In both personal and professional relationships, DISC gives us a simple, powerful way to understand each other. DISC tells you how someone naturally thinks and behaves - a big part of their personality. When you accurately identify someone's personality, you can view their behavior through a lens of their own unique view of the world, rather than your own.
In other words, DISC allows us to communicate with empathy.
"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better" - Abraham Lincoln
While DISC can help anyone improve relationships with their friends and coworkers, it can be especially valuable for professionals who communicate professionally in roles like:
The beautiful thing about DISC is that it's easy for anyone to learn and adopt. You don't need to have psychology background or be an expert to drastically improve your communication in this way.
When you meet someone, your first objective should be to understand who they are and how they prefer to communicate. To do this quickly, you can use intuition, observation, and/or analytical tools like Crystal.
We've created resources to help you identify each major DISC type:
Each DISC type has its own preferred communication style, and you can have a more effective conversation with each of them by showing empathy and adjusting your own style. For people with a similar DISC type, communication should come naturally, since their style will be similar to your own. In fact, if you think about your closest friends you may realize that you gravitate towards people that share at least a primary or secondary type with you.
However, communication with different DISC types takes more work. Often, two people with opposite types will regularly experience misunderstanding, miscommunication, and even conflict, but won't be able to put their finger on the exact reason. This is especially true in stressful situations, when we tend to drop our adapted personality attributes in favor of our instinctual ones.
xiQ’s AI divides people into four different personalities Dominant, Influencing, Steady and Conscientious.
Each personality type has its own merits and enables us to understand people on a deeper level. A short overview of the general characteristics of each personality are given below.
Any business leader knows that an organization is only as good as the people it employs. As an organization scales, this becomes more complicated than simply "hire the best people".
Excellent people are placed on teams, and how teams interact and perform makes a world of difference on each individual's impact. The best teams are balanced, empathic towards one another, accountable, and open.
DISC provides decision makers and team leaders with tools to create the best teams and supercharge their performance.
While it's easy to think that getting a group of execution-oriented type A's together will result in a high-performing team, it's obvious that this won't works so well. In putting a team together, it's important to consider each DISC types strengths, and understand what a team will lack if missing that personality type. For example:
If you find a team encountering one of these issues, you might want to consider bringing in the correct personality type to round it out.
DISC also helps in deciding the appropriate roles for different team members. A high performing team employs each individual's strengths for the greater good of the team. Here are some ideas for different DISC types:
If you have a team with a D at the helm to make decisions, I's in charge of creative vision, an S to support the rest of the team, and a C to take care of the details, you're on your way.
It's important to have a balanced team but doing so requires that everyone understands each other. Each personality type has their own preferred communication style, and each type has to keep the other in mind as they communicate.
While every interaction has its own nuance, there are a few that can be particularly quarrelsome:
When two D's get together, conflict is the inevitable conclusion. Both parties will be blunt, opinionated, and seek to have control over the situation. It's important to clearly establish responsibilities in this situation and make them as distinguished as possible.
While D's and I's are both outgoing, they communicate very differently. A D is short and blunt, while an I tend to like to talk - a lot.
It's important for a D to keep in mind that I's are external processors, they need to talk through ideas to work them to a good conclusion. This goes against a D's natural desire to keep conversation short and to the point.
Along this vein, an I also needs to keep in mind that a D prefers to keep conversation short and shouldn't get offended when a D cuts them off or requests they get to the point.
With completely opposite personality types, a D will have the tendency to absolutely trample over an S. Where S's are gentle and careful with their words, D's are blunt and outspoken- easily offending an S.
A D won't even mean to or realize they're offending the S, and an S isn't likely to confront the problem. This can lead to long-term instability and problems in the relationship that are never confronted and handled.
It's important for a D to be aware of their own natural bluntness when speaking to an S, and for an S to be assertive when they need to be.
Similar to a D and an S, I's and C's also lie on the complete opposite side of the spectrum from one another.
Where an I is outspoken, creative, prefers working with people, and focused on the vision for a projects, C's are reserved, detail-oriented, and prefer working independently.
I's are likely to feel the need to speak to C's far more often than they prefer, ruining the flow and focus they desire in their work. On the opposite end, C's are likely to be more independent and may come off as being rude or seem to dislike an I when they don't need to.
A healthy relationship can be established when an I is mindful of a C's preference of working independently, and a C can be mindful of an I's need to think aloud and find time to be supportive in this role, despite their natural tendency.
When team members get a good grasp on their own DISC type in context of the team, they can start to maximize cooperation according to strengths and weaknesses. For example:
A team who really understands each other will know how they can best support others, and when they needs to go to others for support.
There's no "winning" template for a successful team, it depends on the industry, functional role of the team, and project, but balance comes from diversity.
Take some time to think through both the general strengths and weaknesses of your team, as well as the individual personalities involved. Is your team missing a vital personality type, do the appropriate accountabilities need to be established, or do they just need help understanding each other? No matter what the scenario, a strong grasp of DISC can help charge your results.