Operating Instructions

With 30 years of proven reliability and over 40 million users, DiSC® remains the most trusted learning instrument in the industry. It is used worldwide in dozens of training and coaching applications, including organizational development and performance improvement. We use DiSC and we believe it to be the best professional assessment available.

 

Wouldn’t it be helpful if people—other people, that is—came with operating instructions? If only we could figure out other people by reading their owner’s manual. Knowing how to ask the boss for a raise would be a breeze.

Coping with an annoying co-worker would be a simple matter of reading up on what makes them tick. And dealing with that difficult customer—the key would no doubt be found somewhere in their manual.

Unfortunately sometimes we’re more interested in what makes others tick—“what their agenda is”—than in understanding ourselves.

DiSC® Sheds Light on Human Understanding

Enter personality profile instruments such as DiSC®, the closest thing we have to human operating instructions. DiSC® is an instrument developed to provide people with a common dialogue to improve communication and connectedness. It is based on the theories of William Moulton Marston, a Harvard psychologist, and provides insight to how we behave as we respond to our environment.

DiSC® Profile Products are self-administered (and online available through the EPIC platform), self-scoring, and self-interpreted productivity improvement solutions designed to help adults understand themselves and others.

Click here for samples of DiSC Leadership, Sales, and Team building reports.

A Company Up Front and Personal

The Wall Street Journal once wrote of a company that integrated DiSC® learning throughout the organization to raise awareness of different personal styles and preferences for behaving in an effort to reduce non-productive conflict. Each person wore a button conspicuously displayed on their clothing with the letters D, I, S, or C—depending upon their personal style so that others could immediately get a context for his/her personal style. In this way, the time wasted both consciously or unconsciously trying to “figure” people out would be minimized.

To Be or Not to Be?

One objection to using personality instruments to “profile” people is that of unfairly labeling others. Consider the alternative: we each develop our own internal framework that we use to categorize people with whom we interact that is often highly biased, judgmental, and carries with it its own set of consequences. Wouldn’t it be nice to learn common terms to describe preferences for behaving based on research without all the emotion we attach to our own systems? From this we could learn to celebrate our differences and begin to open dialogues that would reduce non-productive conflict while increasing personal effectiveness and organizational productivity.

The Answer not the Question

While advances in brain science may someday provide us with measures to instantly understand our own as well as others’ behavior, for now we must rely upon other resources. Personality instruments such as DiSC® and others provide valuable insight that may very well be the closest things we have to operating instructions for ourselves and others.

For tips to effectively train your people or for a free consultation using DiSC to streamline your organization email us at info[at]quicktrainingsolutions[dot]com or visit us at www.traininginabox.com. Ron Nielsen designs and delivers innovative and effective training solutions for businesses through NTG, his business development and training company.

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