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“ All that we are is the result of what we have thought. What we think ultimately determines everything else so how our brain processes information combined with what drives us emotionally is essentially what we need to understand.”
Leslie Choudhury
A DISC Profile is a personality testing technique that uses a simple questionnaire as a basis for revealing insights into a person's behaviour. Recruiters around the world have been using this personality test technique for decades, to see your own DISC personality profile.
A DISC personality profile is supposed to help you explore many different features of your own personal style, including your approach to home and work life, your communication style and motivation, your particular strengths.
At one end of the scale are fairly simple personality tests designed to evaluate specific skills and abilities, such as an examination or driving test. At the other end of the scale lie batteries of psychometric tests, designed to build as complete a picture of a person's style and approach, in general terms, as possible.
DISC lies somewhere between these two poles. While it isn't a full 'personality test' in the strict technical sense, it provides an insight into an individual style that is more than adequate to predict the likely trends of their behaviour in the future. It does this by evaluating four key factors in an individual style, rather than the sixteen or more that are often seen in full personality tests (for example, DISC makes no attempt to measure such factors as intelligence).
This confers the advantage of greater accessibility: while a full test battery will often contain literally hundreds of questions, and take hours to complete, a DISC personality profile questionnaire contains only twenty-four, and can be usually be performed in fifteen minutes or less. This also provides advantages in the area of interpretation; while the interpretation of results from a full test remains in the province of experts, DISC results are sufficiently well-defined that their interpretation can be almost completely automated.
At its most basic level, DISC measures four factors of an individual's behaviour: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. These are fairly complex constructs, and aren't easily expressed in single words, but they can be characterised as assertiveness, communication, patience and structure.
The supposed real power of DISC, though, comes from its ability to interpret the relations between these factors. For example where a highly Dominant person has an equally high level of Influence, they will behave quite differently to an equally Dominant individual without that Influence.
Using this information, a DISC profile can be used to describe a person's general approach, including their motivations and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, and some of the basic assumptions they make about other people. It is suppose help to predict how a person will react to a specific set of circumstances.
"It has been estimated that some 70 per cent of UK organisations test their workforce either for personality or ability before making a job offer or conferring a promotion."- Personnel Today magazine
Whilst the popularity and utilization of this DISC tool is far and wide I would like us to compare this against the tools of Directive Communication; specifically the Color Brain Analysis and the Human Emotional Drivers. I want us to explore why I feel the latter being a more pragmatic, useful and important tool that organizations and individuals can utilize for better understanding of their staff, themselves and creating. a better working scenario
What is the Directive Communication CBCI profiling tool The CBCI (Colored Brain Communication Inventory) is a profiling tool unlike others. It is different because the focus of this tool addresses both Nature and Nurture in the formation of Processing characteristics. The foundation is in discovering the Genetic architecture that supports the way an individuals Brain communicates and processes information. It also establishes the "Brain Flexibility" (unnatural characteristics that have been developed through environment) that cross into other genetic territories.
Imagine two computers, a Macintosh and a PC. Both can run "Microsoft Excel" and both can run "Adobe Photoshop" (graphics software), yet you cannot run software written for one type of computer on the other. And, even the same programs have a slightly different look and feel to them. Additionally Excel runs very fast on a PC and a bit slower on a Mac, but Photoshop runs far faster on the Mac than on the PC. Our brains work in the same way. If we are genetically built to process information in a certain way and we are "forced" to swallow systems or procedures or management styles that are "designed" for a different brain processor, we tend to be less efficient and less fulfilled. Yet, if we have a greater understanding of the processor we are running in our brain, it becomes easier to design the right "software" to do the job better and more effectively. The CBCI helps do just that. The second part of the profile also determines the areas necessary to gain more "Communication Flexibility" in order to work well with other types of brain processors.
We often have difficulty getting a clear understanding of how others perceive our actions toward them, and how affects their and our performance. In some cases, our own motivations may adversely affect those around us, causing them to be less productive and less motivated. We may oblivious to the dynamic behind the reason of average or even below average performance in our departments. With the awareness provided with this tool, we gain insights into how we satisfy our "Human Drivers" (motivators), and how we can adjust our behaviour to fill our needs in more positive ways that cultivate more productive and fulfilled environments.
The HDMA is a Directive Communication tool that provides a comprehensive psychological mirror image to recognize the gaps between our personal perceptions (i.e. how we see ourselves), versus peer, subordinates, and superior perceptions (i.e how others see us), thus allowing us to fully understand how we affect, and are affected, by each.
The HDMA measures the Human Drivers that affect us and those around us. It is NOT a performance assessment, but an indicator to give us the psychological and emotional awareness of our environment and the perceptive motives and motivations behind our actions. This awareness helps us gain greater effectiveness in working with others and increase overall productivity
Now the reason I feel this is more effective as a tool is because DISC profiles can change literally in a month’s time or 3 or 6 months and is shaped by how your personality is affected by environment, circumstances and more. Whilst in Color Brain , it is a definitive evaluation of your brain colour that does’nt change and then understanding the co-relationship how human emotional drivers affect a person. If either an organization or an individual understand themselves and others they work with, it will simply make them more effective, not just for a month, 3 or 6 months but they have a tool that will assist them for the long run of inter-relating with people.
Leslie Choudhury
www.lesliechoudhury.com |
DC Versus DISC