How DISC Team Building Can Help Managers Address 5 Common Team Problems

Your team has capable people, yet decisions drag, the same few voices fill every meeting, and small misunderstandings keep turning into friction. Differences in how people prefer to work can contribute to these problems, but managers may not always recognize what’s happening.

DISC team building helps managers and employees understand how behavioural preferences can influence communication, decision-making and collaboration. Through individual assessments and facilitated team discussions, participants can explore these differences and identify practical changes to how they work together. The goal is to move beyond understanding DISC styles to applying those insights to real team challenges.

We’ll look at five common team problems, how DISC insights can help managers approach them and what teams can gain from putting those insights into practice together.

Key Insights

• Capable teams still clash. Slow decisions, missed ideas and recurring friction often come from differences in working style.
• DISC gives the team a shared language. People stop reading each other’s style as attitude and start talking about what each person needs to do good work.
• The value comes from practice and implementation. Understanding DISC profiles is only the starting point. Facilitated discussion and practice can help teams develop new approaches, apply them at work and make lasting changes to how they operate.
• DISC describes preferences only. It does not measure intelligence, skill, or potential.

Why do working styles affect team performance?

A team of experienced, capable people can still underperform. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) reviewed the research on what makes teams effective. Its High-performing teams evidence review points to trust, shared understanding, and making full use of each member’s expertise.

Differences in working styles can affect all three. For example, when one person interprets a colleague’s caution as stalling, trust may suffer. When quieter members hold back, the team may miss valuable contributions. DISC can help managers recognize when behavioural preferences are contributing to these situations and consider how to respond.

Exploring these differences through DISC team building can give managers and employees a shared starting point for discussing how they work together.

What are the four DISC styles?

Most people are a blend of styles, with one or two that stand out. No style is better than another. Each brings something a team needs.

The table describes common behavioural tendencies, not fixed rules about how everyone with a particular DISC style will behave.

DISC describes behavioural preferences, not intelligence, competence, motivation or potential. A person’s DISC style cannot tell you how capable they are or how well they’ll perform in a particular role. Managers should never use DISC profiles to make hiring or promotion decisions, limit opportunities or make assumptions about someone’s abilities.

Which team problems can DISC help managers address?

Each problem below starts with a familiar workplace situation, shows which DISC styles are involved, and ends with steps a manager can take.

1. Decisions take too long

A manager needs the team to choose a new scheduling system by Friday. Two people have compared the options and are ready to vote. A third wants to test both systems with real data first. A fourth says little in the meeting but is worried about how the change will affect the staff who use the system every day.

DISC can help explain some of the different approaches at play:

• D and I (Dominance and Influence): decides fast and adjusts later.
• C (Conscientiousness): wants the facts checked before committing.
• S (Steadiness): focuses on how a change will affect others, and often raises concerns after the meeting instead of during it.

Each sees the others as the problem. Yet each is bringing something the decision needs.

What managers can do: Set up how the decision gets made before the meeting.

• Send the options and the comparison two days ahead. The C gets time to check the data.
• Ask each person for concerns in writing or one-on-one. This gives people who prefer time to reflect or are less comfortable speaking up in meetings another opportunity to contribute.
• Name who decides and when. For example: “I’ll make the final call Thursday at noon, based on your input.” The D gets a firm date, and everyone knows a decision is coming.

2. Good ideas are being missed

In a weekly planning meeting, two team members do most of the talking. They pitch ideas, build on each other’s suggestions, and the meeting moves on. A newer analyst says nothing. Two days later, she emails the manager about a scheduling conflict nobody caught.

• I (Influence): thinks out loud and is comfortable sharing ideas before they are fully formed.
• D (Dominance): responds quickly and steers the discussion toward a conclusion.
• S and C (Steadiness and Conscientiousness): think before speaking, and often hold back until their point is complete.

The analyst had identified an important issue, but the meeting hadn’t given her an effective opportunity to raise it.

What managers can do: Build more than one way to contribute into every meeting.

• Send the agenda and the key questions a day ahead. People who think before speaking arrive ready.
• On decisions that matter, hear from everyone before opening the floor. Ask each person for one comment, in turn or in writing.
• After the meeting, ask the quieter members directly: “What did we miss?” Then bring their answers back to the group.

3. Small misunderstandings create recurring friction

In a project review, a team lead says, “This timeline won’t work. Redo it.” To her, the matter is settled and nothing personal was meant. The coordinator who built the timeline hears criticism of her work and stays upset for days. When the coordinator later raises her own concerns, she softens them so much that the team lead doesn’t realize there’s a problem.

• D (Dominance): direct, brief and focused on the task. Means no offence and expects none to be taken.
• S (Steadiness): values tact and good working relationships. Takes blunt feedback personally and softens her own concerns until they are easy to miss.

