DISC assessment

When you're managing people, it's important to know what type of people you've got on your team. Are they persistent and thoughtful? Are they leaders or followers? Are they reactive or proactive?

Over the weekend, when I was in my business school class on organizational development, the topic of a DISC assessment came up. We're not talking about the spine or herniated disks. Here's a brief description of the DISC assessment from Wikipedia:

DISC is a group of psychological inventories developed by John Geier, and others, and based on the 1928 work of psychologist William Moulton Marston and the original behavioralist Walter V. Clarke and others.

The assessments classify four aspects of behavior by testing a person's preferences in word associations (compare with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). DISC is an acronym for:

1. Dominance – relating to control, power and assertiveness
2. Influence – relating to social situations and communication
3. Steadiness (submission in Marston's time) – relating to patience, persistence, and thoughtfulness
4. Conscientiousness (or caution, compliance in Marston's time) – relating to structure and organization

These four dimensions can be grouped in a grid with "D" and "I" sharing the top row and representing extroverted aspects of the personality, and "C" and "S" below representing introverted aspects. "D" and "C" then share the left column and represent task-focused aspects, and "I" and "S" share the right column and represent social aspects. In this matrix, the vertical dimension represents a factor of "Assertive" or "Passive", while the horizontal dimension represents "Open" vs. "Guarded".



You can read more about the DISC assessment on Wikipedia.

I am currently a business school student in the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Executive MBA program at Saint Joseph's University Erivan K. Haub School of Business in Philadelphia, PA. The Nationally-ranked and AACSB-accredited Haub School of Business, centrally located in the mid-Atlantic pharmaceutical and healthcare corridor, is able to bring together industry experts and a world-class faculty for a unique industry-focused, immersive executive program.

You can read about my business school experience by reading all the blog posts tagged "Business School Blog."