Why DISC is essential for energy management

I'm a big fan of using the DISC assessment tool for behavioural and communication preferences. I have used it for years in the workplace with excellent effect. I often use it during communication super power workshops and even run leadership communication course based entirely on it. I find it a very useful tool for understanding behavioural preferences - and communication styles.

Unlike many of the personality tests out there, DISC is useful in its simplicity. Is it 100% accurate? Of course not, but that shouldn't detract from how helpful it can be. In fact, even though it's not 100% accurate, when people go through it, they often remark how spookily spot on it is.

In a nutshell DISC looks at two dimensions (depending on who you speak to).

On one dimension it looks at how you may respond to the environments around you. Do you find them being in your favour, or are you apprehensive of external environments. This is kind of working out whether you're more prone to being task focused, or people focused.

On the other dimension it looks at how much personal power you feel you have about your surroundings and people. In a sense, this is looking at whether you are more assertive or reserved.

Note: It's not quite as simple as I've made it but that's the basic ideas.

DISC

The D stands for dominance (again, depending on which implementation you use, and who you speak to). D's tend (and I use the word "tend" as it's not an absolute) to be assertive and task focused.

Think of your classic alpha CEO. Determined, a bit gruff, direct, specific, focused on results.

The I (which is what I am, for the most part) stands for "influence" or "influential". Influencers tend to be more assertive and people focused. Think of inspirational speakers, motivational people at work, charismatic leaders and the like.

They tend to focus on people and are good at moving people into action. They often bring humour and warmth, but sometimes struggle to get tasks done. That's me in a nutshell.

The S stands for steadiness. S's tend to be warm, personable, caring and calm. They bring a sense of relaxation to situations and are good at making sure people are OK.

The C stands for conscientious. C's tend to like rules and boundaries. They tend to like plenty of information to make decisions, and are often deep into the more "technical" aspects of the work.

Again, all of the above are not absolutes at all, but they can be helpful, and certainly play out like this in the many times I use DISC.

We often don't exist as just one of these behavioural traits also. We often have a decent mix across, with maybe one or two being more dominant. Sit any decent DISC assessment (links at the bottom) and get your results - and you'll likely find you have one prevailing behaviour and a spread across the others. Or maybe not! Let me know.

When I first sat DISC, about 14 years ago, I was mostly an "I". Pretty much all Influencer to be honest. But, since starting my own business and going independent I've needed to grow my behaviours to look at sales, people, strategy, compliance etc. I am now pretty much D + I.

Don't pigeon hole

It's important not to use tools like this to pigeon hole people, or to defend any dysfunctional behaviours. A good team and company has a mix of all of these behavioural types, and people can, and do, flex. People also change.

The goal with DISC is to understand yourself first, which is why DISC is one of the three pillars of my career trinity. Once you know yourself, the goal is then to develop the behaviours and communication approaches that allow you to move towards other people's preferences. If they do the same, you get glorious communication and work behaviours happening. As both parties (in interpersonal communication) are appreciating the other person, and flexing their communication style, you get to meet in the middle. This helps to drive clarity, appropriate language and listening.

Equally, I've seen surly executives use DISC as an excuse to be even more direct and task orientated, often at the expense of other people. I am what I am - deal with it. This is not the point of using DISC at all. The point is to realise we're all different, and that should be embraced, and we should work on helping everyone move closer in behaviours and preferences so that good communication can happen. We can also use DISC to build workplaces where people are using their natural preferences, strengths and skills to derive meaning from work, whilst contributing to business success.

No right or wrong

There is no right or wrong place to be on DISC. I use DISC as a personal tool to align my career and work with who I naturally am. If I can do work that is aligned to my preferences for work and communication, I am likely feeling more competent, connected and in tune with my own strengths.

For example, as much as I can do task orientated work like my finances, it destroys me. As much as I can move towards other people's styles and spend all day doing 1:2:1 or deep technical meetings, it wears me out.

My natural place is writing, presenting from the stage, running teams, dealing with problems and drama, and a whole host of other activities that need someone to lead and influence. I even like sales.

To some people though, these activities sound like a nightmare.

It's super important to appreciate that everyone is different.

Many people can happily move around DISC every day as they've learned to respond and adapt to other people's preferences and tailor their own communication style. But if you do that over the long term, as a core part of your role, it's highly likely it will frazzle you.

There is no right or wrong though. You are who you are, but learning to tailor your communication, and behaviours, towards other people is the key to success with DISC.

However, as I mentioned before, I have needed to develop new behaviours in order to align to my career goals - and these have been deep rooted behaviours, not just me adapting to a temporary environment or situation. I have changed who I am not just adapted in the moment. That's an important point we'll come back to.

Nothing on DISC is better than any other. DISC is not an excuse to behave badly, and the tool is no reason at all to pigeon hole people and discriminate.

I like DISC because it's about behaviours and preferences, not race, religion or anything else. Behaviours matter a lot - they are the culture of your organisation.

By using something like DISC you are getting away from competency matrices, skills descriptions, job descriptions and subjective reviews. You are in the realms of behaviours and behavioural diversity - which is a good thing.

