You’ve got a promising candidate. Their resume looks solid, the interview went well, and you even ran a personality assessment to make sure they’re the right fit. You’re feeling confident.
But here is the hard truth: you are only looking at half the equation.
If you are assessing the candidate but you haven’t assessed the manager they will be reporting to, you are essentially buying a puzzle piece without looking at the rest of the puzzle. You have data on the new hire, sure. But you have zero data on whether they will actually survive working with you.
Today we are talking about a massive blind spot in how most companies use tools like DiSC or other personality assessments.
Hire Smarter. Work Better Together: How Assessments Help You Build Stronger Teams
We see this all the time. A company treats an assessment like a background check. They use it to "screen" a candidate. They want to know if this person is a "driver" or a "supporter." They want to know if they have attention to detail or if they are big-picture thinkers.
That is valuable information. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it.
But if that is all you are doing, you are wasting about 80% of the tool's potential. And worse, you might still make a bad hire because you failed to ask the most important question:
How will this specific human interact with the specific humans already on my team?
Let’s break down why assessing the candidate isn’t enough—and why you need to be looking at your leaders and your entire team if you actually want this to work.
When we use assessments purely as a hiring filter, we tend to look for "red flags" in the candidate.
We ask, "Is this person too aggressive?" or "Is this person too passive?"
But personality traits don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in relationships. A trait that looks like a "red flag" in one context might be a superpower in another.
For example, let’s say you are hiring a Project Manager. You assess them, and they come back as a high "D" on the DiSC profile—decisive, results-oriented, maybe a little blunt.
If you put that person on a team that is paralyzed by indecision and needs a kick in the pants to hit deadlines, they are going to look like a hero.
But if you put that same person under a manager who is also a high "D"—someone who needs to be in control and hates being challenged—you are going to have World War III by the second week.
The candidate didn’t change. The context changed.
If you only assessed the candidate, you wouldn’t see that coming. You would just hire them, watch the explosion, and then blame the candidate for having an "attitude problem."
But it wasn't an attitude problem. It was a friction problem. And you could have predicted it if you had looked at both sides of the relationship.
This is where the rubber meets the road.
If you are a manager or a business owner, you cannot effectively hire for "fit" if you don't understand your own leadership style first.
I know, I know. We all think we are easy to work with. We all think we are flexible, communicative, and reasonable.
But the data usually tells a different story.
If you are a manager who is highly analytical—someone who values precision, data, and getting things exactly right (a "C" style in DiSC)—you might struggle to manage a salesperson who is high energy, fast-moving, and plays loose with the details (an "i" style).
Without self-awareness, you are going to view that salesperson as sloppy and undisciplined. And they are going to view you as a micromanager who slows everything down.
However, if you know your profile, and you know their profile, the conversation changes completely.
Instead of getting frustrated, you can adapt. You might say, "I know you want to move fast, but I need these three specific details before you send that proposal. Can you get those to me?"
You aren't trying to change their personality. You are managing the gap between your style and theirs.
That is the difference between a bad hire and a great team. But you can't manage that gap if you don't know where you stand on the map.
Here is another reason why assessing the team matters: Diversity of style.
When leaders don't use data, they tend to hire people who remind them of themselves. It’s human nature. We click with people who communicate like we do.
If you are a fast-talking, big-vision leader, you naturally gravitate toward candidates who are fast-talking and big-vision. It feels like "culture fit."
But if you fill a room with people who are all big-vision and no details, you are going to have a lot of great ideas and absolutely zero execution.
Or, if you fill a team with only "stabilizers"—people who love routine and hate conflict—you will have a very peaceful office, but your business will stagnate because nobody is pushing for change.
You need to know the profile of your existing team so you can hire for what is missing, not just what is comfortable.
If your team is heavy on "Influence" (talking, energy, people), maybe you specifically need to hire a "Conscientiousness" profile (data, systems, accuracy) to balance them out.
You won't know that if you aren't assessing the team as a whole.
The real magic of assessments—and I mean the part that actually makes you money—happens after the hire.
When an entire team understands each other’s styles, workplace drama drops significantly.
Think about the last conflict you had on your team. Was it really about the work? Or was it about how the work was being discussed?
Usually, it’s communication.
When your team has a shared language—when they can say, "Hey, I know you need time to process this because you're a high S, so I'm going to send you the info now and we can talk tomorrow"—tension disappears.
It stops being personal. It stops being "Bob is being difficult" and starts being "Bob needs detail to feel confident."
That is huge.
We have seen teams go from constantly butting heads to working like a well-oiled machine just by running a workshop where everyone sees everyone else’s profile.
Suddenly, the manager understands why their direct report shuts down under pressure. The direct report understands why the manager sends those short, blunt emails.
They stop fighting their differences and start leveraging them.
I want to be clear about something: This isn't just "HR fluff."
Hiring is expensive. Turnover is expensive. A team that moves slowly because they are constantly misunderstanding each other is expensive.
When you use assessments effectively—meaning you assess the candidate, the leader, and the team—you are protecting your investment.
You are ensuring that the new person you are bringing in actually has a runway to succeed. You are ensuring your managers know how to coach them. And you are ensuring your team knows how to collaborate with them.
That is how you stretch a team's potential.
You don't get high performance by accident. You get it by alignment.
So, if you are currently using assessments just to "screen" people and then filing the report away in a drawer, stop it.
Dust those reports off. Look at your own profile. Look at your team's profile. Map it out.
Ask yourself:
If you don't have the answers to those questions, you aren't hiring strategically yet. You're just filling seats.
At BR1, we don't just hand you a test and wish you good luck. We believe assessments are a tool for building relationships, not just checking boxes.
We work with leadership teams to map out their entire organization. We help you understand who you have, how they work, and who you need to find next to make the puzzle complete .
If you are tired of hiring people who seem great on paper but flame out in your culture, or if you have a team that just can't seem to get on the same page, we need to talk.
We can help you run the assessments, interpret the data, and most importantly, turn that data into better leadership decisions.
Contact us to start the conversation. Let’s stop guessing and start building a team that actually fits together.
Until next time, keep building your stronger team!