Interest in the genuine DiSC test is generally piqued for specific reasons or when seeking specific outcomes, but maximizing the value of the DiSC means understanding the motivations for taking the test. In understanding how to take the DiSC personality test, the process should be seen in the light of why the test is being taken and which test is the most appropriate for the outcomes, as these tend to dictate not just how it is taken, but also how to extract the intrinsic value offered by the Disc.
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Understanding Why To Take A DiSC Personality Test
“Man know thyself” is a Socratic call for knowledge of self as the basis for a true understanding of self and the possible mastery of self and is sometimes referred to as The Philosophy of Self-Knowledge. Some 2,000 years after Socrates died in 399 BCE, after many philosophers had expanded on the theory, the French philosopher René Descartes hypothesized that self-knowledge starts at the beginning of being with knowledge of self-being a journey of self-discovery and identification.
The DiSC personality test is an extension of these theories, inviting participants to know themselves better- and then build on that knowledge. Human behavior is often the most critical component of almost everything. Overt behaviors are the things the world sees whereas covert behaviors are somewhat hidden, comprising thoughts, emotions, and memory. Bearing in mind that the DiSC personality test seeks to pinpoint behaviors and highlight strengths and weaknesses within a particular framework, the test has the capacity to change the quality of life for those who, after taking the test, align their behaviors with desired outcomes.
Defining four personality identities- Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness (DISC), the DiSC personality test gauges how an individual interacts with others using two personality facets. Personal skepticism (Or the lack of it) and pace are measured and illustrated in a quadrant that represents a snapshot of how the individual sees themselves. The philosophy of the DiSC is broadly built around the following:
1. The Purpose of the DiSC Assessment
In a nutshell, the purpose of the genuine DiSC test is to get to know thyself, thy teammates, or thy employees better. Aside from the personal development that flows from knowing yourself better, the data delivers insight into building the puzzle of life, company and personal goals, or project outcomes and produces an agile platform from which to reach higher heights.
2. Potential Outcomes of The DiSC Personality Test
The DiSC assessment references the philosophy that all behavior is motivated by a person’s needs, wants, and desires, drivers that, when galvanized and directed towards a particular outcome, can be the difference between success and failure, or satisfaction and Discontent. Where these human needs are unmet, motivation levels are low, and success often remains out of reach.
Modeling behaviors using the individual’s natural pace and skepticism on the DiSC scale, and identifying these drivers is useful in several applications. The potential outcomes of the DiSC personality test include:
• Heightened self-awareness of personal strengths and weaknesses.
• Better communication, including within the workforce.
• An increased ability to adjust Interaction styles to different personalities.
• More cohesive team dynamics and collaboration.
• Enhanced productivity and efficiency
• Greater job satisfaction
Ask yourself, do you know yourself well enough to achieve your goals?
3. How DiSC Results Can Be Used
Figuring out why a DiSC personality test would be useful will help clarify goals and define a path to achieve these goals. In understanding the person’s drivers, the DiSC test results can be built into a blueprint where the intentions with taking the test are:
• Personal growth and goal-setting
• Employee Selection
• Employee training
• Team Building
• Conflict resolution
• Leadership development
• Performance management
• Recruitment and hiring
Emerging from the results are areas where individuals are best suited and by leveraging these elements, productivity is enhanced, particularly in team settings. By knowing yourself better, a clearer picture of where you are headed and how to get there starts to come into view.
And once there is a clear idea of the outcomes and goals- the whys, the next step is to figure out which test will be fit for purpose and then how to take a meaningful DiSC personality test that acts as a guide towards goals and outcomes.
Which DiSC Personality Test Will Suit Your Needs
DiSC personality reports are built around outcomes, making how the report will be used to achieve objectives pivotal to selecting the right DiSC test to take. There are six primary domains that cover a broad spectrum of intended outcomes.
