described and Vicky just described, bring in the shrinking war violence into the conversation, because they have something to say. Conversely, those leaders and dare I say I was a bit of a leader in the military at times I have to then come out of my comfort zone and draw people in and make sure everybody gets a say and cool the more boisterous dominant people down a little bit in order to provide the environment where everyone thinks that they've got an equal vote or not. Everyone thinks that everyone does absolutely have an equal voice and that's the skill of the leader and the skill of the leader in, from whatever style they emanate from, deploying their skills to best effect but recognising that they might have to step out of their comfort zone and go into one of the other three styles to welcome everybody into it.

Chris Collett: 31:08

That makes sense. Thanks for that really useful observation. So what would be the key takeaways then as to why an organisation could consider using a tool like disk?

Siaron: 31:22

I suppose they've got to want to get better. There has to be a genuine desire to create a better working environment, to create better teams, a happier, healthier, more productive workplace. So they've got to want to do it. That's sort of a key takeaway. If it's just a tick box exercise, well you know it's not a complete waste of time because there will be people who will take it and run with it. But yeah, there has to be a buy-in across the piece if you can. But it can create greater understanding of the people you work with and greater understanding of yourself. That's its first point. Is you understand yourself better? Then, in understanding yourself better, that opens the door to be able to understand the people you work with better and that, in turn, creates a more productive, more friendly, good place to work. And who wouldn't want to go to somewhere where it's a good place to be? And this can help engender that Really important.

Chris Collett: 32:20

I guess there's an angle about how feeling that your voice is being heard and that your opinion is valid is really important for your overall well-being at work. Yeah.

Vic: 32:34

And actually I think that was one of our motivations to get into doing what we're doing in the first place. We're seeing so many people at work feeling stressed and actually having people in my family who felt so stressed at work because they felt like they didn't have a voice and they weren't being heard and politics and how much that impacts it, because decisions are being made without people feeling like their opinions and their experience have been considered. Everyone wants to feel like they're contributing at work. I think being able to almost provide a more level playing field is what helps to relieve the stress.

Siaron: 33:19

Mental health and well-being is. You know, if you're a leader, a manager, a co-worker, a peer, a friend, why would you not be interested in the mental health and well-being of the people around you? If people are healthy and by health I mean physically and mentally there is no health without mental health. If people are healthy and happy and they want to go to work because where their place of work is a place where they feel valued, is a place where they feel respected, where they do have a voice, where they do have an opinion which is counted for and is welcomed and asked for, then that's got to be a better place to work. That's got to be a team that is functioning really, really well.

Siaron: 33:58

But mental health and well-being you know, when you look at the statistics of how many people are unwell and a lot of it is caused by workplace stress If we can understand ourselves and the sound of people around us better and we make effort to change the environment so that it is a friendly and nice place to be as well as productive At the end of the day, we go to work for a reason then that's got to be good for all of us. And if people want to be at work and they're not looking for excuses to go and to not be there. And also, if there's a problem at the moment, if people are unwell, mentally unwell they'll, in an awful lot of cases, they will ring in and say they've hurt their back or their leg.

Vic: 34:36

Yeah.

Siaron: 34:37

If you've got an environment where people can be open, honest and frank and vulnerable with one another and say to one another actually you know I'm feeling unwell, but it's because of work, it's stress, and this is what's stressing me out, and or the behaviors of certain people are stressing me out. If you've had that conversation already, if you've had created an open and honest dialogue where people can come out of their shell, if you emanate from the style and talk to somebody else and say you know the things that are going on and the things that are doing are affecting me adversely and it's affecting my productivity. Let's have a conversation about how we change it. You know why? Would you not want to be in a place where you could do that? It seems to me that that's, you know. That's where we'd all like to be.

Chris Collett: 35:17

Absolutely. That makes an awful sense, and we'll be covering more about mental health in a future episode, right Vicky?

Vic: 35:26

Yes, we will yeah.

Chris Collett: 35:27

Shall I Over to you.

Sam : 35:30

So I'm going to again introduce our hero man. So we're an amplified group, we have an image, a stickman, a bit of fun, just like us, a bit more relaxed, and he's called hero, and it's not about us being heroes, but making our clients heroes, and so I kind of like to put our guests on the spot a little bit and ask them who the hero is. Before I do that, though, chris, I just want to say today I think you're my hero. You've been amazing. I've really, really enjoyed listening to you and your experiences, so thank you very much for that. But so there we go, chris. Let's hear from you who would you say would be your hero, and it could be anybody, from a very simple thing like you know me this morning handing over my 11 month old puppy to the dog walker and thanking her for taking him out of my hands or somebody that's inspired you over the years. So what's your thoughts?

Siaron: 36:29

It's a really difficult question to answer because I don't generally have heroes. It's what the people I admire. But I was thinking about it just then and actually I'm going to be slightly controversial and I'm going to do a thing which is my hero and that's a thing called. It's a group of people called 18 Platoon, and 18 Platoon if you push me and narrow it down to a hero, it would be. The platoon commander is a gentleman called Sidney Jarry, but Sidney Jarry was 19 when he was thrashed into in 1944, was sent to Normandy to take over 18 Platoon.

Siaron: 37:04

18 Platoon fought violently they had done throughout the war and you know, in 1944, sidney Jarry is a 19 year old was sent to command these men who had fought through World War Two and were a really close knit team of people and at 19, he took over and became a phenomenal leader of these men. He led by example, he led through force of personality, because he was 19 and naive and young and wasn't really sure of things, and he was leading people who were battle hardened, who fought and some of whom had died in fighting. So the platoon had morphed into different things and he was able to galvanize them together. He was able to take over at such an early age, to recognize the strengths and the areas of development in the platoon and to convince these people that this boy of 19 was somebody you should be listening to. And he won the military cross in the end, which is no mean feat, but it's that it wasn't just him.

Siaron: 38:04

He wrote a great book called 18 Platoon. It's in. So my hero is the platoon. Although Sidney Jarry led them, they they were just a phenomenal team of people who cared about one another, who fought alongside and did things for one another in the face of adversity that, you know, would lead most of us in tears, you know, or wondering if we could do the same thing. So so 18 Platoon would be my hero.

Chris Collett: 38:28

Well, thanks, Chris. That was a brilliant example. I really enjoyed chatting with you today and I've certainly learned quite a lot and interesting to think about where I would be on that circumplex. I've also learned the new word. Circumplex is just such a magnificent word. I'm really pleased with that one. Every day is a school day, so thank you for that. I really really appreciate it, Appreciate your insight. So thanks for listening to get amplified from the amplified group. If you liked it, please be sure to subscribe and we'll see you next time.