In today’s fast-paced and competitive business landscape, the success of an organization hinges on the strength and effectiveness of its teams. High-performing teams don’t just happen by chance; they are intentionally cultivated and nurtured through shared behaviors and values. One of the most influential frameworks in team development is the New York Times best-seller, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, introduced by renowned author and organizational consultant Patrick Lencioni. With more than 4 million copies sold and a trusted model, it is the definitive guide for building high-performing teams worldwide.

Here’s a bit about the power of The Five Behaviors^®:

The Five Behaviors model offers a comprehensive approach to cultivating teams by building trust, fostering healthy conflict, promoting commitment, ensuring accountability, and achieving collective results. It provides a roadmap for teams to not only achieve their goals but to thrive and excel in their performance.

Are you ready to take your team to new heights? Let’s begin our exploration of The Five Behaviors and discover the transformative power they hold in creating highly cohesive and successful teams. In this blog series, we will dive deep into each of The Five Behaviors, exploring their importance, practical implementation strategies, and the transformative impact they can have on team dynamics. Before we do that, let’s take a high-level look at each behavior and how it can help your teams rise together:

TRUST

The foundational behavior of a cohesive team is trust. Although many people think of trust as the ability to predict a person’s behavior based on experience, that’s not what we’re talking about here. Rather, in the context of a cohesive team, trust means a willingness to be completely vulnerable with one another—to let down our guard, admit our flaws, and ask for help.

 

CONFLICT

Conflict is often considered taboo, especially at work, and people may spend inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to avoid the kind of passionate debates that are essential to any great team. However, teams that are willing to engage in productive conflict tend to resolve issues and create the best possible solutions in the shortest period of time.

By productive conflict, we mean debate that’s focused on concepts and ideas but avoids mean-spirited, personal attacks.

 

COMMITMENT

If team members don’t commit, they’re just half-heartedly going along with decisions, which means they’re unlikely to have the kind of alignment necessary to reach their goals. In the context of a cohesive team, commitment means having clarity around decisions and moving forward with complete buy-in from every member of the team, even those who initially disagreed with the decision.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Once everyone on a team is committed to a clear plan of action, they will be more willing to hold one another accountable. In the context of teamwork, accountability is the willingness of team members to call their peers on performance or behaviors that might hurt the team. Accountability can be one of the toughest behaviors to implement on a team because it means overcoming the interpersonal discomfort that accompanies confronting peers about their behavior. However, with practice and a foundation of trust, having accountability becomes easier and helps teams grow.

RESULTS

The ultimate goal of encouraging trust, conflict, commitment, and accountability is to achieve results. And yet, as it turns out, one of the greatest challenges to team success is inattention to results. In the context of a cohesive team, results refer to the collective goals of the team; they are not limited to financial measures but are more broadly related to expectations and outcome-based performance.

Whether you are a leader or an individual contributor, understanding and embracing these behaviors will unlock the true potential of your team. We look forward to embarking on a journey through The Five Behaviors, where you will gain invaluable insights, practical tips, and real-world examples that will empower you to foster a culture of cohesion, trust, and excellence within your own team.

This blog content belongs to Everything DiSC, a Wiley brand.

DiSC^® is a highly memorable and valuable tool both in the workplace and in personal life. However, the real value comes when participants learn to keep using it beyond the classroom!

To ensure the DiSC principles achieve their full potential, it’s the facilitator’s job to ensure that this journey of learning is continued and applied on an ongoing basis, to integrate it as part of an organization’s culture.

Why DiSC Fades

Many organizations adopt DiSC, deliver a workshop or two, then move on. The reasons it fades include:

• Lack of reinforcement in daily work

• No ownership or accountability (no internal certified user to support learners after the initial experience)

• No mechanisms to refresh or revisit insights

• Poor alignment between DiSC language and organizational practices

To avoid that, we need a deliberate, sustained approach.

Thankfully for us, DiSC is designed for deepened, ongoing learning. The following hints and tips are some of the ways that certified DiSC users can encourage their clients to continue using DiSC.

1. Start with leadership alignment and modeling
   Leaders must use DiSC language, show adaptation, and model behaviors themselves. When they talk about style differences, others will notice.

2. Embed DiSC into existing routines
   Use DiSC talk in 1:1s, team meetings, project debriefs, performance reviews, and hiring conversations.

3. Use visual cues and reminders
   Posters, desk cards, digital background images — small cues can trigger style awareness in everyday workflows. Contact us and we’ll be happy to share different materials with you.

4. Run periodic “refresh” workshops or micro-sessions
   Even 30–60 minute refreshers help — revisit cornerstone DiSC principles, share stories of how you’ve used DiSC with others, etc.

5. Encourage peer-to-peer sharing of “style hacks”
   Ask people to share small adjustments they made based on DiSC and their outcomes.

