What do you do when you find out that everything you thought you knew about yourself is wrong? That’s what happened to me yesterday. A few months ago, at work, we were informed that we were going to be taking part in something called a DISC analysis, organized by HR. It’s apparently something the entire department, and possibly the entire company, are doing.
DISC is, according to its own website, “a personal assessment tool used by more than one million people every year to help improve teamwork, communication, and productivity in the workplace.” Our HR representative marketed it my team as a communication tool. The website makes a lot of high-falutin’ claims about how effective and powerful it is, saying that the model “provides a common language people can use to better understand themselves and those they interact with—and then use this knowledge to reduce conflict and improve working relationships.”
My team of 15 was highly skeptical. DISC groups people into 4 categories (by color). It’s an acronym, and each letter stands for one of the 4 groups:
- D personalities tend to be confident and place an emphasis on accomplishing bottom-line results. (RED – DOMINANCE)
- I personalities tend to be more open and place an emphasis on relationships and influencing or persuading others. (YELLOW – INFLUENCE)
- S personalities tend to be dependable and place the emphasis on cooperation and sincerity. (GREEN – STEADINESS)
- C personalities tend to place the emphasis on quality, accuracy, expertise, and competency. (BLUE – CONSCIENTIOUS)
On the website, for some reason, they capitalize all the letters except “I”, with no explanation, and in one graph that has the letters labeling different quadrants of a circle, they spell “DICS” instead, which made me laugh. The DISC theory has been around since 1928, and the first assessment tests based on it were created in 1956.
The self-assessment test asks respondents to make a choice between two or more terms, in relation to describing themselves. I found it very difficult to choose most of the time, because in many of the questions, one option was completely inaccurate, and the other wasn’t much better, but because I was being forced to choose, I kept having to choose options that I didn’t really think applied. They just applied less worse than the other option.
Humans love to categorize, group, and label themselves. And maybe having 12 types of people, like astrology, or Chinese birth years, is too much for some, so having only four groups to put yourself and others in, is more satisfying.
Either way, the DISC model has been hugely popular in Sweden, and many other parts of the world, and is used a lot to gauge whether teams or departments or units of people have the “right mix” of personality types. Our HR rep who held the workshop, kept reiterating that no one type is better or worse than any other, and that in fact, we are all a mix of the four personality types…which to me sounds a lot like someone is missing the point. If we’re all a mix, and none are better or worse, then who cares what group we might tend to fall into? And saying that you can use it as a tool to better communicate with people who have different styles than you means that you have to know what group everyone belongs in, as well as yourself. Which is impossible if we’re all a mix, anyway.
AND to make things even more confusing, there is an EXTENDED DISC model, which show both what your “preferred” style of behavior and communication is as well as your “adjusted” style…how you behave when you feel you have to, changing your style to suit the moment, context, situation, or whatever.
We are a tight team of creative and highly skilled people: 4 graphic designers, 5 technical/graphic illustrators, 3 events project managers, and our manager (who used to be the Events team manager, and now has to deal with all of us). Partly because I’m American and perceived as loud and extroverted (even though I’m actually not, when with other Americans…just in comparison to most Swedes), and because I am fast and driven and impatient, I, along with everyone else on my team, assumed I would be a bright red D.
We had to stand on a scale in the room with those who were more task-oriented at one end, and those who were more people-oriented at the other, and I was all the way at the top of task-oriented. Then we had to stand on an axis of extrovert to introvert, and I actually fell very close to the edge of introvert. (Example: if you are at a party, do you tend to go over and and strike up conversations with strangers or do you want to sit with the friends you already know? Or do you skip the party completely and stay home and read your book?) (I was firmly in the stay home and read camp). We talked about our perceived superpowers and our strengths in a group.
And then we got the team results. Every single person on the entire team fell in to Green (steady) or Yellow (influence)…all of whom are people-persons. Except me. Guess where I was? ALL THE WAY AT THE TOP ALL BY MYSELF…
IN BLUE.
Logical, analytical, process-minded, careful, meticulous.
HAHAHAHAHA
And that was our PREFERRED behavioral tendency. There was ALSO an arrow, which pointed to wehre our ADJUSTED behavioral style was. In most cases, how we behave, act, and communicate at work. Some people didn’t even have arrows. And most had very short ones that still ended in yellow or green.
Mine was the longest, all the way from the top blue corner to the TOP RED CORNER.
So, apparently, I behave like a big bright red dominant D at work, but I’m actually not like that at all, when I have my druthers. I didn’t know what to think, but I sure had a laugh about it. “The longer the arrow, the bigger psychopath you are,” I guessed.
The other thing that I find weird is that, according to the DISC website, C stands for “conscientious”. Our HR rep’s materials had translated it to “compliant” which is not the same thing AT ALL. And I AM fast, impatient, results-oriented, and find the vast majority of people vaguely irritating. But I’m also relatively quiet, like a lot of down/alone-time, find talking to strangers uncomfortable, dislike public speaking (even though I do a really good job of faking it), love order not chaos, and am extremely creative and verbal. I actually think “conscientious” applies quite well to me, even if I behave in a confident D manner much of the time.
We have individual 15-page small-print reports on our results that we can read and do whatever we want with. One option is to toss them in the bin, because, honestly?