What is the DISC Profile ?

DISC is the four quadrant behavioral model based on the work of William Moulton Marston

DISC is an acronym for each of the four expressions of behavior.

·     Dominance –  A ”Control Specialist.”  -  A Take charge – do it now person.
·     Influence –  A “Communication Specialist.” -    Enthusiastic, Energetic and Fun
·     Steadiness – A “Harmonizing Specialist.” -  Calm, Patient and Thoughtful  
·     Conscientiousness  – An “Information Specialist.”  -  Analytical, Accurate and Precise

DiSC Benefits to you… 

•       Discover behavioral strengths and potential limitations.
•       Pinpoint areas for adapting, blending, and capitalizing.
•       Meet the behaviorally diverse needs of others.
•      Learn to accept and value the styles of others.
•      Manage Conflict & Stress (inter-personal & intra-personal)
•      Enhance your ability to be an effective team member
•      Enhance Productivity – improve the bottom line.

View Everything DiSC Workplace Profile 

Order your Everything DiSC Workplace Profile Here 

You will receive an email confirmation with an access code that enables you to respond to the assessment right on line. 

Your feedback will be immediate, and you can view/print or save your profile.

   D –  Dominance - Direct and Decisive.
           D’s are strong-willed, strong-minded people who like accepting
           challenges, taking action, and getting immediate results.

    i - influence - Optimistic and Outgoing
        i’s are “people people” who like participating on teams, 
        sharing ideas, and energizing and entertaining others.

   S –  Steadiness  -  Sympathetic and Cooperative
          S’s are helpful people who like working behind the scenes, 
          performing in consistent and predictable ways, and being good listeners. 

    C – Conscientiousness – Concerned and Correct
          C’s are sticklers for quality and like planning ahead, 
          employing systematic approaches, and checking and re-checking for accuracy.

Every day, organizations use DiSC®,  to establish a common language, paving the way for successful training and coaching applications. Detailed, personalized information helps people apply DiSC learning to specific business situations, including sales, leadership development, customer service, and conflict resolution.

Inscape’s ongoing research has resulted in exciting new reports and applications, including:     

    •  DiSC Classic 2.0  which harnesses the power of electronic delivery to provide more user-friendly, narrative-driven feedback

    •  DiSC Group Culture Report, which provides a powerful look at the influence of DiSC Styles on groups or organizations of any size.

When combined with the Everything DiSC Facilitation System, the latest generation of DiSC reports provides the easiest to use, most complete and proven solutions available in the industry.

DiSC is a model of human behavior that helps to understand just that. 

Dominance, influencing, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness are the four dimensions that are measured with the DiSC model.  Individual ways of thinking, acting, and feeling interact with other factors to describe human behavior.   Just like our thumbprint, our unique patterns of behavior becomes our natural style and distinguish us from one another.

While each DiSC behavioral style has has great strengths, if overused, each style also has potential limitations.

Professional effectiveness is enhanced by the valuable feedback derived from having your own DiSC Profile.

With DiSC, you will come to “know yourself better than others know you, and understand other better than they understand themselves.”

In a sunny courtyard, outside the office windows of one of his clients, a duck kept laying eggs on a large rock.    Originally they thought it was a prank, but it turned out to be for real and rather amusing.

So the staff began questioning what DiSC style the duck might be.”  Below is their analysis of possible DiSC applications and interpretation that could be used on this situation.     

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why did Daffy Duck make the decision to lay the egg on the rock?

Daffy was a “D” – Dominant Style:  

High degree of autonomy – likes to make own decisions
Wants to be on top, and is willing to  take risks
Quick to act – likes to achieve new status and gain more influence
Scrambles to deliver on-time results, sometimes at the expense of quality
Quick to act . . . not analytical or methodical

Daffy was an “I” – Influence Style:

Wants to be noticed . . . motivated by public recognition
Likes the limelight . . . dislikes assignments that isolates them  
Moves quickly . . . wants the freedom to move at their own rapid pace
Becomes restless if required to work for long periods of time on a single project
Motivated by flexibility and variety

Daffy was an “S” – Steadiness Style:

Looks for a calm setting where tension is low
Doesn’t like change  . . . appreciates a methodical pace
Likes a stable, secure environment  . . . doesn’t like change
May need a change but has hard time verbalizing their needs
Maintains harmony at the expense of sacrificing their own needs

Daffy was a “C” – Conscientiousness Style:

Daffy took so long analyzing the options that she missed the deadline
Daffy preferred to work alone, and be allowed time and space to complete a task
Daffy likes to be efficient.  She and can lay, cook and serve an egg in one convenient place

Share your creative ways of applying DiSC in our comments section.