6. Integrate DiSC into development processes
   Make DiSC part of development processes and programs — use it in recruitment, onboarding, leadership development, or coaching.

7. Use DiSC in change initiatives and conflict resolution
   When designing a change rollout, consider style differences in communication, pacing, and involvement. Utilize DiSC to navigate and resolve conflicts by understanding the different motivations and fears of the conflicting parties.

8. DiSC® Profiles Display
   Encourage employees to display their DiSC style somewhere visible, like on their desk, office door or any social platform. This acts as a constant reminder of the diverse communication styles within the team.

9. DiSC Champions
   Designate DiSC champions within your organization who are passionate about the framework and can promote its use in various departments. Consider sending at least one member of a team to the DiSC® Certification program to get further expertise and increase the value your organization gets from DiSC.

10. Leverage a dynamic digital platform — Catalyst

Everything DiSC^® Catalyst gives you a living, evolving environment to keep DiSC fresh:

• Participants can view not only their own style but compare with others — fosters empathy and dialogue

• Unlimited group maps let you visualize team style dynamics and surface conversations

• Micro-learning content keeps knowledge bite-sized and digestible

• Modules like Management, Worksmart, and Agile EQ layer further depth without needing new assessments

• Administrators can assign learning content, track activity, and manage groups easily

• Learners can revisit insights over time and apply them to new situations

Catalyst turns DiSC from a single event into a continuous development journey.

Finally, always remember that communication is key! It is what DiSC is all about – effective communication and improved understanding! Therefore, leading by example is key, whether you are a facilitator or a leader in an organization. Being open and transparent with regards to DiSC, acknowledging everyone’s value, and reinforcing the Cornerstone Principles are key to creating a positive DiSC experience, both during your session and keeping DiSC alive long-term.

In this educational video, Dr. Mark Scullard, Sr. Director of Product Innovation at Wiley, helps viewers understand emotional intelligence and sheds light on why it can be so challenging to make good decisions in social or emotionally-charged situations.

We really recommend taking those 15 minutes to watch Mark speak.

• When an individual took it right before or after a big life event
• When an individual took it in their non-native language
• When an individual was distracted when they took it
• When an individual took it more than 3 years ago and has changed work roles
• When an individual was not authentic in their responses the first time that they completed the assessment
• When an individual is transitioning to a new career or work environment
• When an individual is working on personal growth or development

Here’s a hard business truth: no workplace is free of the ravages of distrust. Anyone who’s ever held a job knows the frustrations that emerge when coworkers don’t trust each other – the miscommunications, rivalries, inefficiencies, morale problems, and turnover that in the end distract people from their work and make life stressful. And ultimately, research shows, costs money.

Dr. Mark Scullard, a Ph.D. psychologist who serves as senior director of product innovation for Wiley, has studied distrust in the workplace and found its source: individual insecurity. It’s not insecurity itself that’s the problem, though; it’s our drive to cover it up.

This webinar recording offers you a deeper dive into:

– What insecurity looks like in the workplace
– How DiSC® can help us understand the hidden psychological factors that drive our insecurities
– What you can do to address insecurity’s drain on your company culture

Watch the webinar here:

Curious as to how various assessments compare?

A comparative summary of leading assessment tools

Start reading the comparison here:

How do you help people become more emotionally intelligent?

In this educational video, Dr. Mark Scullard, Sr. Director of Product Innovation at Wiley, answers this question by inviting viewers into a research-backed process that leverages the DiSC model to develop emotional intelligence at scale.

Assumptions That Can Get Them in Trouble

Even if we’d never say them out loud, we all have unconscious assumptions that sometimes get us into trouble. Here are some common ones that C-style managers sometimes make.

• If I make a mistake, I’ll lose my credibility

• If people haven’t gotten negative feedback, they will assume they’re doing a good job

• We need all of the information before we make a big decision

• It’s undignified to show intense or tender emotions at work

• Time spent relationship building is largely frivolous

• My judgement is completely objective and unbiased because I use logic

• Emotions have no place in decision making

• There’s one best way of doing things

• If my feedback is objective and fair, I don’t need to cater to people’s feelings

• I need to consider all of the variables before I decide

• You should keep emotions to yourself

• If I make a bad decision for the group, it will never be forgotten

• I’ve thought this through and there’s no better way to see it

Unintended Consequences for Their Team

• We get bogged down in over-analysis

• There’s a lack of shared excitement for our work

• We don’t feel like our hard work is appreciated

• We miss opportunities because we’re too cautious

• Our processes are too rigid

• We don’t feel connected to our teammates

Helping Your C-style Managers Rethink Their Role

These managers often need help appreciating that to grow as a leader, they’ll need to embrace the humanity of their direct reports on a deeper level. By understanding other perspectives, they see that the people they manage often need praise, excitement, optimism, camaraderie, or risk-taking at a much greater level than they do.

Download the full-size poster here: