Andra 5: DiSC Personality Assessment

Hello bloggers, sorry for my first late post!

I’m staying in Texas visiting my family (and currently playing Civilization VI with my dad), so I totally forgot to write!

For a quick post this week, I wanted to share something cool I recently did for work: a 4-day leadership class that required us to do a personality test prior to the course. Specifically, we took the DiSC assessment, and I was so excited because I genuinely love learning about both me and other people’s personalities.

DiSC is a personality framework that breaks people into four main styles:

You can also fall between two styles, creating 12 combinations in total:

After taking the test and receiving the results, you will get a dot representing where you stand within the circle, and a shaded area, like so:

The closer your dot is to the center, the more adaptable you are to other styles. The closer it is to the edge, the more strongly others perceive you as your dominant style, and the harder it is to flex into others.

My dot landed in the middle of the i quadrant (Influence), with shading stretching into D and S, and slightly into C. This means I am:

-            --Most comfortable in i (enthusiastic, collaborative, expressive).

-            --Able to “chameleon” into D (action-oriented, bold) and S (supportive, steady) when needed.

-            --I feel the least natural in C (detail-focused, structured, precise), taking more energy to work in that way.

According to the test, I naturally tend to focus on the bright side, love action, fast-paced environments, and innovation. I prefer collaboration and social interaction and scored high in the “challenge” trait (not typical for i’s), meaning I enjoy questioning assumptions and pushing for better solutions.

During our leadership training, we split into groups based on our DiSC results and were each asked to make a poster that represented our personality style. Every group approached it in their own way:

-            --The D group made their poster the fastest with bullet points and one color. One person was voluntold to do the poster while the rest watched.

-            --The i group had everyone involved, we made a fun, colorful poster with drawings of flowers, stick figures, and confetti in the blank spaces.

-            --The S group spent a while chatting and getting to know each other before they started. They eventually all worked together to draw a balanced scale showing different traits.

-            --The C group took the longest to plan, carefully thinking everything through. In the end, only one person drew a detailed railroad with different tracks branching off.

Throughout the leadership course we learned how to recognize and interact with other personality types, as well as how to conduct difficult conversations in a way that is perceived well by those with a different personality style. It gave me a new appreciation for how different people think, work, and respond under pressure. If you have the chance to take the DiSC assessment, I highly recommend it. While mine was part of a detailed (and company-paid) leadership program, there are simpler tests online you can explore for fun. Let me know what style you end up with if you take it!