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The DiSC® Model

Improving relationships by understanding people's personal styles

"DiSC" is a trademark of Inscape Publishing Inc. (see www.inscapepublishing.com). We have no association or connection with Inscape Publishing Inc.

At work, different personalities need to do more than just peacefully co-exist!

Is there one person at work that you just don't get? Or someone who approaches things so differently from you that you find it hard to relate to them?

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. We all have people who we find hard to communicate with, or work with. And yet for the sake of our teams or our organizations, we need to make these relationships work. The good news is that there are ways of doing this. A good starting point is to understand more about your own personality, and that of the other person.

Personality has been studied for centuries, and these studies have led to various ways of categorizing people's behavioral styles and behavioral preferences. By understanding patterns of behavior and preferences in the abstract, you can learn to understand other people, and yourself, in terms of what drives people and how they tend to react.

The DiSC® Model

The DiSC model, based on the work of psychologist William Moulton Marston from the 1920s, is one such approach. It is a straightforward, standardized and relatively simple way of assessing behavioral styles and preferences.

It classifies people's behavior into four types (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness) by looking at people's preferences on two scales:

People versus Task, and
Assertive versus Reserved.

These preference scales form the axes of the DiSC model, and the four behavioral types are shown in the four quadrants of figure 1, below.

DiSC assessment tests use standardized data derived from a large population of people who've taken the test before. Thus an individual's assessment score gives an indication of their preferences relative to others. By using the tool, you might learn...