Based on the DiSC model of personality, the tests all pinpoint traits through a sliding scale of responses between strongly disagree and strongly agree. Gathering the data into an enlightening report, the DiSC assesses answers to deliver an accurate profile in specialized environments and postulates potential work to be done to achieve optimal results. The types of DiSC Personality test include:
When you know yourself, with the right mindset, you can go far, but not all mindsets are the same. With the DiSC, eight Agile EQ mindsets are brought into play and the key- as the name suggests, is to achieve agility rather than being tied down to a fixed mindset. A flexible mindset suggests thinking outside the box in different situations. The test invites participants to discover what they have (to know thyself), but also to recognize their mindsets, and then act in order to adapt to a particular situation.
No one mindset is more valuable than the next. A cool head in a surgical operating theatre may not transplant well to the stage as Hamlet and the key lies in taking a nimble approach to interactions. There’s no reason why a doctor can’t moonlight as an actor if he has a flexible mindset.
By understanding and managing emotions, effective and efficient individual and group work can be pursued. The Agile EQ personality report guides the participant to recognize and understand their own emotional states and those of others around them, delivering strategies for managing these emotions on both sides. Learn to know yourself- and your team, then act on that knowledge to improve self-knowledge, employee interaction, managerial performance, and executive leadership.
The DiSC® Agile EQ™ Report Assessment is useful for:
• Learning strategies to improve interactions with others by quickly responding to work and social situations.
• Gaining insight into strategies to reach outside established comfort zones.
• Establishing methods for accepting change and improving adaptability responses.
• Understanding different mindsets and approaches to situations within a group or an organization.
• Learning how inherent behavioral style preferences can be beneficial or harmful in collaborative environments.
The DiSC® Agile EQ™ is recommended for better team collaboration, enhanced cooperative productivity, individual adaptability, and an overall positive workplace culture.
2. The DiSC® Management Profile
Managers, they say, are made, not born. Yet management does require a certain amount of natural ability to combine with skills learned and it’s this natural inclination towards or away from skepticism and pace that is gauged on the DiSC personality test.
Building on ingrained personality traits, the DiSC Management Profile measures these qualities, processing leadership and management strengths and, identifying potential areas for improvement, using recognized strong points of employees and teams as a reference. As is devops a personalized leadership development plan, the report identifies areas where managers will reap benefits from additional training or support, contributing to a stronger, more productive team or workgroup.
Understanding your particular inherent preferences and management style, and using them to your best advantage while filling in any gaps that may have been revealed in the test, can elevate organizational efficiency to new heights. As leaders, the personality of a manager shapes the working climate of the team and often dictates how team members perform.
The DiSC® Management Profile Report Assessment is useful for:
• Understanding the strengths and challenges of an identified style when directing and delegating.
• Learning about motivational factors that could influence personal management style.
• Gaining perspective on modifying an established approach while developing others.
• Learning about how others could perceive a manager’s inherent leadership ability.
• Educating employees on how to work cooperatively and achieve the best with managers with a different DiSC® personality type than their own.
The DiSC® Management Profile is recommended for: Organizations assembling teams that work well together, managers seeking to understand themselves and others- and adapt if necessary, and build stronger working relationships or supervisors working on conflict resolution skills and seeking ways to motivate and direct employees.
3. The DiSC® Productive Conflict Profile
Managing workplace conflict- one of the worst workplace disruptors, needs productive conflict resolution where disagreements are skillfully guided and managed to a positive outcome. Better-managed conflicts make for stronger relationships within a team which in turn delivers better focus on the tasks and goals at hand leading to the achievement of goals.
By applying the DiSC model traits identified in the report, individual approaches and responses to conflict are recognized, and strategies to progressively manage differing conflict styles are suggested. The report advocates for compromise and finding common ground and contributes to healthy dispute resolution and employee engagement.
Highlighting areas where the focus should be directed when dealing with conflict, the report could strengthen team perseverance, tenacity, and purpose.
The DiSC® Productive Conflict Profile Report Assessment is useful for:
• Deepening self-awareness and recognizing adverse behaviors that promote unproductivity.
• Suggestions on positive communication tactics when team members are presented with disagreements.
• Gaining perspective of different behavioral methods so innate objectives can be modified.
• Learning ways to choose productive responses by reframing automatic thoughts.
• Recognizing how and why some methods for handling conflict tend to be effortless, while others demand forethought.
The DiSC® Productive Conflict Profile is recommended for: Organizations seeking to increase communication and productivity levels, and for managers to learn how best to decrease conflict in a constructive manner.
