The key foundation to what we do at Discovering Potential is that we believe that the first and most important person you need to understand in this world is yourself. It is common place to come to a realisation (usually somewhere mid career, or mid life) that the one person you may not truly know is yourself. When we are busy with our lives - studying, family, work - we tend to just carry on with life, moving through each day, sighing with relief when the weekend arrives and then its back to our daily regime again on a Monday. To take time off to study yourself sounds like a silly thing to do. You may even be thinking "This is a waste of time. Of course I know myself, what can a personality assessment tell me that I don't already know."
Lets bring to mind someone whom you respect, who is a subject matter expert - perhaps your professor in school, or the top salesperson in your company, or a famous scientist. He/She knows their particular subject inside out, achieved a high level of understanding of the subject, and continues to at all times improve his/her skill or depth of knowledge. Mastery of their skill is their foundation to their success and mastery starts with in-depth understanding.
Why then would we not invest the same level of time and effort in understanding the key subject matter of our lives - which is ourselves. This is where DISC profiling comes into play - it is a tool (not a crystal ball) to provide us with a platform to understand ourselves, which then provides the foundation to allow ourselves to achieve mastery in other areas of our lives - communication with others, developing relationships, stress management, people skills.
If we were to ask you to talk about yourself, the description will be a little different depending on the type of person you are. Those who are humble may undersell themselves, those who are confident may oversell themselves. And then there are those who have no idea how they really behave in the eyes of others - especially when they are under stress.
DISC profiling provides a non-judgemental, objective assessment to get everyone a description of themselves, without directly asking the person for their own description. The theory goes a long way (since 1928 by William Moulton Masrton) and the algorithm behind the assessment is more complex than it may seem on paper. This is a well tested profiling tool that has been used by millions, and has helped many in their own self development.
The assessment is kept simple, not because the results are simple, but because it is important that any profiling tool can be clearly understood and is rigorously tested, rather than being complex and difficult to explain. The assessment revolves around 4 categories of behaviours (D, I, S and C) but most people will have a blend of the 4 categories, allowing for a wide range of personalities and not just 4. The assessment used by Discovering Potential is published by The Institute of Motivational Living, one of the largest publishers of DISC assessments worldwide.
What happens when you receive or get a debrief about your DISC personality? Firstly, you come to a realisation that what you are reading/hearing is the outcome of your own responses - it was not the opinion of your family, your friends or your spouse - it was your own. Then you see yourself from a third person perspective. Some parts of the assessment results will likely invoke a "Aha" moment, some "yes, that sounds like me", and there may be some parts that you may say "no, I don't think I am like that". We have clients who then discuss the assessment results with their close friends or family, only to realise that the "I don't think I am like that" is actually true! Not everything in the assessment will be 100% spot on (we are after all unique individuals!), but you will find the assessment to be able to provide you with a fair and non-judgmental descriptor of you.
When you can see yourself from a third party perspective, removing the self bias and denial (we all have it), you get to understand how you typically respond to certain situations or types of people. There are certain situations that may have caused you a great deal of stress, some types of people you hit off with straight away, and some folks who for the life of you just "irritates" you (but you still need to work with them!). The realisation that your personality and your personality differences to those around you invoked a response, gives you better control over it as it has become less "personal" . You get to understand your reaction, you see things from other people's perspective, and once you achieve mastery on yourself, you can then enhance your people skills, adapting as we go along. Doing a personality assessment is not about working towards changing yourself. We are all unique and there is no one "great" personality. We are all great in our own ways, but with deep self understanding, you can augment your strengths, adapt to situations and become at ease with your self, and along the way discover new things and potential about yourself and those around you.