Each reads the other’s style as an attitude. One seems harsh. The other seems vague.

What managers can do: Make different communication styles something the team talks about openly.

• Have each person share how they prefer to give and receive feedback. A team meeting is enough.
• Coach direct communicators to add one line of context. “The timeline misses the March deadline. Can you rework the last two phases?” lands very differently from “Redo it.”
• Coach indirect communicators to state the concern in their first sentence.
• Treat disrespect as disrespect. Style explains tone. It never excuses rudeness.

4. Team members struggle to work together

A manager sets up daily 30-minute check-ins for a new project. Half the team likes them: they get updates and can talk through problems as they come up. The other half start blocking off their calendars to protect focus time, and attendance drops every week.

• I and S (Influence and Steadiness): value regular contact. The I wants energy and ideas. The S wants to stay connected and know where things stand.
• D and C (Dominance and Conscientiousness): want to work on their own once the goal is clear. The D wants to move faster. The C wants time to concentrate and get it right

These are possible preferences, not automatic divisions between DISC styles. Individual team members may have different needs depending on the work and circumstances. Neither half is wrong. The problem is one way of working applied to every task.

What managers can do: Agree as a team on when to work together and when to work alone.

• Sort the work. Planning, problem-solving and handoffs need the group. Most other tasks don’t.
• Replace daily check-ins with two set meetings a week, plus a shared status document everyone updates by a set time.
• Set one clear way to ask for help between meetings, such as a team channel with a same-day response.

5. Pressure changes how people interact

The organization announces a restructuring, with details to follow in a month. Within a week, one team member is pressing the manager for a plan. Another keeps asking questions the manager can’t answer yet. A third talks it over with colleagues all day. A fourth, normally the team’s steadiest member, has stopped volunteering for anything.

• D (Dominance): pushes for action and control.
• I (Influence): talks it through with others, which can feed rumours.
• S (Steadiness): worries about the impact on people and withdraws.
• C (Conscientiousness): looks for information and certainty.

These responses reflect behavioural preferences, but circumstances, experience and individual concerns also influence how people react to uncertainty.

What managers can do: Give each person what they need to keep working.

• Tell the team what is known, what isn’t known yet, and when they’ll hear more. Then keep that date.
• Put key information in writing so the C has something to refer back to and the I has accurate facts to pass on.
• Give the D something to own that moves the work forward during the wait.
• Hold short one-on-ones and ask each person what they need. The S is unlikely to bring it up unprompted.

How do you turn DISC insights into lasting change?

Understanding everyone’s DISC style is a useful starting point, but awareness alone doesn’t change how a team works. The real value comes when team members practise different approaches, agree on changes to their working habits and put those changes into practice.

1. Understand preferences. Each person learns their own style and the styles of their colleagues.
2. Discuss the impact. The team identifies where style differences are slowing decisions, sidelining people or causing friction.
3. Agree on changes. The team commits to specific changes, like sending agendas ahead or setting decision deadlines.
4. Apply and review. Team members practise their new approaches, use them in everyday situations and review what’s working at a team meeting a month later.

Working through these steps as a team is different from simply receiving individual DISC profiles. A facilitated session gives everyone an opportunity to discuss their preferences, explore how those differences affect their work and practise responding to realistic situations together. It also helps the team agree on changes that everyone understands and can put into practice.

Managers should participate alongside their teams. Their own behavioural preferences can influence how meetings are run, decisions are made and feedback is delivered. When everyone participates, including the manager, the discussion becomes an opportunity for the whole team to consider what they can do differently.

The manager then helps make those changes stick by reinforcing the team’s agreements, addressing recurring friction and revisiting working arrangements as the team’s needs evolve.

Is DISC team building right for your team?

DISC team building is worth considering when differences in behavioural preferences are contributing to recurring challenges in how people communicate, make decisions and work together. Some signs to look for include:

• Team members misread each other’s intentions.
• Decisions stall or cause frustration.
• Some people’s ideas rarely make it into the discussion.
• The team can’t agree on how much to collaborate.
• Communication breaks down under pressure.

Before the workshop, name the change you want to see, such as “make decisions within one meeting” or “hear from every team member before major decisions.” A clear target gives the team something to work toward and a way to check progress afterward.

DISC isn’t the right solution for every team challenge. Problems involving unclear responsibilities, insufficient resources, ineffective processes or serious unresolved conflict need to be addressed directly. Understanding behavioural preferences can support better working relationships, but it cannot replace sound management practices.

Bring DISC to your team

PMC Training’s DiSC team building workshop, Powerful Team Building with DiSC Personality Profiles, gives your team its individual and team DiSC reports and a facilitated session to put them to work.

If these challenges sound familiar, ask us how a facilitated DISC workshop could help your team put these insights into practice.