DiSC Profiling FAQ's

The DiSC model has been used for decades, to help people understand themselves and others, Assists with bringing a common language to a team or an organisation. Reducing the potential of conflict, improving communications and enhancing teams to better achieve and perform.

Often referred to as behavioural profiling. When used correctly this instrument leads to the understanding of others and is certainly the furthest point away
from equipping people to make judgments as this learning solely serves to enhance relationships in the workplace and to help indivduals and personal relationships to reflect.

Everything DiSC assessments go by the following descriptors:  Dominance (D) - influence (i) - Steadiness (S) - Conscientiousness (C)

(note the lower case, this is pertinent to the original
Wiley product – Everything DiSC)

An Everything DiSC assessment will allow for inferior differentiation among styles than just these four labels. Some styles could be a D, i, S or C;
or a Di, or an SC.

Why not undertake an Everything DiSC profile and get to know you.

Wiley, the publisher of
DiSC®, is committed to maintaining the highest standards of instrument development and application through careful research and development processes.

From the Everything DiSC Manual:

People agree with the narrative
descriptions of their styles.

“Overall, participants report that the DiSC fit is good or excellent approximately 90% of the time. As documented under the Forer effect (1949), however, it is not unusual for participants to
show a high level of agreement with psychological test results, especially when those results include broad interpretations that could accurately describe most
individuals in the population.”

Observers also show agreement.

“… a study was conducted to examine the relationship between DiSC assessment results and observer ratings of leadership behaviour. … The results of the analysis were largely as expected
under the theoretical DiSC model. For 71% of the [leadership] practices, the expected style had the highest mean. For 88% of the practices, the expected
style was among the top two highest means.”

All Everything DiSC® instruments
offer valid scores and accurate feedback to the respondent. Each instrument is designed to provide reasonably accurate interpretations or feedback based on individual scores.

You can be sure each Everything DiSC assessment has gone through rigorous evaluation for validity, reliability, and ease-of-use.

Activate your own self reflection assessment and receive your personalised report here.

Everything DiSC Workplace® (English) from Wiley publishers has been DNV-GL certified as an occupational test tool in the UK. Meaning that the Everything DiSC Workplace assessment has passed the test Review Model developed by the European Federation of Psychologists’ Association (known as EFPA).  The DNV GL is an approval of manufacturers (AoM) who confirms that a product such as this has been found in
compliance with international standards, regulations or their recognised DNV GL rules. This provides a company with proof of high quality and safety
standards.

By firstly conducting a DiSC assessment a 20 plus page report will
then be generated and personalised to you. Where you will learn more about your
behavioural traits along with your tendency’s and preference in line with the
workplace. By becoming more aware this naturally leads to being inquisitive
about others and their DiSC styles learning how they may react to your approach
and theirs to yours. If conducted individually you can then choose to engage on
one or more coaching sessions with a certified Everything DiSC practitioner.
The first session will always present a more in-depth examining of your report
along with translating it more so to help you get the absolute best from the
experience.

If you run a team of people then following the assessment stage a
certified Everything DiSC facilitator can then be deployed to facilitate a
workshop which will be enlightening to all in attendance and where activities
will be meaningful and where experiential learning will commence and provide
the beginnings of a change of culture in your workplace. 

A team with a mix of styles is no better or worse than a team of all
one style. The key to a well-rounded team is awareness: the group needs to be
able to recognise its challenges and work to overcome them rather than focus
only on its strengths.

We always insist upon a needs assessment to be completed beforehand so
we can customise your workshop towards yours and the organisation's aims and
objectives. If the organisation or leader is unable to be specific towards his
or her exact needs then this process will assist. Equally so, if the experience
outside of DiSC is not within our expertise we will recommend a company who
is. 

The DISC Model of Behaviour was first proposed by William Moulton
Marston, a physiological psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard. His 1928 book,
Emotions of Normal People, explains his theory on how normal human emotions lead to behavioural differences among groups of people and how an individual’s behaviour might change over time. His work focused on directly observable and measurable psychological phenomena.

There’s a long history from DiSC model to Everything DiSC profiles.

Walter V. Clarke, an industrial psychologist, was the first person to build an assessment instrument (personality profile test) using Marston’s theories. He developed an assessment instrument for John Cleaver called ‘Self Description’.

