As a touring musician, being on the road can be a thrilling and rewarding experience. However, it can also be a challenging one, particularly when it comes to navigating the dynamics within the band. As highly talented and creative individuals, touring musicians can be emotionally charged thinkers, which can lead to personality conflicts and misunderstandings. This is where the DISC personality assessment tool can be incredibly useful.

So let’s talk about DISC and sales. Everybody wants to go hire a successful sales person, right? So as we talked about earlier, most people hire somebody with a great track record on their resume. And that’s smart - but most importantly you must hire somebody with the right personality type to understand and get along with you and your clients. 

Most people consider conflict a dirty word. All we hear on the news is conflict, conflict, conflict: it is presented as negative. But it’s not. You need to run toward it. It is nowhere as big a deal as you think it will be. Conflict only happens when two parties care about something.

With so many clients building and restructuring their teams, I wanted to take a moment to re-address the importance of smart hiring. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending the time – and often the money – to make a great hire but then discovering it’s the wrong person for the team, and for the company: and for you.

We have talked about the idea that a person is a natural born leader. You hear the phrase all the time, on TV, in movies and in books. But, in my opinion, it is easily debunked. I don’t think there are natural born leaders. There are big charismatic personalities who can wax poetic and convince people they are “born leaders”. But leadership is a skill set that is learned.

If you’re leading people, there must be what I call accountability structure. There are so many buzzwords around accountability and how to lead and manage. The cupcakes! Discipline is not the killer of enthusiasm, being an asshole is! Do I trust you, do you trust me, do you care? You’ve probably heard many of these.

CEOs want to focus on their business. But there are four silos to success: People, Sales, Profit and SELF. This is the full picture of a healthy business. A healthy business begins with a healthy person. If I hear from a leader that they don’t “have time” to work out or take care of themselves, then I call b.s. immediately. When I hear “I’m exhausted”, it’s a huge red flag.

Leaders often think that being a good leader means solving all problems within a company. It is my belief that leaders should equip a team to solve their own problems, client problems and the team’s problems. Often an entrepreneur steps in when an employee is stuck or does something wrong. This is a time for a leader to teach and consult versus their first instinct, which is to just show the employee the right answer as quickly as possible.

This past year has been challenging for all of us in a variety of ways. Whether you side with those that believe lockdowns and restrictions are the best course for the greater good, or favor the side of less restrictions, and open economy and free will, there is no doubt that our emotional intelligence (our “EQ”) has played a part in how we have handled the past year and how we may intentionally navigate our feelings and actions going forward. Three elements of EQ include Self Awareness, Self Regulation and Social Awareness. Each is key to successful navigating this “return to normal” year.

There are so many ways to apply great communication skills to being leader. When I downsized and became a solo entrepreneur, I had to be laser focused on who I had running beside me to be effective. For my right-hand hire, I needed somebody more organized than I am. That’s obvious. I have no interest in detail work. I fight organization every day. DISC helped me understand that I don’t want to have anything to do with organization. When I understood that, I began to make logical choices that compliment my style.