Disc

Introduction

DISC is a popular system due partially to its many versions and widespread distribution by publishers worldwide. Another reason is that it luckily took advantage of early research in personality assessments that can be traced back to the 1940s and that have continued to prove being “not so bad after all” after all these years. However, research has greatly progressed since then. And the use of reports—which is most often what the DISC is about—shows its limitations more often than not.

We have been able to learn from many systems before starting the GRI, DISC is one of them. We couldn’t have conducted our own explorations so efficiently without it. Research have quickly progressed in the field of psychology and personality assessment during the last century. It should be no surprise that the distance separating the GRI and DISC is filled with many discoveries, which we have hopefully and graciously taken advantage of when developing the GRI.

The first publication of this document goes back to 2013. It has regularly been updated since then. The document is not to be copied and for publication. Growth Resources retains all copyrights on it. Thanks to keep it for you.

Generalities

DISC is a forced choice technique. People are asked to select the adjectives that correspond the most and the least to what they think they are. It takes around 10 minutes to complete. The results are a report and three graphs. The first graph reflects the answer to the most likely; the second reflects answers to the least likely. The third graph is a combination of the two first ones. Only the third one is really interpreted. It is on this one that the automatic report is produced. The report describes different characteristics such as management styles, sales style, motivation, interview questions, etc.

The origins of the DISC are rooted in the works of William Marston in the late 1920th, Walter Clark in the 1940th, John Cleaver in the 1960th, John Geier in the 1970th and Pamela Cole in the 1980th and 1990th. The main publisher of DISC is Inscape Publishing, Minneapolis, MN, USA, which owns the DISC and PPSS trademarks. It is sold by a network of consulting companies.

There are several versions of DISC that work from the same forced-choice technique principles. They include Inscape Publishing, Performance International (PI), Target Training International (TTI), Insight, and Thomas International. They all come from the same origins: the PPA or PPSS, and obviously from previous works done on the AVA from Walter Clark in the 1940s that inspired people who worked with him and left his company to create the earlier versions of DISC.

15 Classical profile patterns are identified by the DISC Inscape version. The comments on these profiles come from observations conducted by John Geier in the 1970th. Comments are given for each profile on: emotions, goals, how the person judges or influences others, how the person behaves under pressure, how the person increases effectiveness, what are the person’s overuses, what are the person’s fears, what is the person’s value to the organization.

DISC is proposed for applications in team building, career counseling, conflict resolution, improving communication, sales force training and organizational development. It is not proposed for recruitment (see critics below). It is a popular technique among consultants who utilize it on the different above-mentioned applications.

Quality of Measurement

GRI is a free choice technique. DISC is a forced choice one. This difference makes a big impact on the quality of the measurements. Let’s put it this way: Assume that you are questioning yourself about how much a person likes sugar. If for answering this question you force a person to eat meals that has no sugar, you will not get any correct answer. There is a similar problem with DISC: people are forced to check among four adjectives even if none are appropriate for them. On the contrary, GRI proposes a large number of stimuli to which people are invited to check or not, as much or as little they want. In the same way you would propose a large quantity of meals to a person, some having sugar in it, some not, more or less, so as to observe the one that the person likes best or dislikes most. At the end of this “food test”, you will be able to infer how probable this person might want to eat sugar and how much. The “DISC type of tests”, because of the way they are built, cannot bring the quality and precision in the measurements and the predictions as GRI does.

The quality of measurements can be revealed by doing A/B testing of the two technics: asking the same persons to take DISC on one side and GRI on the other, then receiving both feedbacks and expressing which one they felt more reflected who they are and was more beneficial (we call this face validity). Our experience of these situations is that the persons felt the feedback was more detailed and closer to their understanding of their behavior, motivations and drives, or what was happening at that time. We have documented the GRI for complying with the EEOC requirements (no discrimination of women, or people who are over 40, etc.). Most versions of DISC have no documentation and thus are not legally safe for use in many situations including hiring and promotion (see below about hiring). There are other statistics which should document a test (internal consistency, criteria validity, etc.).

