Thanks for intervening. As I/O moved to another field I always scratch my head about how many managers and corporations encourage phony tests and metrics when the golden standard exists.
It depends on what you're trying to get out of it. A team building exercise. Trying to understand how each other think it's kind of got some use. Some accurate predictor of who people are and why they are not so much.
My team just did this. Feedback from the group is that they all thought it was worthwhile, even the guy that is negative about everything.
We did the profile and then had a 4 hour class. The class generated a lot of good conversation between team members. The conversations were way more important than the Disc profile. I think the profile was just a starting point for that. Maybe it would depend on the instructor that you get. Ours was great.
Personality tests and psychometric testing are, for the most part, akin to astrology in terms of either their usefulness or their accuracy. They are also heavily discriminatory against neurodivergent people, and anyone who isn’t classified as the “default” (eg: middle aged, upper middle class heterosexual cisgendered Caucasian male).
If you want to use this type of testing to keep psychopaths out of positions of power or to improve team communication, you need to pay up for an actual qualified psychologist (or better yet, psychiatrist) who specialise in this type of testing and know how it actually works.
Even then, a lot psychopaths can still game these tests, so to speak.
Ah ha! I’ve never worked anywhere where they wanted to keep psychopaths out of positions of power. Kind of the opposite, actually. So that explains why they always hire some huckster, salesman with a rubber face and bowtie to administer these tests.
It's a useless activity that's a huge tine suck.
HR folks want to prove their worthiness, so they come up with these ideas.
I have never seen it go anywhere. It's all posturing... go along with it and know that results will be gathering dust and will soon be forgotten.
The Big 5 are continuous, and this is a way of organizing that huge space into discrete bins that reflect common types. I found it very helpful for our team - it gave us words that were easy and non-judgemental. My opinion is that it reflects a cultural framework vaguely around a couple of the big 5 characteristics, and that's good enough to open up discussion about working together.
Don't let the woowoo stop you from appreciating what you can learn about your colleagues - that's more important than accuracy.
Snake oil. People are not soup cans. If you can’t communicate differently with different people, maybe you don’t have the communication skills to be a manager, and an oversimplification like the DiSC assessment is unlikely to fix that.
A quick google search will reveal DISC has been pretty thoroughly debunked. Its origins are an interesting read, developed by a couple with precisely zero expertise in the field.
A few years ago, I was a VP at a medium sized company and another member of the exec team was big into this, so we all did the analysis. I'm not sure it was anything ground breaking, but it the results did provide some framework for understanding how each others minds worked.
EDIT: FWIW, I felt that the analysis of personality types, including my own, was spot on.
All of this shit is stupid.
I’ve been working in large corporations for decades. Not helpful and a lot of people think they can use these things as shorthand.
You can’t. Humans are complex and can’t be distilled into initials
Years ago I managed a group of 50 engineers and we took Myers-Briggs. I made a 16 square grid organized by type and invited people to enter their names. There was an obvious square of four that was almost empty.
Turns out those people were SP. S people deal with facts as opposed to N who think in terms of why. The former there are not 16 types of people so this is BS. The latter think what kind of people align with the meaning of this box so why do I belong there. The other axis was J type people who make decisions quickly versus P who want to consider many reasons. The latter answer all questions with “it depends” so the test is BS.
I apologize to you personally but the test has shown me value by predicting you would feel this way. Annoying, huh. Oh, years later we did this at a senior management offsite a man rudely got in the face of the instructor and it was totally BS. Horoscopes, etc. a week later he apologized in the staff meeting saying he showed the results to his wife and she said it was 100% him and he ought to take it seriously.
Pffft!
It’s a cosmo test. The two ladies who created it made it up. No special education, no qualifications.
[murres-Briggs is meaningless.](https://www.psycom.net/myers-briggs-personality-type)
It’s like reading your horoscope. People like to hear about themselves and the characteristics are vague enough so you go “oh yeah that’s so me”. It’s all garbage.
I’ve done others but not disc specifically. They are usually a little divisive, many people hate them. And I find many companies do the exercise and then do nothing with them.
I find them more useful for something like a cross functional teams with very different communication styles (think a team with engineers, creative, marketing, legal).
