Rainbow Thinking is a term that encompasses the ability to champion neural diversity within a team as a means of delivering high performance. In this series of 6 blogs, I'll discuss this in more detail using DiSC® as a tool to highlight our different styles, ways of thinking, approaches to different situations, how we interact with each other. The subject requires more than I can deliver in a series of blogs and so there workshops that can be delivered to bring this to life within your own team. In the meantime, I hope that some of this reasonates with you and your sales management life. Let's look at the first DiSC® style - The D Style.
About the 'S' Style
Leaders with the 'S style' are strongly people and team oriented, focused on collaboration, support, empathy, consensus, and stability.
People with the 'S Style' are poorly represented within most sales environments, and during recruitment their emphasis on cohesion, continuity, harmony is often considered as weakness and candidates with strong traits of action, results, drive, and change tend to be preferred. However, with more emphasis on wellbeing, people centric management and with more women coming into sales leadership roles, we are seeing more people with the 'S Style' in sales leadership roles and they are being very successful.
My Experience
I worked with a sales manager at Amazon Web Services who was responsible for cloud sales into the National Health Service (NHS). She had a S style character which worked very well within the culture of AWS (read their Leadership Principles), she hired a team who came from different backgrounds, including clinicians and NHS management, and she was able to work at very senior levels within the NHS and Department of Health, because she always came across as someone who wanted to work in partnership, be supportive, and put the aim of the NHS first in her sales development. Despite being quite a restrained and introspective person, she was incredibly impactful and led one of the highest performing teams in the AWS Public Sector team.
S Style Leaders
Leaders with the S style are particularly strong in sales environments requiring a more consultative approach and where the development of longer term close relationships with customers and partners is required. Several of the more successful sales leaders that I know in AWS are 'S's - supporting their teams to work very closely with customers to really understand their longer term needs, build trust and then work hand in hand with them through change projects. During the pandemic, leaders with strong S traits were the most concerned with people's wellbeing and would have instigated more team and collaborative activities than most.
An S style person can be a strong leader where diplomacy, persuasion and good collaboration within an organisation is needed, they can be very great at bringing disparate factions together, and they are very dependable and loyal in challenging times. This style focuses on team harmony for success so they will be very keen to take all the team together, to ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to provide input and they will also be an excellent listener. Leaders with an S Style will likely be much quieter and restrained than a typical sales leader, but do not confuse this with weakness as they can be quietly very firm, and determined. However, decision making may take longer than with other styles as a S style leader will prefer to try and gain agreement and consensus within a team to move forward..
S Style Salespeople
A S style salesperson is likely to build very strong trusted relationships with customers that is sustained beyond their current role. Salespeople with the 'S Style' can be particularly effective in Public Sector sales where civil servants typically have an ingrained resistance to more overt and direct sales approaches which a 'D Style' might employ. An 'S' leader or salesperson can more easily build empathy and trust with civil servants and government customers, showing collaborative and empathetic traits that aligns to public service and supporting public policy.
Different types of the S Style
Not all people with a 'S' profile think the same, there is a spectrum of colour within this quartile dependent on how influential the other styles are to a person's makeup and the I quartile is divided into 3 sections, S, Si and and SC.
A person who has an S style but has strong influence of the I style (Si) is more extroverted and active than a typical S who will be more reserved, and so has a blend of creativity and enthusiasm with a drive to ensure team cohesion and inclusion. A person with influence from the 'I Style' will be more comfortable with risk than a typical S and bring passion and emotion to a group environment.
A person who has an S style but has strong influence of the C style (SC) is more analytical and data driven than a typical S who will be more reliant on feelings and empathy. A leader with the SC Style will have strength at managing stability and continuity, and will have a quiet, and measured approach. Decisions may take a little longer, and will likely be more resistant to change but they will include both data driven and people's feelings into everything they do.
Leaders with the 'S Style' are very important in a modern management team and bring strong wellbeing, mentoring and personnel management traits to the job. Leaders with strong 'S Style' traits will likely have better retention within their teams than others.
Does the S, Si or SC style ring any bells with you? Who do you know with this style and how well do you relate to them?
If you want to get more specific, I can provide a full individual Workplace Profile for you and one for each of your team, with a team DiSC® map and an individual feedback session for each person. This can be followed by a half day team workshop which is fun, light hearted but informative and impactful.
To find out more, please contact me directly at timhearn@skylark-development.co.uk
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