Why Use DISC Profiles

Hello, everybody! 

Jody Ann Johnson here with the 67th episode of “Coffee with Jody”.  

Today we’re going to be covering the profile DISC. DISC is a behavioral profile and the value of this is knowing your predominant ways of behaving, and also how you can be effective with others. I’m going to be covering a lot of material so you may see me referencing some documents because I’ve got a lot of information. 

There’s a world of things that DISC can tell you about yourself and also how to be effective with others. The first thing I want to do is to go over what each of the letters in the acronym DISC represent.  

The first one is D, for doer, directive, dominant and decisive. These are task oriented people. They have a tendency to be assertive. When conflict is happening, their style is to be demanding, they need control. Their primary drive is independence and they love a challenge. They’re comfortable with being decisive and their personal strength is being a great problem solver. Their preoccupation is with goals over people. A limitation can be that they’re just too direct and they can be intense people.  They want control and variety. 

They fear losing and their blind spot is resisting being held accountable. They need to work on empathy and patience because they are predominantly impatient. A measure of their maturity is the willingness for them to give up control.  Under stress, they may become dictatorial and critical. They measured worth by the impact of their results and the track record, both theirs and that of others. 

The next one is I, for influential and inspiring. These are persuasive people. When they are in conflict they attack, they need approval and they want to be liked. They are primarily driven by interaction and are very people oriented and related. They’re comfortable with social friendliness and they’re an encouraging person. They can sometimes speak without thinking. They can tend to be too disorganized and non-traditional. They seek approval and less structure. They fear rejection and they have a blind spot about being able to follow through on their commitments.  

What they need to work on is controlling their emotions and following through. A measure of thier maturity is objective handling rejection. Under stress, they may become sarcastic and superficial. They measure their worth and the worth of others by the acknowledgements and compliments they get. 

The next one is S, for that supportive style. They tend to be patient.  When they’re in conflict, they’ll comply. They need routine, and their primary drive is for stability. They preferred their tasks to be scheduled as they’re task oriented people. They’re comfortable being part of a team and their personal strength is being able to be supportive. Under stress, they may be become overextended, procrastinate and resist change. Their personal limitations are sometimes being too indecisive and indirect. They want routine and harmony in the workplace. They fear sudden changes. The blind spot is embracing the need for change. They need to work on being assertive when they’re under pressure. A measure of their maturity is standing up for themselves. When they’re confronted under stress, they may become indecisive and submissive. They measure the worth of people, themselves and others by compatibility and their contributions.  

The last one is C, that one stands for conscientious. They’re contemplative people, they avoid conflict, and they need standards. Their primary drive is doing things right and being correct. They prefer their tasks to be structured and they’re comfortable with order and planning. 

Their personal strength is being an organizer, this strength when it’s overextended is being an over analyzer of everything. Their personal limitations are being too detailed and impersonal. They want standards and logic. They fear being wrong. And the blind spot is they struggle to make decisions without over-analyzing. They need to work on worrying less about everything! 

The measure of thier maturity is not being defensive. When they’re criticized and under stress, they may become withdrawn and headstrong or stubborn. They measure worth by precision, accuracy and the quality of their results.  

When you get your DISC profile, you’re going to have some combination of, some percentages of each of these different styles in your report. The beauty of the report is that it will tell you what’s unique about you based on the percentage you have of each of these four areas, I’ve just described that you have in your behavioral profile.  

When I say behavioral profile, it’s just that, it’s behavior. Now you’ll have a natural way that you are when you’re at rest or you’re at home and how you become when you’re very stressed. And then you have an adapted behavior, which is how you’ve learned to produce a result out in the work world. 

Hopefully they’re very similar without too much of a change in the percentage in each one of those four areas. But sometimes there can be, which indicates a great deal of stress. If the adapted area of D, I, S or C is elevated beyond 10 to 15 points, that’s an indicator of stress.  

The report gives you what it is that you need, how you work best and in what environments, what value you bring to the organization, how people can best communicate with you. It also tells you what to do and what not to do in communication with others. Another great aspect of this report is that it’s 28 pages long, and it gives you a good bit of information on how you can be effective with people whose profiles are different than yours. 

Included in your report are 12 behavioral tendencies and are summarized under both your natural and adapted ways. These behaviors are how you are as a customer, in team interactions, how you’ll be as you build rapport, how you express openness, accuracy, personal drive, prioritization, providing instructions, change, resistance, work, process, alignment, reasoning, self-reliance and careful decision-making. Whew, that’s a lot. 

And it will tell you, if you engaging in this area, or are you relationship focused? Is it situational? Will you be precise? Are you social here or are you intuitively based about this area. The report lets you know those and then gives you a set of tools to be able to modify your behavior that if it’s an area that you want to take action on. 

So the long and short of this is it’s going to give you a much better understanding of you, your tendencies, your blind spots, the kind of environments in which you thrive best. The best ways for people to communicate with you and for you to be able to communicate with them. When this report is done as a team, and we have access to one another’s reports and you’ll know, “Oh, okay, I understand why this person behaves that way” this is their predominant style.  It doesn’t give us a license to be, “Hey, this is me, take it or leave it.” No, it’s more a matter of, okay, how can I adjust myself to be who’s needed by that person, in order to gain better rapport and effectiveness in our communication.  

We use this tool when we’re looking to recruit. Because each role in the company will have a behavioral style that’s best suited for it, we’ll identify what are those kinds of tasks that the person is going to be doing. Then what is the best profile for the role and write an ad to attract just that kind of person. These tools, all of them can be used in that way, but this is one of the first ones because it improves our ability to be effective in communication and in building rapport. 

If you found value in this video please like it, share it and subscribe. We actually use this with all of our clients and have it as a part of our shopping cart on the website. If you’re interested in taking this profile or any of the others that I’m going to be talking about, you can find them on www.actioncoachteamsage.com/profiles  

Bye for now.