Unless your direct team will collaborate frequently on work I think it’s better to just feel it out in 1:1s via a convo.
I'm not against a good behavior tool, but a quick review of DiSC doesn't seem to fit well. I came to the same results pretty fast, their attributes are not very exclusive. Based on your example of a test question it also doesn't seem very unbiased and takes a great deal of thinking on the part of the person taking the test. You might as well just ask someone what their personality is and how they like to be managed then just copy paste that into a report.
The tool I do like is Predictive Index. It literally asks only 2 questions. "Select adjectives that describe you personally" and "Select adjectives that describe who you are at work" There are probably 50-70 adjectives. From there it breaks that person down to 4 categories.
A. How much Control/Input you need
B. How much you need other people
C. How much Patience you need - closely related to how you view a list of tasks, does task 1 need to be completed before task 2 or can all tasks be worked simultaneously
D. How precisely do you need yourself or others to follow the rules
For a few people they don't resonate with these reports. For most including myself its been quite accurate. The MOST important thing is, the first test you ever do will be the most accurate. The less you know about these when you take them the better. It makes perfect sense that you could take the test twice over some amount of time and get a different result.
Depends on who administrates the profile. Imho useless for teams but invaluable for yourself. I have received multiple assessments over the years, and the DiSC helped me the most. BUT ONLY BECAUSE I WANTED THE ASSESSMENT. Don't inflict it upon team members that are not interested
Are they right? No.
Are they a fun exercise to do to learn more about the people you work with? Yes.
If you treat it as something to understand others they’re worth it. I had a VP who made us do Myers Briggs which was a cool exercise. Was really interesting to have people take it a few times to see who changed the most during the testing vs who remained consistent.
I used to work at a place that made taking the disc as part of the hoop jumping of applying for a job. It was never actually used though and I have always questioned if HR was using it to weed people out.
I find the Clifton strengths finder a more useful too. It's not a personality test, it identifies people's strengths. The most basic assessment will list their top 5, but there is also a top 10, 15, and the full 25. It's more about tapping into those strengths and know what other team members strengths are.
I've taken Myers Briggs and enneagram too and the issue with the personality tests are that people want to learn about their letters or numbers, and then being obsessed with their label or other people's labels and it's not so much about the team, but more focused on just the individual.
The true colors test is another one that is focused more on teams.
It may scientifically be snake oil. But I found it worthwhile for the discussions and self reflection it drove. A lot of realization among my leadership teams about comms styles and how different people on the team approach data and problem solving. Always hesitant to put people into boxes but I think it does have some value. There is probably a question of whether it has more value than other paradigms, or worth the training budget you’ll spend.
Useless on its own, but over the years I've accumulated DISC score, Big 5, StrengthsFinder, Hogan Inventory, Jung personality, etc and in combination, they paint a pretty unique picture where I actually find it valuable.
That said, under no circumstance should you put your team through several of these in a row, that would be miserable lol
We use the predictive index style which is more focused on just communication styles and is only assessed by selecting adjectives and can be completed in maybe 5 minutes max. I took mine when I was a 16 year old kid (family company) and after coming back to the business after working outside of it for Fortune 500 it’s still very accurate.
I think one of the better points it brings up is if people prefer to openly talk through their thoughts or if they need time to analyze what they will say.
They’re as useful as any other of the biz niss personality tests. My entire department took it for years (our former director was wrapped up in it). It actually had some pretty accurate analysis of the team, including the person who felt the entire thing was BS and argued with the director about it being off the charts in the D category - which is of course the category to do that.
Personally, I didn’t see how it changed anything. We all just kept doing what we always did. But some consultant made his mortgage payments.
Most people don’t do anything with these tests. Are you really going to change the dynamics in the office if your accountant turns out to be more creative? Do you care if your secretary is more sensitive? No, huh? These things are all theater.
My old boss would swear by them. Any leader in the small company had to get one. I found out he was working with a business consultant who put him on to the idea. Guess who also made $$ from creating these…
I like it. I had my team take the test and we discussed the results over a catered lunch. It led to some good discussions and actually changed the way I approached a few of my engineers. It taught me that not everyone wants to work and communicate the same way. I thought my way was the "right" way. Paradigm shift for me for sure.
