YOUNG, Vinessa DISC

The DISC system is a way to understand people's behavior and interactions. It categorizes behavior into four styles: drive, influence, support, and clarity. Most people have a dominant style that influences their behavior. DISC assessments are used in the workplace to improve teamwork. The system is represented by a graph with four types in four quadrants. Two dimensions, active/receptive and skeptical/agreeable, determine where you fall on the graph. Your scores indicate that your dominant style is influence. Understanding the four styles can help you understand your strengths and weaknesses in the workplace. Your helper styles are drive and support, while your challenge style is clarity. DISC for Vanessa Young. What is DISC? The DISC system is a simple but powerful way to understand people's behavior and the way they interact with one another. This system describes people and their behavior in terms of four broad styles drive, influence, support, and clarity. Although everyone uses all four styles most of us depend on one or two most of the time. Understanding your dominant style can help you to understand how others see you, where conflict is likely to arise, and what sorts of work rules will suit you best. DISC assessments are frequently used in the workplace to help teammates better understand one another and how to work together. Whether you're taking this assessment as a team activity or on your own you can expect to gain a better understanding of how you approach the people around you. The DISC system. The DISC framework is often represented by a graphic that shows the four types in four quadrants of a circle. The four letters in the graphic designate the four primary DISC types. D is for drive. People with the drive style tend to be leaders who are action oriented and decisive. I for influence. People with the influence style tend to be collaborative and encouraging, motivating others to do their best. S for support. People with the support style tend to be helpful and observant, looking for ways to assist. C for clarity. People with the clarity style tend to be analytical, self-motivated, independent contributors. The graphic is organized along two axes, active and receptive, running from top to bottom, and skeptical and agreeable, running from left to right. These two axes are the foundational styles measured by the DISC assessment and determine where you end up on the DISC graph. Let's look now at how you scored on these two foundational aspects of DISC. The foundations of DISC. To effectively use the DISC system it's important to understand that the assessment fundamentally measures two key dimensions of your personality. Each of these dimensions is a major driver of your behavior and the combination of your scores on both dimensions can help us to understand your behavior in a holistic way. Let's look now at these two key dimensions and how you scored on each. Active versus receptive. The first dimension is active versus receptive. People who score more towards the active side of this dimension tend to react quickly to what's going on around them. They are oriented towards speaking up, making decisions, and taking action. People who score more towards the receptive side of this dimension tend to be calm and spend time taking in what's going on around them without reacting. They spend more time contemplating and considering before taking action. You scored on the active side of this dimension which means that you are more likely to move quickly and speak up in a group setting. You may see yourself as a leader and someone who takes charge of things. You tend to be good at influencing the group dynamic and getting people moving. Skeptical versus agreeable. The second dimension is skeptical versus agreeable. People who score more towards the skeptical side of this dimension tend to challenge ideas and people. They tend to be task focused and interested in what is correct. People who score more towards the agreeable side of this dimension tend to be more focused on cooperation and relationships than on facts or tasks. They tend to accept others as they are and look for ways to help and share. You scored on the agreeable side of this dimension which means that your primary focus is on the quality of your work relationships and the well-being of the people you work with. You are interested in fostering cooperation and enthusiasm among your teammates and you look for ways to come to consensus and work together. Putting your scores together. Now that we've looked at the two dimensions that DISC measures we can see how they combine to create your personality type. Remember in the DISC circle the active receptive dimension is measured from top to bottom while the skeptical agreeable dimension is mapped from left to right. These two axes intersect creating four quadrants. Each quadrant represents a personality type. Your individual scores may fall anywhere within the circle. Your scores are on the active side as well as on the agreeable side and puts your overall result into the I quadrant. This indicates that influence is the most dominant style for you. Going deeper in addition to your main type we can map your score much more precisely within the circle so that you get a full picture of your behavioral style. When we consider your scores in more detail with 12 total chart segments instead of four with some marked with labels like D, I and C, S we get hybrid DISC types that represent a blend of styles. For instance a person who is primarily a drive type but also incorporates a lot of influence behavior in their work style will be labeled a DI type. With hybrid types we are able to accurately describe people whose behavior is primarily driven by one DISC style as well as people whose behavior is typically a mix of two styles. Your largest wedge is for the type I. This indicates that you are an influence type. Remember for