Strengths

Scores | Charts | Descriptions

Discipline™

People especially talented in the Discipline theme enjoy routine and structure. Their world is best described by the order they create.

Score Distribution

Shows scores for this strength across all staff.

Users with Discipline strength

Theme Description

Your world needs to be predictable. It needs to be ordered and planned. So you instinctively impose structure on your world. You set up routines. You focus on timelines and deadlines. You break long-term projects into a series of specific short-term plans, and you work through each plan diligently. You are not necessarily neat and clean, but you do need precision. Faced with the inherent messiness of life, you want to feel in control. The routines, the timelines, the structure, all of these help create this feeling of control. Lacking this theme of Discipline, others may sometimes resent your need for order, but there need not be conflict. You must understand that not everyone feels your urge for predictability; they have other ways of getting things done. Likewise, you can help them understand and even appreciate your need for structure. Your dislike of surprises, your impatience with errors, your routines, and your detail orientation don't need to be misinterpreted as controlling behaviors that box people in. Rather, these behaviors can be understood as your instinctive method for maintaining your progress and your productivity in the face of life's many distractions.

Action Items

• Seek out roles and responsibilities where structure exists.
• Don't hesitate to check as often as necessary to ensure that things are right. You feel an urge to do it anyway, and soon enough others will come to expect it of you.
• Learn how to use a time management system. It will make you even more efficient and give you more confidence.
• Create routines that make you follow through systematically. Over time, people will come to appreciate this kind of rigorous predictability.
• Recognize that mistakes might depress you. Precision is a core part of who you are; however, you must find ways to move through these moments of annoyance to prevent becoming dragged down.
• Help other people add a little order to their lives. Do it in the right way and they will appreciate it.
• Explain your Discipline theme to your close associates. Initially they might resent your perfectionism, but once you have explained how it works for you, do not be afraid to let your perfectionism show. Others will want to see it in action.
• Recognize that many others are not as disciplined as you are. More than likely, their clumsy process will frustrate you, so try to look beyond it, and instead assess them on their results, not on their process.

How to Manage a Person Especially Talented in the Discipline Theme

• Give this person the opportunity to bring structure to a haphazard or chaotic situation. Since she will never be comfortable in such shapeless, messy situations ó and don't expect her to ó she will not rest until order and predictability are restored.
• Clutter will annoy her. Don't expect her to last long in a physically cluttered environment. Either charge her with cleaning it up or find her a different environment.
• Always give her advance notice of deadlines. She feels a need to get work done ahead of schedule, and she can't do this if you don't tell her the schedule.
• In the same vein, try not to surprise her with sudden changes in plan and priority. Surprises are distressing to her. They can ruin her day.
• When there are many things that need to get done in a set time period, remember her need to prioritize. Take the time to prioritize together and then, once the schedule is set, stick to it.
• If appropriate, ask her to help you plan and organize your own work. You might ask her to review your time management system or even your proposal for re-engineering some of your department's processes. Tell her colleagues that this is one of her strengths and encourage them to ask her for similar help.
• She excels at developing routines that help her work efficiently. If she is forced to work in a situation that requires flexibility and responsiveness, encourage her to devise a set number of routines, each appropriate for a certain situation. In this way she will have a predictable response to fall back on, no matter what the surprise.