‘Self Description’ was used by John Geier, Ph.D., to create the
original Personal Profile System® (PPS) in the 1970s.

Inscape Publishing improved this instrument’s reliability by adding new items and removing non-functioning items. The new assessment was named the
Personal Profile System 2800 Series (PPS 2800) and was first published in 1994.
This self-scored and self-interpreted assessment is now known as DiSC® Classic.

The Everything DiSC®
product family was launched by Inscape Publishing in 2007, was created to make the DiSC assessment even more valuable to its users. It introduced more
highly personalised reports, customizable facilitation tools and electronic access to unlimited follow-up reports.

Please note the trademark lower case( i )in DiSC as this represents the authentic Wiley Everything DiSC product.

It takes around 15-20 minutes to take an Everything DiSC assessment, when you will be presented with around 80 questions. This could be more as the software utilises adaptive testing hence not everyone receives the same questions or
number of questions.

It is best to answer what comes natural and be truthful to yourself.

Indefinitely, our programmes are designed with lifelong learning in mind as our mantra is ‘return and learn’ our assessments and reports stay with you to assist with experiential learning in the workplace.

No, you can undertake and assessment independently although we would always
recommend having at least one follow up session to help examine, translate, and dig deeper in your report. This would be especially so if there is a team or an organisational development need. However, an individual assessment can assist with self-realisation/ learning and can help with how to best deal with others by being confident with your own style.  Likewise, to aid with organising and producing your CV to make it more impactful.  Knowing yourself, your attributes and how they could be applied well at interview is always helpful too. Additionally, to help you plan careers move in relation to your preferred behaviours and comfort zone.

NB
you can always generate an assessment then follow up with us at a later stage
if you wish us to work with you by  expanding upon learning.

It is sometimes observed one dimension over another can appear to be so when working with different categories of groups.
Example: seemingly the construction industry appears to have more D’s, similarly accountants seem to have many C-styles. That being said the
distribution of successful people in each dimension is still fairly evenly
circulated. As often styles can also be located in the other quadrants.

It is suggested that Job profiles and DiSC research shows no strong correlation between styles and success in any job
type. The founder here at My Training Shop knows that to have a mix of styles in many positions can only serve a team well.

DiSC should not recommended for
recruitment  screening as it does not measure a specific skill, aptitude or factor specific to any position. this is not what DiSC profiling is intended for, it is not a predictive assessment so assumptions should not be made regarding an applicant’s probability of success based solely on their style. However to use DiSC for on boarding into an
organisation which already utilises Everything DiSC, would be a win - win situation.

If you wish to use pre-employment profiling then contact us for more information  

Most definitely and thanks to our new Catalyst Programme which was designed in response to world changes and where individuals are often working remotely. There is strong evidence that leaders
need to manage and motivate teams in a completely different way now. 

DiSC can assist leaders with optimising and elevating their teams working from home
experience.  As they take on the
necessary yet challenging task of improving their teams’ remote work situation.
Everything DiSC Workplace can serve as a solid foundation to help build a strong culture and connection with one another by uncovering insights that help
deepen self -awareness, inspire appreciation of others, and offer ‘no nonsense’ tips to start conversations to  build better relationships—all based on  DiSC styles.

Read more about Remote Learning in this article

In general, the average person’s
behavioural profile tends to stay fairly consistent over time. While small differences in results from one time to the next can occur, major swings in style are unlikely. When you repeat a DiSC assessment it is improbable
that you will answer in exactly the same way and hence your dot placement is likely to move marginally. The median change Wiley (the publisher) sees after a
repeat assessment is 12 degrees which is nominal

However, if it has been two years or more since you last took the assessment or a major life or work event has occurred, it is recommended that you retake again to for you to gain the most
accurate, up-to-date picture.

Additionally It is good practice to
administer DiSC assessments every two or so years to keep on top of new recruits, how they fit in to the company culture or indeed as a part of the on boarding process allowing your organisation to preserve its effective DiSC
culture.

Extracted from The Everything DiSC Manual:

“Stability refers to the assessment’s
ability to yield the same measurements over a period of time. … A sample of 599
respondents took the DiSC assessment twice with a two-week interval between testings. … [D]ata suggests that the DiSC scales are stable over repeated administration. Consequently, test takers and test administrators should, on average, expect no more than small changes when the instrument is taken at different times. As the period between administrations increases, however; the divergent results of these administrations will become more and more noticeable.”