Energy Management

I've not gone into great detail in this post about DISC and the different types - and how you can adjust your communication. If you are interested in more, I do cover these in any of my in-person workshops, and the online Super Power workshop too.

Suffice to say, DISC is also a good indicator of energy and attention.

A few years back I did my DISC Communication workshop for a group of leaders in the telco space. The CEO himself was burning out. He was frazzled. Nobody could really understand why, as they didn't work epic hours, had a well run business and were riding a wave of high profit and favourable market conditions. They didn't always get on as a team, but that tends to be natural at this level of a large organisation.

When I ran the DISC session it turned out that everyone in the leadership team, except the CEO, was a High D. They were all dominating, determined and direct, some more so than others.

They were fast paced, decision-quick kind of people. They didn't wait for data and they typically didn't consider the staff too much. You kind of need people like this, but not necessarily in this quantity.

The CEO was a high C. He was an ex-technologist and he preferred interpersonal communication, data informed decision making and time to understand the business and it's problems. He didn't get that. In fact, he spent most of his time arguing with his team, and resisting their natural urge to just get things done.

His preference was different to the team he had built. The meetings were always a battle for him and the direct approach by some of his team felt disrespectful to his position as supreme boss. He was outnumbered by people who seemed to want to move fast and not always consider the consequences. That wasn't his style, nor what he wanted, nor what he imagined running a company would be like.

He was tired. When I covered the in-depth section on energy management in the workshop, he had to remove himself from the session. I went out to make sure he was ok and he was in emotional pain. He was deeply upset. Not at me. But at the fact he'd realised during this energy management section, that he was expending huge amounts of energy trying to play to preferences that simply weren't his natural ones. He was living his work life as a high D, when that wasn't who he was. He'd yet to change his natural behaviours (or didn't want) and so he was playing and acting through every single day.

After this session he made some changes to the leadership team. He hired in a few new people, one of which was a high I on DISC, and the other few were high S.

A few months after this change, he phoned me and said his leadership team was far more balanced now. Instead of going straight for action and decisions, they took time to consider all dimensions of the problem, to think about people, to spend time making data-informed decisions and he was also not pretending to be someone that he wasn't. His team were also actively using DISC to approach their meetings, work and behaviours.

In another example, my accountant is a high C. She is very conscientious. And I like that. She deals with my tax and pay and everything else. I need her to be highly conscientious. She likes numbers, tax rules and other accounting specifics.

However, she often does local events and conferences to drive new business and grow the brand. She hates that. She can do it - and move across various sections of DISC, but it's not natural to her. She is destroyed after doing an event like this. I derive energy from conferences and events, and speaking in public - and I am destroyed if I have to spend more than 10 minutes looking at spreadsheets full of numbers.

My unhappy place is working through minute details - she thrives here. My happy place to is rally people around the mission and moving people into action, she doesn't thrive in this aspect of her work. I like to provide clarity and alignment - I'm not so good at the action piece. She is the opposite.

As another example, after scaling a startup and fixing lots of startup problems, I was burning out. I wasn't working many hours but I was done, I was toast, I was frazzled. It took me a while to realise that I wasn't using my natural preferences for work and communication.

The company was still growing, but it was steady state, it was smooth operationally. It didn't need someone to deal with drama and align people - and point to a new direction. There was no need for a new strategy, nor bringing some control to chaos. That's where I thrive.

Instead, it needed me to be slow and steady and to dig into the details for fine tuning and optimisation. Not my happy place.

I realised I was playing in an area of DISC that was not natural to me. I also didn't want to develop these skills and change my behaviours - I was quite happy with who I was at the time. So I moved sideways and did something completely different - aligning this new role with my natural preferences as a high I.

Energy matters. It's finite. If we use all of our energy at work - how will we keep our pillars of life in tension? Will we have any energy left for our families, or goals, or hobbies?

DISC is a powerful tool to understand our own preferences for work and communication. It's a powerful tool to move towards other people's communication preferences, so that we can be effective and allow good communication can happen. It's a wonderful tool to understand other people - and to accept and appreciate who they are. Inclusive, meaningful and joyful workplaces accept people for their own preferences, and encourage communication to happen towards each other's preferences. Good managers build teams in which people use their strengths, and each person helps to mitigate other's weaknesses. Good businesses align to our natural preferences, and bring the combined effect of our diversity together to create an enriching, tolerant, effective and fun place to work.

But DISC is also a wonderful tool for energy management. When I'm burning out and exhausted, it's likely not because of epic hours. It's typically because my natural preferences are not being used in my work. Or I'm doing work that has no meaning 😀

Links

For DISC I recommend Tony Robbin’s free online survey. It's not the best by a long way, but it is free. You will need to sign up and he will send you lots of emails after the DISC assessment, so be careful which email address you use. And unsubscribe if you want to.

Note: Cultivated Management can not be held responsible for the use of your email address on external sites. This site is purely is a recommendation - a good internet search will find plenty of other DISC options.