some people one style is mostly dominant and so their type is a single letter D, I, S or C. Other people are more likely to use a second style along with their main style so their type is a hybrid type like DI, SC or IS. Your scores indicate that the influence style is most important for you without a strong influence from another style and so your type is the single I. How you use the four styles. Your type is an indication of the work style that is most dominant for you but we can also look more deeply at how each of the four styles shows up in your attitudes and behavior. We all have styles that we rely on often as well as styles that are less comfortable to us. Understanding how each of the four DISC style shows up in your work approach can help you to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Your core work style. You depend most on the influence style in your workplace behavior. Influence describes behavior that is engaging and enthusiastic. When people show influence they reach out to other people to build a sense of excitement and fun. They inspire and persuade those around them. People who are highly influential are described as warm, friendly and sociable. They love to be around other people and get a high from connecting with a group. They have a natural charisma. Influence is useful in roles that require you to persuade others. Teachers, salespeople, managers and parents all benefit from a command of influential behavior. Highly influential people thrive on human connection and tend to wither when they're forced to do isolated impersonal tasks. Your helper work styles. Helper work styles are those that are not your go-to mode of behavior but are styles of working that you can access when you need to. Helper styles are often at play when you feel you are out of your comfort zone but still engaged with what you're doing. For most people, helper styles should be used sparingly in the workplace as it takes more mental energy to use these less preferred modes of behavior. Your helper styles will be less developed and less comfortable for you but may represent possibilities for you to grow and acquire new skills. Your helper work styles are drive and support. Drive describes behavior that is assertive and results oriented. When people show drive, they tend to take charge, make decisions and control the direction of tasks and projects. Drive is useful in leadership positions as it helps to push to get the job done. People who are highly driven are described as assertive, dominant, competitive and confident. They like to take decisive action and don't mind taking risks to get things done. They may be described as natural leaders. Support describes behavior that is helpful and caring toward others. When people use support, they notice what others need and look for ways to serve them. They are empathetic and compassionate. People who are highly supportive are described as caring, kind and helpful. They rarely have their own agenda. Rather, they prefer to help other people reach their goals. Very supportive people spend much of their time caring for and serving others. Support is useful in caretaking and helping roles. Nurses, parents and assistants of all kinds tend to use a high degree of supportive behavior. Your challenge style. Your challenge style is represented by the work style you access the least. This represents a mode of behavior that is difficult for you and not part of your natural repertoire or behavior. This doesn't mean that you are not capable of utilizing behavior from this style. However, it is generally not your strongest mode. If forced to operate within this style for an extended period of time, it's likely you will become stressed and struggle with motivation. Your challenge area is the clarity style. Clarity describes behavior that is precise and detail-oriented. When people exercise clarity, they work steadily on tasks requiring focus and accuracy. They take a systematic approach to finish the job. People who are high in clarity are described as efficient, methodical and orderly. They enjoy working independently on well-defined tasks with clear instructions and expectations. They place a lot of importance on getting everything done correctly. Clarity is useful in roles where accuracy and precision are important. Accountants, engineers and computer programmers all need to exercise clarity to be successful in their work. Your top style in depth. Your top style is the disc style that you scored most highly for and the style that will typically be the strongest influence over your behavior at work. You can use your top style to better understand your strengths and weaknesses, how other people may see you in the workplace, how you contribute to a team and how you function as a leader. In the next section, we'll study how your top style impacts you in a variety of contexts in the workplace. Based on your responses, you lead with an influence style, which means you are likely to be enthusiastic, energetic and sociable. In this report, we focus on how you can put your influence strengths to good use. We provide tips on overcoming your blind spots and help you to recognize how everyone's talents contribute to the long-term success of your projects, team and organization. Your influence style. You are fast-paced, collaborative and outgoing. You focus on using your enthusiasm to bring people together. You enjoy meeting and talking with people, both to hear their stories and to share your excitement for an idea or project. Your natural energy and optimism means you help create a workplace where everyone feels included and enjoys themselves. At your best, people describe you as upbeat, persuasive, expressive and engaging. They appreciate someone who can infuse a sense of excitement and possibility into a project and who uses their optimism to help others overcome seemingly insurmountable problems. However, people can also