Adaptation, Role

The second difference between GRI and DISC: The Role does not exist in DISC. Without the Role one cannot know how much a people adapt their behavior. And one cannot anticipate also without the Role the limits of behavioral adaptations in the long run. Some may argue that the Profile II is the perception of role (There are 3 profiles drawn with some versions of the DISC) but it’s not. This second profile has opened various interpretations such as being the shadow aspect of personality from the Jungian approach, or … whatever. If one wants to know what the perception of the role is, one has to ask about it like we do with GRI (first question of the survey). It cannot be inferred from vague hypotheses. No Engagement Level, no Response Level, and no Adaptation.

It comes from the above that the DISC cannot measure the Engagement Level, the Response Level and Adaptation as we do with the GRI. As we know these measurements are precious to understand individuals, what goes on in their environment, and how they adapt to it, or not. These aspects help make the connection with the PBI: what is expected in the job, the team and the organization. Without them the individual analysis is lacking what we can call the “social component”: the relationship with what’s happening out there and which is too part of what the person is. These few aspects make the GRI a more sophisticated system than the DISC, not more complicated and much more simple in many respects, but bringing more in depth understanding of what’s going on with the person, and actionable items to work on.

Not for Hiring

In the 1980th the publishers of DISC sent a letter to their network strongly recommending not to use the DISC for recruitment, fearing litigation. This may explain why the DISC never really penetrated recruitments in the United States. Other versions of DISC such as Thomas have been used in recruitment and other applications in Europe. Most DISC systems focus on the personal report and not on the job or position as we do with the PBI. That may be the other reason why some versions of DISC have not been promoted for other thing than coaching and team building.

Just a report

How it mostly works with the DISC systems is by printing reports for people and managers and reading these reports. It’s a constant among all versions of the DISC. The reports are more or less lengthy with generally 25 pages, up to 80 pages with graphs and many more analyses. We have a different approach with GRI regarding these reports: 1) they need to be succinct. 2) Profiles are much more powerful than words. For 1) the GRI report is maximum three page long and get to the essential of behavior and motivation. For 2) Profiles are much more powerful to analyze nuances, remember and apply for many applications. Texts are powerless to remember, cannot help for comparisons and cannot be utilized on a more regular basis. A fit with a job can be analyzed instantly by looking at two graphs. Many profiles can be remembered for analyzes of groups or even individuals alone. Profiles are also powerful for job analyses and reaching consensus.

Social media components

GRI’s platform enables to invite and share results. One can perform some style match, learn and test knowledge about key aspects of personality within the platform. Individual contributors and managers alike can better learn about the team. Managers can interview, select, learn about there team and get assistance for performance reviews. Expectations in jobs can be surveyed, analyzed, shared and finalized between users. Users including experts and executives can get coached in the GRI thanks to online tutorials, quizzes, exercises and case studies. As highlighted above, the profiles make a huge difference in making an efficient use of the information. But this requires a bit more effort to learn, than just reading a report. People learn if there is an interest or necessity for it, but also if they have easy tools and easy access to new experiences. That’s the social component of the GRI platform so that individuals can learn better, faster and benefit from its measurements. There is nothing close to that with the DISC system.

Group Analyzes

GRI proposes tools to analyze teams and larger groups. We can visualize profiles of teams, see how the behavior measurements are distributed and compare with hard metrics. We can map behavior of groups of people and thus better understand how people behave and analyze the fit-gap with strategy. There is nothing close to the above with the DISC systems. Again, even when some versions of DISC such as Insight propose team analytics, the analyses to not lead to much actionable items, thus leaving DISC systems as systems that mostly provide lengthy individual reports.

Distribution model

Another big difference between DISC and GRI is the way the DISC is distributed, trained and serviced through a network of consultants who most of the time do nothing but print the DISC reports for adding value to team building sessions. There is nothing like the GRI seminar with the DISC approach. DISC knowledge is kept in the hands of consultants and is not transferred and shared with the clients as we do with the GRI. There are however lot of books and online reading about the DISC measures and what to do with them. Publishers of the “DISC kind of tests” often have entertaining support materials based on the four colors of DISC, available to their affiliates for team building sessions. The Insight version of DISC is the most popular for making use of the colors and other tools that they provide to their network.