Visit www.discprofileblog.com for The DiSC Classic Profile of the week.

In order for a high quality DiSC Assessment to provide useful feedback, it must measure what it claims to measure (validity) and it must do so consistently (reliability).

Research specialists assess how good an instrument is by first considering the sample population.  Inscape Publishing  makes sure that their research samples are representative of people of different ages and racial backgrounds and from a wide variety of geographical locations and occupational backgrounds.

The validity of Inscape’s DiSC scales has been confirmed by two types of statistical analyses, one called factor analysis and the other called multidimensional scaling.

DiSC Assessments also have to be reliable, which means they provide consistent results.   Professional-quality instruments offer “scale reliability” greater than .70.  The numbers for Inscape’s DiSC range from .77 to .85.

Inscape DiSC Classic Research & Validation Report

View Sample DiSC 2.0 Profile

Questions?  Call us at 517-324-9937.

Objective:   To help managers learn to adapt their management style to meet the needs of employees.

DiSC Training Materials:

• Sample Everything DiSC Management Profile – one per participant
• Everything DiSC Management Interaction Guides

Send access codes for each participant to complete their Everything DiSC® Management Profile prior to the training.    Inform them that they’ll receive their report during the training session.

When assigning access codes in your EPIC Account, set the radio button to no so your participants cannot view their reports until you pass them out on the day of training.  

Training Activity Setup:

Tell the group this is an activity to practice adapting their DiSC® styles to meet the needs of employees with different DiSC styles.   In pairs they’ll have the opportunity to practice having one-on-one conversations with employees having different DiSC styles.

Have the pairs choose from the following list of situations:

1.  The employee successfully completed a long-term project

2.  It’s time for the employee’s yearly performance review

3. There has been an organizational change in procedure

4. There is a conflict going on between the employee you’re talking to and another employee

5. The employee is being promoted

6. You’re asking the employee to take the lead in a last-minute project

7. You’re letting the employee know that you’re adding a new team member, and team members’ responsibilities will be shifting

8. The employee doesn’t appear to be enjoying work

9. You received a phone call from a customer who raved about the employee’s great customer service

10. You received a phone call from a customer who complained about the employee’s customer service

Ask participants to consider their natural DiSC Management style and tendencies. Use the information found in the Everything DiSC Management Profile and Everything DiSC Management Interaction Guides.  Have them practice adapting their style to employees of all four DiSC styles.

Debrief Training Activity in Large Group:

Ask a few participants to share what they learned from the Everything DiSC Management activity.

Encourage each manager to apply what they learned in their real management relationships, and adapt their style to meet the needs of their employees.  Encourage managers to adjust a little more after their first try.   Coach  manager’s to spend time reflecting and taking notes on what worked and what didn’t.  This will create a map of how to work best with each employee.

Your Insights:

In what circumstances do you think this activity would be especially useful?
Submit additional role-playing topics using the comments link below.

Virtual Showcase: - e-brochure pdf
Everything DiSC Applications Library (EDAL)		$30.00

Date:      February 22, 2011

Time:     10:00 AM – 11:30 PM (CT)

Fee:     Includes the 90-minute webinar and 1 Everything DiSC® Workplace® Profile

Description:
Participate right from the comfort of your own office.  This webinar features the entire family of Everything DiSC Application Library products; to include DiSC Workplace, DiSC Management, & DiSC Sales.

Pre-Work:
As a participant, you will be sent an access code to take the Everything DiSC Workplace® profile as pre-work, and then  experience the benefits of the Everything DiSC Library during the 90-webinar hosted by Inscape Publishing.   The webinar will feature an activity from the program and the all-new, application-specific video. 