see you as disorganized, overly expressive, in a hurry and easily distracted. In your fervor for something novel or new, you can get distracted from completing tasks that seem dull. And since you prefer to work at speed, you may struggle to slow down to assess risks and analyze possible consequences. In the workplace, you are more likely to be described as enthusiastic, talkative, collaborative, charming, impulsive, goal-oriented, confident, influential, optimistic and sociable. You are less likely to be described as cautious, analytical, organized, reflective, soft-spoken, self-controlled, reliable, detailed, systematic and modest. Your workplace priorities. At work, you prioritize communication, connection and creativity. You thrive on using your energy to engage and charm others. When assigned to a project, you use your natural energy to excite people about the vision. You reach out to your broad professional network and encourage people to get on board. This helps people take action quickly and start making progress without getting stuck in the details. For you, that might look like building relationships with a wide range of people, talking about ideas, projects and exciting solutions, lifting team spirit when things get tough, bringing a sense of fun and playfulness to work, always seeing what is working and what's possible, encouraging people to take action quickly, regularly meeting people for catch-ups, taking risks on creative or adventurous options, organizing group activities and social events. Equally, you tend to avoid tasks or workplaces that are too slow, predictable and routine. That can include jobs that don't value your ability to connect with people and your enthusiastic energy or that require you to work independently with attention to detail. Situations you may find difficult include when you are working in a slow-paced, steady or traditional environment, have to follow inflexible rules, are implementing predictable or routine solutions, need to work at a slow pace or do detailed analysis, aren't able to network or build relationships, or work with people who don't value your effervescent style. Your talents in action. At work, your skills are focused around enthusiasm, action and collaboration. For you, being enthusiastic means you tend to maintain an upbeat or positive attitude whether things are going well or not. You are excited about new and novel possibilities which helps others see an idea or projects potential and get on board. You can be an expressive communicator and your charm and energy can be very persuasive. You bring a sense of fun to work that helps to create an environment that people enjoy working in and encourages others to see that serious work doesn't always require a serious atmosphere. For you, being action-oriented means you prefer to get started instead of getting bogged down in analysis or detail. You want to feel like you are in the thick of the action, whether that's taking a risk, making a call, or persuading someone to get involved. You also take action by spotting new opportunities and working on creative, adventurous, or bold ideas that are untried or untested. Being collaborative means you prefer to work with people rather than independently. That could mean working one-on-one or in a team, meeting new people, getting people involved, and encouraging your team to achieve the goal. Strengths and talents. Confident communicator. Building professional networks. Being approachable. Being enthusiastic. Persuading others. Lifting team spirit. Inspiring others. Seeing new opportunities. Promoting change, creating a fun atmosphere, and making quick decisions. Blind spots. Being cautious. Analyzing risks. Following procedure. Being modest. Being methodical. Staying focused. Being even-tempered and calm. Quietly listening. Working independently. Giving constructive feedback and being systematic. Balancing your influence style. Our strengths can become liabilities when we overuse them. We can get so comfortable using our hammer that we forget we have a whole toolbox at our disposal. The key to being effective at work and at home is to use our strengths in a balanced way. Every workplace needs people who are optimistic, persuasive, and sociable, but there are times when other traits will be more useful. For example, sometimes your colleagues will need you to set aside your natural approach of being more charming and energetic in order to be more patient and cautious. During those times, do you find yourself hammering at the problem or reaching for other tools? To be successful, you need to recognize when your organization and your team need you to use your strengths and when they need you to adjust. The lists below describe how you may behave when you are balancing your strengths and when you are overdoing them. Take a look and consider the situations when you operate at your best and when you might need to use a more balanced approach. When you are balanced, you are optimistic about the idea and objective about the risks. You are enthusiastic and patient about taking action. You are excited in listening to others' ideas. You are meeting people and completing tasks. When you're overdoing it, you are constantly seeking excitement. You're impatient because you fear missing an opportunity. You're more talkative while avoiding listening. You're overly expressive because you fear you are being ignored. While you might not always be overdoing it, it's useful to start building the skills that help you remain balanced even before you notice you need them. The following things will require some energy and effort at first, but eventually they will become a natural part of your working style. Practice being more objective, staying focused and following through on tasks, appreciating the benefit of systems and procedures, seeing what isn't working and the possible consequences of that. Your communication style. Your