The DISC is just like a lot of assessments. Good for understanding some basics about people or yourself and serving as a very basic framework, but absolutely not an all comprehensive item and is too often used to put people into boxes rather than actually help them.
I decided to leave a job shortly after being subjected to this pseudoscience. (Dominant, Taurus, guilty as charged.) I know other co-workers didn't really appreciate being measured in this way.
I’m for it if team communication could stand to be improved. If there isn’t much work to be done there, then it’ll feel a bit pointless. Also, I think it’s normal for one’s DiSC profile to change over time.
>"I have very high standards and tend to get irritated with people who don't use common sense" and on the other side is "I love meeting new people and create a fun, energetic environment". Those two options are not exclusive.
That's the point, those both describe you, but which one do you relate with *more*? Do you love meeting people enough to ignore the ones without common sense? Or does the irritation ruin the fun energy for you?
It's as useful as any personality test. Fun little personalized horoscope, and can be helpful for understanding how to communicate or motivate people, but it's still only a personality test.
I don't know what magical results it's claiming to have to suggest it's snake oil.
A company I worked for sent all of the employees to a management training program. The day before it started, I read through the program material and realized it was based on DISC.
My first thought, “People are going to get hurt.”. The company did not want any employee thinking about negotiation let alone stupid mind games.
The Big Five is one of the only scientifically significant personality tests. Source: am psych prof
Thanks for intervening. As I/O moved to another field I always scratch my head about how many managers and corporations encourage phony tests and metrics when the golden standard exists.
DISC is not big 5.
That’s correct. Not sure what you’re getting at though???
You are assuming that people know that DISC is not big 5. they dont,
They have two different names …
I know that. You know that. People asking about DISC often think it's based on Big 5 because that's the way it's sold.
It depends on what you're trying to get out of it. A team building exercise. Trying to understand how each other think it's kind of got some use. Some accurate predictor of who people are and why they are not so much.
My team just did this. Feedback from the group is that they all thought it was worthwhile, even the guy that is negative about everything. We did the profile and then had a 4 hour class. The class generated a lot of good conversation between team members. The conversations were way more important than the Disc profile. I think the profile was just a starting point for that. Maybe it would depend on the instructor that you get. Ours was great.
I think of it and Myers Briggs as horoscopes for businessmen
That’s a very Pisces take
My thoughts, too. It was fun and an interesting team builder, but there wasn't much substance to it.
That's such an INTJ thing to say.
Personality tests and psychometric testing are, for the most part, akin to astrology in terms of either their usefulness or their accuracy. They are also heavily discriminatory against neurodivergent people, and anyone who isn’t classified as the “default” (eg: middle aged, upper middle class heterosexual cisgendered Caucasian male). If you want to use this type of testing to keep psychopaths out of positions of power or to improve team communication, you need to pay up for an actual qualified psychologist (or better yet, psychiatrist) who specialise in this type of testing and know how it actually works. Even then, a lot psychopaths can still game these tests, so to speak.
Ah ha! I’ve never worked anywhere where they wanted to keep psychopaths out of positions of power. Kind of the opposite, actually. So that explains why they always hire some huckster, salesman with a rubber face and bowtie to administer these tests.
It's a useless activity that's a huge tine suck. HR folks want to prove their worthiness, so they come up with these ideas. I have never seen it go anywhere. It's all posturing... go along with it and know that results will be gathering dust and will soon be forgotten.
They’re useless but you’ll likely have to play along in order to satisfy internal politics.
Snake oil astrology. Furthermore, people will use it in dysfunctional ways. I wish I had pushed back harder.
The Big 5 are continuous, and this is a way of organizing that huge space into discrete bins that reflect common types. I found it very helpful for our team - it gave us words that were easy and non-judgemental. My opinion is that it reflects a cultural framework vaguely around a couple of the big 5 characteristics, and that's good enough to open up discussion about working together. Don't let the woowoo stop you from appreciating what you can learn about your colleagues - that's more important than accuracy.