Requirements:    
Both a high-speed internet connection and a phone connection are required for this session.

For More Information:  
Call: 517-324-9937 or
Email:  janet@discprofiles4u.com

The Ancient Greeks gave us the concept of the four temperaments. 

Hippocrates  said, there were 4 observable styles and their behavior was determined by types of  body fluids: 

He named them: 

• Choleric / Yellow Bile
• Sanguine / Blood
• Phlegmatic / Phlegm
• and Melancholy / Black Bile. 

The DiSC Classic Model used today has come a long way since the ancient Greeks.     The four DiSC patterns of behavior that are used to day were identified by Dr. William Moulton Marston, in his book “The Emotions of Normal People,” published in 1928.   Below are the DiSC behavioral names by as given by Marston, followed by how they are referred to today. 

• Dominance / Dominant
• Inducement / Influence
• Submission / Steadiness
• Compliance / Conscientiousness

There is an abundance of studies on behavioral styles.  In all theories, there seems to be one common thread – one factor – that even reinforces the more primitive studies.  That is that behavior is observable, and it forms patterns. 

Today, the most thoroughly developed, valid and reliable behavioral instrument for measuring behavioral styles is DiSC Classic Profile by Inscape Publishing. 

You will recognize the “Original DiSC Profile” -  the one with the small “i” – as a trademark of Inscape Publishing.

This is a one time offer, and applies only to the February 15, 16 DiSC Certification in Minneapolis.

Just register one person from your organization for the next Everything DiSC Applications Library Trainer Certification on Febuary 15-16, and the second person from your organization can attend for FREE.   You save $900.00!

The two-day training is designed to help you fully understand the Theory around the DiSC Circular Model, and learn to successfully implement the  DiSC Applications Library  products within your organization.  This means your organization will have a Certified DiSC Trainer on staff to conduct in-house training programs.

Participants are required to bring one of the Everything DiSC Application Library Facilitator Kits, all priced at $995.   Registration fee is $900 for the first participant and FREE for the second.   Must be registered by January 24, 2011.  Limit one offer per organization.

Seats fill up quickly.   For more information, please contact us at: 517-324-9937,  Mon – Fri, 10 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET.

Inscape’s DiSC products began with a theory based on the work of William Moulton Marston, a Harvard psychologist, and a contemporary of Carl Jung.   The findings of his work is found in his book: “The Emotions of Normal People,” published in 1928.

While all of his contemporaries studied abnormal behavior, or pathology, Marston was interested not in mental illness, but in how normal people behaved as they interacted with others and the world around them – their environment.

It was his intent to increase people’s understanding of themselves and others while decreasing misunderstandings.   He found that two kinds of perceptions are particularly useful for explaining people’s response in a particular situation:  perception of environment and perception of one’s self. 

Marston observed that these two kinds of perceptions interact to describe an individual’s response to a situation.

Dominance: 
When the environment is perceived as unfavorable and the individual  feels more powerful than the environment, he or she expresses a Dominant response.  This individual will likely try to direct, change, fix, or control the situation.

Influence: 
When the environment is perceived as favorable and the individual  feels more powerful than the environment, he or she expresses a desire to Influence.  This person will likely try to bring others around to his or her point of view.  To influence or persuade.

Steadiness: 
When the environment is perceived as favorable and the individual  feels less powerful than the environment, he or she expresses behaviors that offer support and help others.  This person will likely try to keep the situation stable and support those in need.

Conscientiousness: 
When the environment is perceived as unfavorable and the individual feels less powerful than the environment, he or she expresses Conscientiousness Behaviors.  This person will likely set clear rules within the situation and work very hard to follow them.

While Marston created the DiSC Model, he never developed and instrument by which to measure it. The original DiSC Classic Profile based on the work of Marston was developed by John Geier of Performax Systems International.  For more than thirty years Inscape and its predecessors have researched and refined the original DiSC theory to maximize its impact and accuracy. 

Watch for a future posting to describe Inscape’s Research and Validation Report.