When teams bring me in

It usually starts with an offsite. A leader wants a teambuilding session and wants it to be fun. Sometimes it is one block of the agenda, sometimes the whole day. Nothing is wrong with the team: people get along, work gets done. But the leader (and usually the team members too) senses the relationships are more surface-level than they should be, or the team is newly formed, with people who will work side by side and barely know each other.

Here is the question I always pose:

After the fun, what stays?

An escape room, laser tag, or dinner with drinks can be a genuinely good time, yet... by Monday it is photographed memory. I design teambuilding that is just as enjoyable in the room, AND leaves the team with something they keep using: a shared language for how each person works, and conversations that continue long after the offsite ends.

The tool I most often build this around is Everything DiSC.

What DiSC is (and is not)

Everything DiSC is one of the most widely used workplace assessments in the world. Each person completes a short online questionnaire and receives a profile describing their work style across four dimensions.

Most people are a blend, with one or two styles leading. And DiSC stays focused on work style: how you prefer to communicate, decide, and handle pace and pressure at work. Some tools reach further into personality and personal life; the work focus is exactly what makes people comfortable enough to share. There are no good or bad styles, and no style is an excuse for one's behavior.

One thing matters more than the letters: the reported profile is not where value lies. A report read alone changes very little. The value is what a team does with it together, which is where the design of the day matters.

How I run it

This works as a two-hour workshop inside a larger offsite, a half day, or a full day. The depth changes; the approach does not.

The individual/team profile is never the main event.

Before any session, I hold discovery conversations, so the day is designed for this team, not assembled from a standard deck. In the room, I do not present DiSC at people. We work live on Catalyst, Everything DiSC's online platform, where everyone has their own results in front of them, and the session is built around talking:

• People with the same style come together first, compare their experience, then teach the other styles who they are.
• We play with it: reading each other, guessing styles, testing the language on real moments from their work.
• Then pairs, chosen deliberately with the team leader. The aim is not to amplify similarity or difference. It is to get people connecting who usually do not chat.

I often open with a short exercise borrowed from my team trust-building work: where you grew up, how many siblings you have and where you fall in the order, and one unique challenge from childhood. This is meant to showcase how easy it is to get to know each other through a little bit of vulnerability. Every time I have had the privilege to facilitate this group conversation, we all see the team closeness come to life.

And I design the day the way my company name suggests: A great offsite plays like a movie.

Different energy at different points, a change of scene when the room dips, ensemble time and one-on-one time, so people get to know the team and the individuals in it.

DiSC or the Five Behaviors?

I hold certifications in both, and I regularly tell teams which one they do not need yet.

• DiSC is for connection: individual contributors or intact teams doing the foundational work of understanding how each other operates.
• The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team suits teams of managers deliver a shared purpose that no one of them can deliver alone. A team of individual contributors with their own tasks rarely needs that yet, and I say so.

For more on my work using Five Behaviors, click here.

What shifts

A common language, first of all: "that is my D showing" does work that used to require a difficult conversation. And something I did not expect when I started this work: joy. People visibly enjoy having a structure that gives them permission to talk about how they work.

And the first session is rarely the end, because bringing DiSC to life is a journey rather than a one-time event. The session creates the shared language; the value multiplies as the team uses it. From there, teams go different directions:

• Reading the work styles of other teams, stakeholders, clients...
• As a manager, how the style impacts their way of leading
• Expanding one's awareness of emotional intelligence and the connection with DiSC

Teams that begin with one session usually come back for the next layer. I also counsel them on how to keep it alive between sessions.

Languages

I facilitate in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. For teams in Japan, the assessments and reports are available in Japanese, so participants can take and read everything in their own language, and I bring key terminology in Japanese. Posters and other content are multi-lingual if it benefits the participants. Sessions work well in English-comfortable teams and mixed-language rooms. For teams needing full delivery in Japanese, I partner with a Japanese-speaking associate coach.