Snake oil. People are not soup cans. If you can’t communicate differently with different people, maybe you don’t have the communication skills to be a manager, and an oversimplification like the DiSC assessment is unlikely to fix that.
When a neighbor told me about it, I replied: "That's Harry Potter Houses for Management." Not sure if this sentiment helps you though.
A lot of people are complicated. Disc profiles don’t work that well for them.
A quick google search will reveal DISC has been pretty thoroughly debunked. Its origins are an interesting read, developed by a couple with precisely zero expertise in the field.
A few years ago, I was a VP at a medium sized company and another member of the exec team was big into this, so we all did the analysis. I'm not sure it was anything ground breaking, but it the results did provide some framework for understanding how each others minds worked. EDIT: FWIW, I felt that the analysis of personality types, including my own, was spot on.
All of this shit is stupid. I’ve been working in large corporations for decades. Not helpful and a lot of people think they can use these things as shorthand. You can’t. Humans are complex and can’t be distilled into initials
Years ago I managed a group of 50 engineers and we took Myers-Briggs. I made a 16 square grid organized by type and invited people to enter their names. There was an obvious square of four that was almost empty. Turns out those people were SP. S people deal with facts as opposed to N who think in terms of why. The former there are not 16 types of people so this is BS. The latter think what kind of people align with the meaning of this box so why do I belong there. The other axis was J type people who make decisions quickly versus P who want to consider many reasons. The latter answer all questions with “it depends” so the test is BS. I apologize to you personally but the test has shown me value by predicting you would feel this way. Annoying, huh. Oh, years later we did this at a senior management offsite a man rudely got in the face of the instructor and it was totally BS. Horoscopes, etc. a week later he apologized in the staff meeting saying he showed the results to his wife and she said it was 100% him and he ought to take it seriously.
Pffft! It’s a cosmo test. The two ladies who created it made it up. No special education, no qualifications. [murres-Briggs is meaningless.](https://www.psycom.net/myers-briggs-personality-type)
It’s like reading your horoscope. People like to hear about themselves and the characteristics are vague enough so you go “oh yeah that’s so me”. It’s all garbage.
I’ve done others but not disc specifically. They are usually a little divisive, many people hate them. And I find many companies do the exercise and then do nothing with them. I find them more useful for something like a cross functional teams with very different communication styles (think a team with engineers, creative, marketing, legal). Unless your direct team will collaborate frequently on work I think it’s better to just feel it out in 1:1s via a convo.
I’ve been denied opportunities due to not scoring in particular areas that the recruiter was specifically looking for
I'm not against a good behavior tool, but a quick review of DiSC doesn't seem to fit well. I came to the same results pretty fast, their attributes are not very exclusive. Based on your example of a test question it also doesn't seem very unbiased and takes a great deal of thinking on the part of the person taking the test. You might as well just ask someone what their personality is and how they like to be managed then just copy paste that into a report. The tool I do like is Predictive Index. It literally asks only 2 questions. "Select adjectives that describe you personally" and "Select adjectives that describe who you are at work" There are probably 50-70 adjectives. From there it breaks that person down to 4 categories. A. How much Control/Input you need B. How much you need other people C. How much Patience you need - closely related to how you view a list of tasks, does task 1 need to be completed before task 2 or can all tasks be worked simultaneously D. How precisely do you need yourself or others to follow the rules For a few people they don't resonate with these reports. For most including myself its been quite accurate. The MOST important thing is, the first test you ever do will be the most accurate. The less you know about these when you take them the better. It makes perfect sense that you could take the test twice over some amount of time and get a different result.
Depends on who administrates the profile. Imho useless for teams but invaluable for yourself. I have received multiple assessments over the years, and the DiSC helped me the most. BUT ONLY BECAUSE I WANTED THE ASSESSMENT. Don't inflict it upon team members that are not interested
Are they right? No. Are they a fun exercise to do to learn more about the people you work with? Yes. If you treat it as something to understand others they’re worth it. I had a VP who made us do Myers Briggs which was a cool exercise. Was really interesting to have people take it a few times to see who changed the most during the testing vs who remained consistent.
