Videos for DISC Training and Coaching

DISC Styles: Perceptions & Reactions
It is important to understand that other people's perceptions of you may be far, far removed from what you intend to convey, particularly in times of stress. Different behavioral styles have very different ways of seeing the world; and frequently, what is intended by one person's behavior is not judged the same way by another. This is fertile grounds for misunderstandings; it can make an already-burgeoning conflict even worse.

When you perceive somebody in a negative way, it often determines how you will interact with them. In a team, the same behaviors and negative reactions can happen over and over again and cause team-members to form negative perceptions of one another. If these daily misunderstandings and clashes are allowed to persist between two people over time, without ever being addressed, they can cause those people to lose respect for one another - and that is the worst thing that can happen in a team.

DISC Styles and Difficult Behavior, Part 1
Every behavioral style has its own natural strengths - those things that just seem to come naturally to a person - as well as a complementary set of typical weaknesses. But what is natural for a person is not the only thing they can ever be good at. The difference is just that it requires a conscious effort and willingness to adapt in order to develop a skill that is not intuitive to you. It takes a commitment to making that practice a priority, as well as the conviction that developing this new skill really deserves your attention, either in your current environment or for where you would one day like to be.

DISC Styles and Difficult Behavior, Part 2
Your behavioral style is a roadmap - not only to your own behaviors and tendencies, but also to the behaviors in others that are most likely to be difficult for you. Each style has its opposite: for 'D's, it's the 'S' style, and vice versa; and for 'C's and 'I's, it's the same thing. In a deeper sense, the people of your opposite style are the ones who have the most they could teach you; day to day, however, those same people are the ones who are the most likely to annoy you the worst. The good news is that this same understanding of your differences is your guide to resolving these clashes, for the good of the team and for your respect levels to your teammates.

DISC Styles and Difficult Behavior, Part 3
One of the biggest personality differences in styles is in the area of pace. This probably causes the most problems in the interactions between 'S's and 'D's. 'D's are fast-paced; they are bottom-line oriented, and sometimes brusque; they want to do things as quickly as possible. 'S's, on the other hand, prefer a slower pace: they want more detail in instructions; they like to spend more time in order to absorb the subtext, to be sure that they deliver what the other person expects. So for an 'S', the rapid pace and forceful demeanor of a 'D' can hit them like a tornado - and by the same token, for the 'D', the extra time and conversation an 'S' demands can be excruciating!

How to Be More Assertive
Assertiveness is a behavior. So is non-assertiveness. These behavior patterns are all habits: we begin practicing them very early on, and by the time we're adults we've gotten really good at doing one or the other. They have become our comfort zone, in other words, and we will resist doing anything different. But leadership development depends on breaking out of our comfort zones to begin practicing the skills we want to develop, not just the skills we already have. It begins by acknowledging that changing behavior patterns is a hard thing to do, and then choosing to do what is hard over what comes easy. It also depends on recognizing that our behavioral style is not our identity: what we do is not who we are. Leadership is deciding on what we would like to do, and then choosing to practice those behaviors every day and every chance we get.

DISC Behavioral Style Model Overview
How the the DISC Model divides into four behavioral styles comes by measuring two scales of behavior. The first scale divides extroverted or introverted behavior; and one of the things that goes along with this is pace. Pace relates to the quickness of the way you speak, as well as how quickly you jump into situations. Pace informs the words you choose and even the way you form sentences, and it also relates to decision-making and impulsivity. A simple way to put it might be to say that an introvert likes to think before speaking or acting, generally, and an extrovert will be more comfortable "thinking out loud," or "acting on instinct," so to speak. DISC also compares task-oriented vs. people-oriented behavior at the same time. This is about what a person is more likely to focus on in a situation: the way they like to look at things and how they will approach problem-solving. "Task-oriented" people tend to be more pragmatic and practical, focused on getting the job done; "people-oriented" people are more attuned to the feelings and interactions of the people involved, and view problems in terms of the dynamics of the team engaged in solving them. Where a person lands along these two scales shows how strongly they identify as either 'D,' 'I,' 'S,' or 'C,' and it also helps them to see how they might be influenced by or react to each of the four DISC styles.

DISC Styles Are Like Languages
Every behavioral style is like a different language, in much the same way that regional dialects can sometimes make it hard for two people speaking the same language to understand one another. In a way, the "languages" of the four behavioral styles of DISC are much the same. We assume that because we are using the same language, everyone understands what we're saying. But the fact is, effective communication with people of differing styles is often not about what you say, but how you say it. We communicate through things like tone of voice, and other non-verbal signals which can be easily misinterpreted, according to the behavioral "type" of the other person. The question of whether what is picked up is projection doesn't matter - perception is in the mind of the perceiver. And if you want to communicate effectively, it is your responsibility to take a leadership role in continually monitoring that the input and output you send and receive are a match with the message intended.

DISC Styles & Team Diversity
Working with a diverse team involves interacting with a variety of thinking, communication and behavioral styles. In other words, everyone is not like you. The lesson is important and bears repeating: Forgive other people for not being you. If everyone in the world thought like you, acted like you and talked like you, the world wouldn't function well at all. We need the diversity of thinking, behavior and problem-solving we find at work, at home, and everywhere around us; and if we accept this is true, we realize that we need to learn how to get along with people who are very different than us. If we want to benefit from the strengths of people who think in very different ways, we have to learn how to work as a team. And if we want to be a good team we cannot avoid the conflicts and problem behaviors that inevitably come up.

Avoidance doesn't work. You learn to communicate with a person by trying different ways of talking or interacting with them, until you get the positive response you were seeking. If you haven't done that, you haven't really tried to communicate. And until you succeed at that, you haven't communicated at all.

Your DISC Style Can be a Blind Spot
Our blind spots cause our miscommunications. When you're in a conversation with someone and trying to communicate, it's important to remember that all of us have certain blind spots that obscure or distort our perception in unpredictable ways. The blind spots causing someone else's problem behavior may be obvious to you, but you can't just tell somebody why they need to change. You'll only encounter resistance. This is a particular challenge for people of direct behavior styles: when they see something wrong that the other person is just not getting, the temptation for them is to get very direct and blunt; their controlling urges start to come out. But each behavior style has its own areas of inattentional blindness that handicap a person's ability to focus on the positive outcomes of communication and teamwork, and instead spark resistance, blame and defensiveness in the other person and themselves.

DISC Behavioral Styles & Team Ecology
Improving team ecology with DISC: When you feel good about the people that you work with and the environment that you're in, it really makes a difference. A work environment that has a sound ecology - that is, where people communicate well, where teams get along, where employees feel a sense of accomplishment - gives everyone a sense of value in their work that raises productivity as a whole by substantial margins. It doesn't happen by accident, and it's a lot easier to improve on when there's already a solid foundation of teamwork and morale - to go from good to great, in other words. But a shared understanding of the principles of DISC behavioral and communication styles gives your team a new terminology to use with each other: instead of derogatory labels or loaded terms that can feel like value-judgements, your team shares a vocabulary that understands the wide variety of communication styles, and assumes the positive intent behind each person's behavior.