Would you be interested in a behavioral assessment tool that can help you:
- Strengthen your communication skills?
- Build your leadership abilities as well as your coaching and mentoring skills?
- Reduce personal and organizational conflict, stress, and turnover?
- Make better hiring decisions?
- Learn to appreciate behavioral strengths, challenges and differences in yourself and in others?
- Increase your sales skill by understanding how clients or customers make buying decisions?
- Improve customer relationships and satisfaction?
Some of you may already be familiar with it. It’s the DISC behavioral assessment. While it’s been around and widely used for many years, there are still lots of people who have never been exposed to it. If you know and understand DISC and have used it before, you can probably stop reading now because it’s unlikely I will be telling you anything about DISC you don’t already know. But if you’re one of those people who has never been exposed to DISC, if you are intrigued by the benefits listed above, and if you’d like to find out how to get a DISC assessment for yourself FREE . . . that’s right, I can get one for you FREE . . . please continue reading below.
Using DISC for fun and profit . . . and did I mention it’s FREE?!
First, DISC is not an IQ test. The results of the assessment say nothing about how smart you are. Nor does the assessment say anything about your values, morals, or personal ethics. It doesn’t try to measure skills or knowledge.
DISC is a behavioral assessment tool based on the theories of psychologist William Moulton Marston (who, under the pen name of Charles Moulton, created the Wonder Woman character for DC Comics). He conceived his behavioral theories in the 1920s which were later used by industrial psychologist Walter Vernon Clarke to develop the DISC behavioral assessment tool. This tool attempts to divide people into four distinct behavioral traits: Dominant, Influencing, Steady, and Compliant (collectively referred to as Ds, Is, Ss, or Cs).
We’ll look at each of these in a bit more detail.
Dominant. If you’re a D, you’re impatient and may have a short attention span. You’re a big picture, action-oriented person. You don’t want to get bogged down in a lot of details and you don’t want to talk something to death, you just want to get on with it. Your focus is always on results. Your communication style is minimalist. Your spoken and written communications are clipped, sometimes cryptic, often blunt. People may interpret your communication style as impersonal at best, or even rude.
Influencing. In many ways, if you’re an I, you’re the polar opposite of a D. You’re gregarious, talkative. You’re a relationship-builder. You may tend to take action or make decisions emotionally, not rationally. You have a high need for social recognition and approval. Your communication style is warm and engaging. If you’re going to err, you’re going to err on the side of saying too much rather than too little.
Steady. An S is patient, loyal to a fault, but becomes insecure in the face of change . . . particularly rapid change. They can tend to be “lurkers” who lay back in the weeds and watch what’s going on very closely, but may not be active participants in what’s going on until they feel it’s safe. Their behavior is a reflection of how secure or insecure they feel. They don’t like a lot of attention and will resist putting themselves “out front” whenever possible. In a meeting, they may tend to keep their thoughts, opinions, and ideas to themselves unless the leader works to draw them into the conversation.
Compliant. Cs are information junkies. Before they will make a decision or commit to anything, they want as much information in as much detail as possible. They operate best in an unambiguous environment surrounded by well-defined rules and procedures. They react badly to criticism of their work. Their communication style is to ask questions, endlessly, in an effort to get as much data as possible about the subject at hand.
None of these four traits are good or bad, no single one of them is more desirable than the others. And all of us possess at least a little bit of all four traits. Some of us will have one trait that completely overshadows the other three, while other people may have several traits that are more or less equal. Either way, understanding why we behave the way we do and why others behave the way they do is a key insight that can help improve communications, build leadership abilities, and do all the other things mentioned at the top of this letter.
If you haven’t ever had a DISC assessment done on yourself but would like one, call me at (847) 665-9134 or email me at ARock46@aol.com. I will be happy to put you in touch with a friend and colleague who will give you a FREE trial DISC assessment, and afterward, if you like, I will be happy to help you interpret your results.
I hope to hear from you.
Rock Solid Business Development
Phone: (847) 665-9134
andy@rocksolidbizdevelopment.com
If you would like to schedule a free, two-hour strategic coaching session, click here or call me at (847) 665-9134 to take advantage of this offer.