communication style is more likely to be friendly, personable and passionate. Your enthusiasm for products, services or projects easily rubs off on your customers and colleagues. People find you very approachable and easy to talk to. However, others can struggle with your overly optimistic style at times. They may find it difficult to take you seriously when you tend to only look at the bright side of a situation and seem to be in a rush to get going. That can leave some people feeling overwhelmed and not entirely sure what they are signing up for. Strengths. You are sociable, friendly, expressive, trusting, upbeat, charming, energetic. Limitations. Talking over others, speaking too fast, glossing over details, being overly emotional, interrupting others, exaggerating and needing to be the center of attention. You will be a more effective communicator when you develop the ability to switch between communication styles. Learn when to use your magnetic and engaging style and when to take a more calm and deferential approach. There are a number of ways you can do that including slowing the pace of your speech, noticing when others are overwhelmed by your energy, leaving time for others to speak up, avoiding interrupting others, listening to the details, asking questions to understand colleagues perspectives and motivations, providing specific examples, talking through the pros and cons, listening to concerns about the possible risks, and providing people time to reflect before making a decision. Your conflict style. Conflict can be both constructive and destructive. To resolve conflict, you prefer to take an empathetic approach that reassures others. You will share how you're feeling and support others to do the same. You want to create a space that encourages open dialogue. If that doesn't feel possible, your style can become a little more destructive. Notice when you start to become overly emotional or talking over others, attack people personally, or want to say or do something impulsively. Take some time to understand what conflict means to you and what drives that. Disagreements at work often stem from a difference in approach. For example, someone may wish to take their time to analyze an opportunity to reduce the exposure to risk, while you prefer to act quickly so as not to miss out. Tips for developing a healthier conflict style. Notice when you are talking over people, interrupting others, exaggerating for effect, acting impulsively, being critical or attacking, downplaying the issue, or being overly expressive. Practice listening to all perspectives, slowing your pace, allowing time for others to think or talk through the issues, considering the consequences, and separating the personal from the professional. On a team, we have a tendency to overvalue people who share our strengths and undervalue people who don't. Yet every strength has a time and a place. Every project needs all strengths, just at different times. As an influence style person, you tend to value people who are personable, sociable, and enthusiastic, and who can communicate easily and openly. That also means you tend to undervalue people who prioritize analysis over action and who want to take a more systematic, cautious, or measured approach to a project. Being a good teammate is knowing when to use your skills and when to support your teammates to use theirs. You bring to a team persuasive communication, being optimistic, connecting with others, involving everyone in the decision, creating an upbeat workplace, sharing your opinion, seeing opportunities, having a positive attitude, creating a fun atmosphere, and pushing boundaries. Others bring to a team concentrating on the task at hand, seeing a project through to the end, giving people space to work, being skeptical, being patient, weighing the pros and cons, analyzing risks, researching facts, deliberating before deciding, and following the rules. Take a few minutes to determine whether you are able to use your strengths effectively in your current role and team. How do your strengths contribute to making the team more effective? Then reflect on your teammates strengths and how they contribute to making the team more effective. As a leader, you are an energizing leader, inspirational, eager, and adventurous. You provide positive feedback and encourage people to take action and achieve results. You prefer your team to move quickly, to take advantage of opportunities, and to be on the lookout for innovative or unexpected solutions. You create a sociable working environment. There are regular team meetings and social events where birthdays and wins are celebrated in equal measure. It's important to you that people work as a team and for everyone to contribute to decisions and plans. You prefer the team to achieve success together rather than be reliant on a single individual's abilities. However, there are times when you will need to make a tough decision without the team's input, and you will need to insist upon things being done a certain way. You will also need support to keep things focused and on track in order to achieve long-term goals, and there will be times when your team will appreciate constructive or even critical feedback to help them achieve their objectives. Some of your team will likely require stability, efficiency, and accuracy. They will want to analyze the data using a methodical and reliable approach and will question your assumptions. They will want to optimize plans and ensure they are based on accurate data. Acknowledge that these team members bring valuable skills to your team and create clear guidelines for working together to make the most of everyone's skills. Your well-being. For you, stress can feel like you are moving faster but being less effective. You may talk more, become more expressive, or exaggerate the situation. You can get caught up in details, becoming flustered or disorganized