Whether salespeople’s styles are hunters or challengers, shopkeepers or farmers, or any other effective style, every sales style has value. But, as ‘they’ say, “Different strokes for different folks,” so whatever the salesperson does, different styles will always appeal to some clients, and repel others, which makes understanding your own sales style, and the styles of the sales force essential.
Recognizing a particular style that works for a particular salesperson- and identifying areas for improvement or flexibility helps the person excel. Making a sale is often described as one of the best feelings in the world and the confidence generated from engaging in marketing that comes naturally is a bonus tool that leads to significantly better target attainment.
By understanding the ins and outs of inner traits that affect the way sales are approached, salespeople benefit from an analysis based on the DiSC model of personality, gaining a deeper awareness and finding strategies to enhance the dynamic world of sales. Because they won’t always be selling to the same kind of folks.
When sales training is elevated, customers’ proclivities could also be better understood, and tailored sales approaches will better meet the needs of customers. The DiSC Sales Profile can also raise personalized sales training levels to polish plans for growth within the given corporation or team.
The DiSC® Sales Profile, an expansion of the baseline DiSC® Profile, gives a brief overview of how the scenarios where the most energy is place (expressed priorities) affect a person’s sales experience during situations- both when purchasing and selling. Using individual strengths and leveraging personal traits, the decisions of those who may have alternate personality habits can be influenced.
The DiSC® Sales Profile Report Assessment is useful for:
• Improving customer interaction strategies by learning to recognize different personalities and purchasing habits.
• Learning behaviors that each personality type tends to deploy when approached by a purchasing opportunity.
• Enhancing sales strategies by learning methods for adapting established behaviors generally used when approaching others.
• Developing an action plan for elevating a customer’s sales experience.
• Expanding on the current knowledge of how personality shapes an organization’s culture, and increasing the ability to match sellers with buyer based on compatible personality behaviors.
The DiSC® Sales Profile is recommended for: Professionals who want to find out how their particular personality can influence their sales tactics.
5. The DiSC® Work of Leaders Profile
Delving into the qualities and characteristics of effective leaders, John C. Maxwell’s seminal work, “The Work of Leaders,” identifies seven key responsibilities or “works” of leaders. These are vision, alignment, buy-in, leadership, communication, execution, and renewal.
Based on the concepts identified by Maxwell, the DiSC model applied to The Work Of Leaders assessment leads users toward a better understanding of their inherent development and functioning style. A leader with one style may be especially effective at creating a cohesive vision and fusing their team around it, while another may be more comfortable with building buy-in and engaging their team, but both could achieve similarly good results.
People who work toward a common goal mosly produce positive results if communication between leaders and subordinates is at the forefront of priorities. When a leader has a deeper understanding of their particular leadership style this can be used to communicate more effectively. The DiSC® Work of Leaders Profile is an expansion of the DiSC® Personality Profile but extrapolates the detail of where a person’s energy is generally placed, giving leaders a better understanding of how their inherent behaviors and personality influence others. Managerial, executive, and leadership styles can be adapted and focused to meet the needs of the group or organization.
The DiSC® Work of Leaders Profile adds significant strengths to managers and leaders by guiding them to:
• Learn how innate behaviors affect leadership style.
• Deepen self-awareness to find motivational factors driven by behavior.
• Realize leadership strengths and recognize areas of challenge, to modify behaviors for building productive and optimized leadership strategies.
• Expand on the DiSC® by leveraging personalized results for behavioral development.
• Understand the personality expressions of others who may be assessed in alternate DiSC® styles.
The DiSC® Work of Leaders Profile is recommended for leaders seeking to fulfill leadership responsibilities effectively.
6. The DiSC® Workplace Profile
Understanding how managers, employees, executives, groups, and team members are inclined to interact with others improves the proficiency, efficiency, and adeptness of work-related teams. Building on employees’ inherent behaviors and responses- and how they affect others, the DiSC Workplace Profile measures individual dominant traits and reports on conduct tendencies.
