Summary: About five years ago Joel & I discovered DiSC profiles. DiSC is a behavior assessment used to determine how you interact with other people as well as what strengths you bring to an organization. DiSC has four basic behaviors; Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance. The assessment will determine what blend of the four behaviors you have in both a natural state and an adapted state (most commonly work). In this podcast we share how we use DiSC everyday in our business. We use DiSC in two main areas of our business - sales and employees. By familiarizing ourselves with the different personality types we are able to assess what behavior a potential client most likely displays. This helps us to tailor a sales presentation to each personality. For example, a dominant personality doesn't like a long drawn out presentation with a lot of detail. They want a brief overview and they will make a quick decision. If we were to go on and on about our company or our ideas we would turn them off in a hurry! The other way we use DiSC is in hiring and working with our employees. By knowing how everyone likes to be communicated with we are able to give everyone the perfect type and frequency of communication for them. Additionally, we can hire people to fill in the gaps in our personalities. Neither Joel nor I like dealing with conflict (who does?) but we have hired others that are better skilled at this than we are and let them handle Visa when they double charge or don't credit our payment. We are able to find these people by using a DiSC profile BEFORE they are hired. After we first discovered DiSC we spent the next couple of years using it as a crutch and an excuse for not accomplishing things. It wasn't until we discovered the book "I'm Stuck, You're Stuck," by Tom Ritchey that we really saw the big picture of DiSC profiles and how best to use them. As promised here is Neil's DiSC profile and Joel's DiSC profile. These are a few years old and as we state in the show, they change over time so we would test differently today if we were to retake an assessment. But they will give you a good idea of what to expect if you were to take your own DiSC. The last page has our graph showing our natural and adapted styles. The two styles are our natural style versus what we do at work. Notice that we downplay some of our traits at work. For example, I drop my 'C' at work because I know I can't be perfect and expect to get anything done! Joel drops his 'D' because he doesn't want to run other people over! Download a PDF transcript of this podcast - click here Find the book "I'm Stuck, You're Stuck" here Get Your Own DiSC Profile here