in the process. You may even find yourself seeking people to talk to to distract yourself from what feels hard. You feel stressed when assigned tasks that feel boring, tedious, and repetitive. Anything that lacks excitement or novelty can be hard for you. You can struggle with feeling left out, ignored, or isolated from people, and giving and receiving critical feedback can be stress-inducing. Do have a trusted advisor to act as a sounding board. Practice moderation. Slow your pace. Think things through. Finish tasks you set aside. Have an accountability partner. Become more disciplined. Reduce needing all work to be exciting, impulsive decisions, constant busyness, change for the sake of change, leaving tasks or projects unfinished, and always working with people. Increasing your effectiveness. Key areas for development are being more objective and following through on tasks. You are naturally sociable and personable. That brings a lot of strengths to the workplace but also some blind spots which can reduce your overall effectiveness. When you can learn to be more objective and follow through on tasks, you will find yourself being even more influential in your workplace and an essential part of successful projects. Suggestions for improvement include manage your time and your deadlines. Reduce distractions by having a separate notebook to park new ideas. Learn a task prioritization method that works for you. Learn how to dial your energy up and down as needed for the situation. Weigh pros and cons before making a decision. Work independently for short periods of time. Be more self-controlled over how you express yourself and the actions you take. Get into the details and read the fine print. Be skeptical. Ask the hard questions. Slow down your pace. Talk less. Listen more. Give and receive critical feedback. Be more firm with people who aren't performing. Develop a more systematic approach to work and learn to work with systems and procedures as they are. Working with others. Knowing the personality styles of your colleagues can help you work more effectively together, circumvent communication issues, and navigate potential areas of conflict. In this section, we'll look at how your influence style interacts with each of the four DISC styles. Influence styles with drive styles. Drive style people are results oriented and like to act quickly on bold plans and big challenges. You'll enjoy brainstorming ideas about how to tackle the project. You won't mind a drive style taking charge of the project as long as it's a friendly environment where your enthusiasm for working with people can shine. At times you might find them blunt or demanding. With their desire for results and action, drive style people can see small talk and social interaction as inefficient or a waste of time. They may become impatient with your love of anecdotes, stories, and socializing. When you want to get a point across, aim to be brief with a few clear points you want to articulate. If you can, give them the bottom line. When you find yourself procrastinating on some of the more tedious and boring tasks, ask a drive person to help you prioritize and create an action plan. They will be able to help you map out the most effective course of action. Influence styles with influence styles. Given you both love to have fun, it's bound to be a party when you get together. You will work hard to create a relaxed and friendly working environment where everyone feels excited about their work. Be careful not to let your love of spontaneous discussions distract you or others from tasks that need to get done. When things get stressful at work or you both find yourselves excessively socializing, band together to create healthy activities for the team, such as a group gym session or healthy lunches. Given that public recognition and social influence are important to you both, be on the lookout for any unintended popularity contest that might derail your working relationship and distract the team from the larger goal. Influence styles with support styles. Support style people put others needs ahead of their own. They seek to be of reliable service to everyone. They are patient, tolerant, and great listeners who avoid conflict. You'll both want to create a friendly working environment, so you'll love to catch up over coffee regularly. When communicating, slow down your pace and aim to focus on one thing at a time. This will provide a support style person time to ask questions and clarify your expectations. Don't rush this. Be polite, avoiding any colorful language or rudeness. Be sure to inform them of any changes as soon as possible, giving them plenty of time to process how the change will impact their work in the future. While you both want to be appreciated for your efforts, support people prefer any recognition to be given in private, so make sure to give your thanks quietly or in writing. Influence styles with clarity styles. The clarity style is motivated to build deep expertise in a particular field. They take a methodical approach to their work and set high standards. It is very important to them that any information used for decision-making is correct. Given the reserved nature, a clarity person will prefer conversations to be in private. Their business-like manner responds well to clear expectations and a calm, formal manner. It will certainly aid your communication if you can slow down your pace and stick to the facts. Be ready to clarify your meaning as a clarity style will want to double-check your facts before taking action. Clarity people are not self-promoters or self-starters, so use your connections to champion their expertise and your enthusiasm to encourage them to speed up their decision-making or to take on new projects. In return, they can help you with schedules and deadlines. Take a moment to reflect, meditate, or pray about being the best version of yourself today.