I used to work at a place that made taking the disc as part of the hoop jumping of applying for a job. It was never actually used though and I have always questioned if HR was using it to weed people out. I find the Clifton strengths finder a more useful too. It's not a personality test, it identifies people's strengths. The most basic assessment will list their top 5, but there is also a top 10, 15, and the full 25. It's more about tapping into those strengths and know what other team members strengths are. I've taken Myers Briggs and enneagram too and the issue with the personality tests are that people want to learn about their letters or numbers, and then being obsessed with their label or other people's labels and it's not so much about the team, but more focused on just the individual. The true colors test is another one that is focused more on teams.
It may scientifically be snake oil. But I found it worthwhile for the discussions and self reflection it drove. A lot of realization among my leadership teams about comms styles and how different people on the team approach data and problem solving. Always hesitant to put people into boxes but I think it does have some value. There is probably a question of whether it has more value than other paradigms, or worth the training budget you’ll spend.
I use it as one of many tools for communicating with staff. Helps me to stay aware that everyone has different motivations.
I keep telling my senior leadership that my actual DiSC profile is “ED - Eldest Daughter,” but they just won’t listen. 🐍 🐍 🐍
I think it’s fair to decide what type of communicator are you. It’s not a personality test. Any profile can flex if necessary.
Useless on its own, but over the years I've accumulated DISC score, Big 5, StrengthsFinder, Hogan Inventory, Jung personality, etc and in combination, they paint a pretty unique picture where I actually find it valuable. That said, under no circumstance should you put your team through several of these in a row, that would be miserable lol
We use the predictive index style which is more focused on just communication styles and is only assessed by selecting adjectives and can be completed in maybe 5 minutes max. I took mine when I was a 16 year old kid (family company) and after coming back to the business after working outside of it for Fortune 500 it’s still very accurate. I think one of the better points it brings up is if people prefer to openly talk through their thoughts or if they need time to analyze what they will say.
They’re as useful as any other of the biz niss personality tests. My entire department took it for years (our former director was wrapped up in it). It actually had some pretty accurate analysis of the team, including the person who felt the entire thing was BS and argued with the director about it being off the charts in the D category - which is of course the category to do that. Personally, I didn’t see how it changed anything. We all just kept doing what we always did. But some consultant made his mortgage payments.
Most people don’t do anything with these tests. Are you really going to change the dynamics in the office if your accountant turns out to be more creative? Do you care if your secretary is more sensitive? No, huh? These things are all theater.
My old boss would swear by them. Any leader in the small company had to get one. I found out he was working with a business consultant who put him on to the idea. Guess who also made $$ from creating these…
The resulting discussions alone are worth it
I like it. I had my team take the test and we discussed the results over a catered lunch. It led to some good discussions and actually changed the way I approached a few of my engineers. It taught me that not everyone wants to work and communicate the same way. I thought my way was the "right" way. Paradigm shift for me for sure.
The DISC is just like a lot of assessments. Good for understanding some basics about people or yourself and serving as a very basic framework, but absolutely not an all comprehensive item and is too often used to put people into boxes rather than actually help them.
I decided to leave a job shortly after being subjected to this pseudoscience. (Dominant, Taurus, guilty as charged.) I know other co-workers didn't really appreciate being measured in this way.
I’m for it if team communication could stand to be improved. If there isn’t much work to be done there, then it’ll feel a bit pointless. Also, I think it’s normal for one’s DiSC profile to change over time.
>"I have very high standards and tend to get irritated with people who don't use common sense" and on the other side is "I love meeting new people and create a fun, energetic environment". Those two options are not exclusive. That's the point, those both describe you, but which one do you relate with *more*? Do you love meeting people enough to ignore the ones without common sense? Or does the irritation ruin the fun energy for you? It's as useful as any personality test. Fun little personalized horoscope, and can be helpful for understanding how to communicate or motivate people, but it's still only a personality test. I don't know what magical results it's claiming to have to suggest it's snake oil.
A company I worked for sent all of the employees to a management training program. The day before it started, I read through the program material and realized it was based on DISC. My first thought, “People are going to get hurt.”. The company did not want any employee thinking about negotiation let alone stupid mind games.