3 Common DiSC® Questions, Answered
Want to treat your team to a DiSC® personality training workshop and not sure what it’s all about or where to begin? See below.
DiSC® personality training is often misunderstood. It’s either mistaken for a personality test a la Myers-Briggs, or it’s not explained fully so people don’t get its full benefits.
Having spent several years working with DiSC® profiles and offering DiSC® workshops through our registered and certified DiSC® instructor, we’ve come across more than a few questions that appear year after year.
From how it works to its practical applications in the office, here are the 3 most common DiSC® questions. Read them over, and you’ll learn everything you need to know to decide whether a DiSC® personality training workshop might be right for your group.
1. Can your DiSC® profile change if you repeat the assessment?
Believe it or not, results of the DiSC® assessment are pretty consistent over time. Profiles remain generally the same, with small details perhaps changing, but they are typically so small as to be unimportant to the overall style assessment of an individual.
Plus, DiSC® developers are constantly seeking ways to make the assessment even more reliable and accurate. Starting in Summer of 2013, adaptive testing became available, which make the program even more dead on when it comes to describing personality types.
2. Does DiSC® categorize people too narrowly?
DiSC® wasn’t developed so people could pigeon-hole one another. It’s not true that all “S” types, for example, behave the same way. Two people can be a “D”, but there’s much diversity within that personality type so behavior is far from predictable.
DiSC® simply gives people the tools to understand people’s preferences and priorities. Someone may prioritize organizing ideas, but that doesn’t mean you can extract behavior from that!
3. Do certain groups tend to be one DiSC® type over another?
While it’s true that some personality types are attracted to certain professions, there’s still a diversity of style mixes to be found in any profession.
As for cultural and regional grouping, the folks who developed the DiSC® personality training program state they have not noticed such groupings of personality styles.
The Bottom Line
DiSC® is often misunderstood partly because it’s easy to confuse with the old personality tests we all know from yesteryear (of course, many companies are still using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which was developed almost 100 years ago).
But if you break DiSC® down into its essential elements, you’ll find that it’s really just a way of describing personalities. Plus, unlike the MBTI, DiSC® has immediate and practical relevance for inducing positive change in real-life settings at the office.
So, maybe the final question you should be asking is, why haven’t you booked a DiSC® personality training workshop yet?