Regarding geography and culture, Mark Scullard, a psychometrician and DiSC researcher, had this to say in a LinkedIn forum:

“We don’t see much difference in DiSC results based on region of the U.S. In fact, I had just done a comparison using some representative states (CA, DC, FL, IA, NY, OH, TX, CO, GA) and found very few differences. There was a very slight tendency for results like more S styles in Ohio or more D styles in Georgia, but these differences are so small that they have virtually no practical implications.

With regard to ethnic difference, we can also say that we don’t see any differences based on the traditionally defined five U.S. categories. In fact, when we look at a large sample of Australians (living in Australia) who have taken the U.S. profile, they look the same as the U.S. population. I would only expect to see a difference in
your sample with a large Latin-American population if participants are not very fluent in English. In such a case, the distribution of scores shouldn’t change, but the precision will drop a little.

The Everything DiSC blog (formerly published by Inscape Publishing) noted the following in their “How many D’s are
there in the population?” post:

A person is only D relative to the
people around her. A person is only C relative to the people around her. For example, imagine that we a have a plane full of S-style folks and the plane crashes on a remote island. We, of course, would have an island full of very, very polite people. But imagine that isolated community of people
10 years later, once they got to know each other really well. Some of those people would now probably be considered D’s – because they are more dominant relative to everyone else. If DiSC is going to be useful, it must help us understand our individual differences, not what everyone has in common.

The Everything DiSC profiles show a dot for your style and shading to show your comfort zone. If a
person scores high for priorities outside the three surrounding his or her style, shaded lines will be shown. An example where a person has 5 priorities rather than the more typical three. Approximately one-third of respondents will receive an extra priority or two in their report.

Absolutely, if you are an in-house or free-lance trainer and wish to deliver one of these programmes yourself., we are a DiSC authrorised parter and can support you with this.  It is important to point out that certification is not a mandatory requirment to administer Everything DiSC profiles, we are at My Training Shop hence can advise you.
Alternatevely Wiley (the publisher) can guide and assist you with this process.  If certification is what you want to pursue then equally so, we can put you forward to apply for Everything DiSC workplace certification which is currently run online, meaning it is much more accessible than it ever was. For certification in other countries, we can put you in touch with our international partners. Any further information on any of these pointers please contact us here.
Facilitation kits are available for all DiSC profiles assessments. Where you can utilise their scripted modules, videos, and other resources to create your own modified training program.

Other facilitation support:

Behavioural Profiling – article

Everything DiSC – article

Quite simply it’s about what do you want to learn/achieve? What problem are you trying to solve? Knowing the answer will help you choose the profile that best meets your needs.

In short, Everything DiSC for the
workplace is Wiley’s flagship assessment and focuses on general workplace issues. leadership and sales assessments along with workshops or mentoring , are specific to
those roles. If you are a leader and aslo looking at team communication improvements, conflict reduction, building a better culture then its always a good idea to participate with the Everything DiSC workplace profile or the briliant Everything DiSC on Catalyst. (all available for group sessions)
The sales assessments is perfect for anyone in a position where they depend on people for performance. Valuable insights are gained on themselves and
importantly how to people read their prospects and customers in order to communicate in a meaningful way which consequently will bring about increased likeliness of results.

In view of the changes brought about in 2020 where an agile workplace is a foregone for any organisations success then Agile is the tool of choice to contribute with this aim. Contact if you are unsure – then complete the needs assessment first then we can talk afterwards.

The needs assessment is helpful when there is a requirment for a ‘top down’ approach. when it is likely a multiple variety of assessments and interactions will need to be implemented.

If you want to learn more about
yourself, we recommend Everything DiSC for Self Refelction

Learn more

If you're a freelance trainer, consultant, or coach, there are many ways to incorporate DiSC in your learning and development practice.

Or

If you're interested in building a DiSC culture in your workplace, there are many ways to get started.

We are proud to be an authorised partner of Wiley's Everything DiSC. This means we can provide you with all the information you need about the various options available.

We are here to support you every step of the way. If you're interested in learning more about this insightful profiling tool, feel free to ask us for more information.

We'd be happy to chat at a time that works for you.