Written by Kaia Vincent
Profiling is an important aspect of Brevity’s principles. Indeed it’s the first principle covered – personality. For us, it’s highly important that as a business owners you increase your self awareness so you can become a better leader, a better communicator and ultimately a better negotiator when the time comes to sell your business.
What is the meaning of DISC?
DISC is a self-assessment tool based on the 1928 DISC emotional and behavioural theory of psychologist and Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston.
It’s quite simple to understand and it gives us insight into how we’re wired, we why process information in certain ways, and why we have our unique communicate style. It can also identify how our personality differ at work (our mask) or when under pressure. DISC clarifies what we know about ourselves, and how we can better interact with those around us.
The profile is made up of four ‘ingredients’:
D – Dominance
I – Influence
S – Steadiness
C – Compliance
The four ingredients combined with our natural levels of outgoingness or reservation indicates our preferred way of doing certain things and our DISC personality style.
Why should a business owner consider completing a DISC profile?
Most useful thing is the clarification – when we complete a personality profile, we are told things we already knew, but in a way which makes sense and gives more clarity around why we do things in certain ways. The profile may shed light on some of things we find frustrating and give us helpful solutions on how to overcome the sticking points.
The profile gives a greater level self-awareness, which has a beneficial effect on:
There are lots of applications of the knowledge once we have the starting-point of understanding our own profile – we can apply it our business interactions and wider lives.
What might a business owner learn about their personality from a DISC profile?
A profile indicates how much or how little of each of the four ingredients you have. It will also highlight where there may be some tensions, e.g on the task side dominance and compliance are both task related, but one is about getting the job done now. The other is about getting the job done right. So you can start to understand some of the tensions there.
Do business owners have particular traits in their DISC profile?
In simple terms, any of us can could potentially do any role, but we will be naturally suited to some things rather than others. Some places will feel like our natural environment.
A typical business owner/entrepreneurial profile will have a high level of dominance and influence, with probably less of the steadiness and compliance, but it’s not true of everyone. It can depend on the type of industry you’re in.
Science, engineering, and the IT sector will generally attract people with a lot of compliance so the ‘D’ that gets the job done matched with the ‘C’.
Business owners will understand why certain environments exhaust them, for example someone with a high D/C personality will most likely struggle with lots of meetings where they have to be charismatic. This goes against their natural profile and they struggle. This where they should delegate and build a complementary team around them to fill the gaps.
For our Director, Kaia Vincent, her DISC is a ‘DS’ View Kaia’s DISC profile here
What is the biggest fear of being profiled using DISC?
The biggest fear can be ‘will the profile tell me something I don’t want to know?’, but it’s unlikely to tell you something you don’t already know because you are you! You are already aware who you are, the test takes who you are and puts some extra clarity around your foibles.
It can be useful to be aware of how we are perceived or experienced by others. If it’s a little bit uncomfortable to hear some of the shortcomings of your profile, it can actually be helpful as a business owner to understand if your team or stakeholders are having this experience of you and whether it’s negatively impacting your business.
Does your profile always stay the same?
It might and it might not. Where DISC is different from some of the other profiling tools that people may come across. It can change over time, and it is context specific. When we complete a profile, we do that in the context of a typical day at work, for example, or a typical setting and who we are in that environment.
Our profile may be slightly different in different settings and it can change over time because we have additional skills that we have learned, or if we’ve had a significant life changing event that can also cause a profile to adjust.
When I start working with a client, we’ll profile at the very start to get a sort of a snapshot in time of what their profile looks like at that point. And then maybe six or 12 months later, we’ll run the profile again just to see what has changed, if anything, and what does that tell us about how things are developing if it has changed.
And how would a business owner benefit from the insight provided from DISC profiles?
The application for self-awareness and self-development helps a business owner to communicate more effectively or moderate or adapt their behaviour in that communication style, depending on who they’re going to meet. By learning your own profile, you start to observe the profile preferences in those around us family members, our colleagues, and our team members.
We can then adapt our behaviour around their needs and preferences as well. All of that enhances professional relationships. It also has application with things like understanding who are the ideal customers, stakeholders and suppliers to work with. If you know the profile of you, your team, your clients, your customers, and your stakeholders, you can then use in your marketing communications so that the language resonates with ideal clients.
If you’re talking to prospective clients and you think that they are a DC profile, then you know that you need to give them more detail with case studies and evidence. Do they want to talk to an existing customer because they want to research to verify and confirm their decision?
Whereas if somebody is a DI, you know that they don’t sit in a meeting with you for two and a half hours. They want the headlines and they’ll be able to make a decision quickly.
Both profiles have different ways of making a decision and if we can use the test to understand that, then every at business opportunity we can adapt the meeting to the needs of the person.
How long does the DISC assessment take?
It takes a grand total of 10 minutes, so it’s ideal for the busy business owner! It’s simple to complete and it’s a series of statements and all you are doing is identifying which ones you relate to the most and which ones you relate to the least.
The combination of which statements resonate and relate to the individual is then processed. We then have a review session together to decide how to put this information into use so that you get a fantastic return on investment.
How can directors arrange to have a DISC profile with Wild Empowerment?
The simplest thing is to get in touch and schedule a chat. I’ll then send links to the DISC assessment. The business owner can then at their leisure complete the profile.
A DISC profile is the first of Brevity’s Marketing Mandala Principles – Personality. As a Brevity client you will complete a DISC profile and along with receiving a report, will get to spend 30 minutes discussing the findings with Nikki Wild.
Brevity clients can also opt to work with Nikki for executive and personal coaching purposes.
Example of Kaia Vincent, Director of Brevity’s DISC report which is the exact format you will receive.
If you wish to have DISC assessment with Wild Empowerment for you and/or your team, get in touch with Nikki via her website or LinkedIn
