The Power of DISC
In business there are 2 key fundamentals that you must seek to master to ensure you are successful; Maths & People. Now the unfortunate thing is this, those 2 things are completely foreign to each other. Math is hyper logical, predictable and binary, people on the other hand are wildly variable and unpredictable.
The purpose of this article is to delve into what it means to understand people, motivate people, and persuade people.
No one likes to be put in a box, but in the eternal quest to understand what it is to be human, we are left with little choice. The variability in human behaviour is immense, and to try to understand it is a daunting task, so we try to engineer a little of the variability out of the equation by making some crude assumptions, while this is far from perfect it has proven very effective in bringing to understand what makes people tick, and thus be able to in someway predict human behaviour.
There are many tools and formulas that have tried to simplify and distill down human behaviour over the years, but today I want to dive into my personal favourite - DISC. DISC is an acronym, and it stands for Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. These four titles make up the DISC profiling quadrant model. Below is a breakdown of each.
Dominance: Individuals with a high D score tend to be assertive, direct, and focused on results.
Influence: Individuals with a high i score are often outgoing, enthusiastic, and persuasive.
Steadiness: Those with a high S score are typically patient, reliable, and supportive.
Conscientiousness: Individuals with a high C score are often analytical, detail-oriented, and focused on quality.
The model suggests that each human can be placed inside this quadrant model, the closer to the extremity, the more strongly the character traits show up, while the closer to the centre of the model the more subtle the traits are. To plot an individual on this model is it a rather simple multiple choice questionnaire, consisting of only 24 questions, and should take no longer than 15 mins to complete.
Before you can unlock the full power of this tool, you must first seek to understand yourself. By plotting yourself on the DISC spectrum you will uncover powerful insights into how you operate. What your subconscious preferences are, what truly motivates you, and also what some of your natural weaknesses and blind spots might be.
Let me know in the comments what personality type you think you might be…. I’m a D/i type.