Improved communication, better collaboration, efficient managerial and leadership, and beneficial conflict resolution are made possible through acute perceptions concerning employees and their peers, and how the conduct of each member of a group affects professional activities. The report is regularly used by Fortune 500 companies to help improve the bottom line
and finds purpose through:
• Improving communication and collaboration among team members.
• Enhancing executive leadership and managerial efficiency.
• Upgrading conflict resolution and better understanding different perspectives.
• Ascertaining and amplifying employees’ strengths and areas for improvement.
• Aiding in the selection and recruitment of new hires by choosing prospects with the desired characteristics and the innate workplace behavior sought.
The DiSC® Workplace Profile is recommended for: Candidates being screened for a new job, new employees, and different groups of employees who work closer together.
How To Take The DiSC Personality Test
After defining the purpose of taking a DiSC personality test and selecting the appropriate type of DiSC test, it’s a simple matter of checking out your purchase before being redirected to a link. Failing the DiSC personality test is not an option as there are no right or wrong answers. Spontaneous responses are just as valid as those that are well thought out- authenticity is what matters.
The DiSC personality comprises a bank of questions about your own behavior on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Designed to gauge individual behavioral styles and priorities, the test uses adaptive questioning and generally takes about 15–20 minutes to complete before compiling a comprehensive and insightful report.
The kind of questions that can be expected in the DiSC personality test include:
• Trait selection questions: Similar to multiple choice-type questions, these questions may list four traits and ask you to select the pair that best describes you or the one or two that least describes you.
• Adjective-based questions: The questionnaire lists questions about how you rate your own behavior, for example, do you feel you are assertive, cautious, outgoing, or reserved? And how strongly do you feel about each of these adjectives as they apply to you?
Mark each word according to how well it describes you. The DiSC personality test is scored on your responses as they fit into the Pace-Skepticism quadrant. On completion, a behavioral profile that reflects your unique dominant traits is compiled showing responses on a circular or quadrant diagram and where you fit in within one of four personality categories.
By understanding how you fit into these four distinct behavioral styles, you can learn how to understand yourself and develop ways to interact more effectively with others. A quick way to access meaningful results, the DiSC personality test provides insight into personality traits and strategies to help users know themselves better and grow into the best possible version of themselves.
Ways To Use The Results of a DiSC Personality Test
Taking the test arms the user with self-knowledge and guidance on how to adapt. Its strength lies in pinpointing an identity and revealing ways to be a better or more effective self. But it’s not simply a piece of paper and when used properly will enhance and improve the daily life of the individual and those around them.
In this way, the DiSC personality test results could make a very real difference in one’s life in these areas:
1. Understand your personality: Who are you and what makes you tick? Once these questions can be answered life starts taking on a more meaningful direction. A DiSC profile reveals aspects of self and provokes thought, making life decisions less like the roll of a dice and more of a conscious, well-informed choice.
2. Improve communication: Knowing your communication style makes it far simpler to tailor your particular style to match the preferences of others.
3. Building relationships: Strategies to build better relationships at work and in the community can be devised and implemented based on individualized traits.
4. Motivate others: When a DiSC personality is undertaken in a team setting, each member’s priorities and preferences can be accounted for as leaders implement motivational techniques that resonate with the particular team member.
5. Prepare for job applications: By understanding where your strengths lie, the types of jobs to apply for can be pinpointed rather than sending out a CV that won’t get read, or ending up in a soul-destroying job where you don’t fit in.
6. Evaluate applicants: Most jobs require a particular temperament and evaluating applicants for a job role can take account of this facet which seldom emerges from a CV.
7. Onboard new employees: New employees are onboarded more successfully when there is an inherent understanding of where they fit in best.
8. Consider promotions: Rather than promoting a person outside their comfort zone, assessing whether their performance will continue to be good in a different role based on their specific qualities has a better chance of success.
9. Organize teams: Cohesive groups work better when members of the group have common priorities or where potential clashes are identified before turning into workplace conflicts. DiSC results are useful for organizing employees into harmonious teams.
10. Build better workplace conflict resolution protocols: Using information gleaned from a DiSC test, methods for managing conflict can be developed and implemented.
The DiSC stimulates the thought process and offers opportunities to grow as a person and be your best possible self. But mostly, it helps you to know thyself.