10 questions people ask about DiSC assessments

A DiSC assessment is a short behavioural questionnaire that shows which of four styles you lean towards: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness or Conscientiousness. DiSC tests and DiSC assessment training are fairly common in the business world. Not only can they help people to be better at their jobs, they can also help people communicate and collaborate more effectively.

From a business perspective, investing in DiSC training for employees can be worthwhile for their professional development. But because the effects are not quantifiable in the traditional sense, it is understandable that you might have some questions before enrolling your staff.

So, to help you out, here are ten of the most frequently asked questions about DiSC training and assessments.

1. What is a DiSC assessment and what is it for?

The purpose of a DiSC assessment is to determine which of the four behavioural types the respondent fits into. These categories can affect how we deal with conflict and workplace challenges as well as what motivation we need to do well at a job. Each style has its strengths and weaknesses, which can help us understand how to approach tasks and meet our goals.

Once you have this information, you can take part in DiSC training. As the name suggests, this is a training course based around DiSC personalities, knowing which you will work best with and how to overcome clashes between behavioural styles.

So, the purpose of a DiSC assessment is to improve your self-awareness about your behaviour and work on potential weaknesses using this information.

2. What does DiSC stand for?

The letters in the acronym DiSC refer to the four behavioural styles the test categorises respondents into. These are Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness.

Each style has a behavioural profile associated with it that determines how people work, lead, respond to stressors and deal with conflict and communication. Similarly, each style will have strengths and weaknesses, such as difficulty empathising or responding to change.

Different DiSC assessments will produce this information in different ways. The Everything DiSC assessment we use produces a report of around twenty pages that analyses a respondent’s answers and how this fits into their behavioural style. From there, this information can be applied to the associated training course, which looks at how to interact with other styles and use your behavioural style to thrive in professional environments.

3. How long does a DiSC assessment take?

Again, this can depend on the specific test taken, but a DiSC assessment generally takes ten to fifteen minutes and consists of up to thirty questions. DiSC tests are typically quicker and less complicated than other behavioural and personality tests, such as Myers-Briggs.

We offer DiSC assessments as part of our DiSC assessment training courses. These last for a day in total, which can be completed as two half-day events or a single full day. They can be online or in person.

Most of the value of the DiSC test comes from what you do with the information. This is why we offer the full-day training course: it allows people to identify their DiSC style and then apply it to workplace situations.

We are big advocates of Catalyst, the online Everything DiSC platform. After the course, everyone in the team can see their own DiSC style and their colleagues' styles, across the team and the wider organisation, with practical tips for working well with each person. It keeps DiSC part of everyday work long after the workshop.

4. Do DiSC styles change over time?

A DiSC style relates to certain behavioural and personality traits, such as how you might respond to conflict or stress in the workplace. As such, the results can change over time because our behaviour is influenced by age, maturity, education and experience. You will not see any noticeable differences over the short term, but tracking results over a period of several years might show some changes.

However, this does not invalidate DiSC training, as this is based on the respondent’s results from the assessment they take at the beginning of the training course. Companies may choose to send employees on a new training course after a couple of years depending on how relevant DiSC styles are to their work.

5. Which DiSC style is best for leadership roles?

There is not one DiSC style that is better than the others, as each has its own pros and cons. For example, dominance styles can work best in high-pressure, time-sensitive environments, whereas steadiness styles thrive in consistent, results-driven situations.

Rather, the point of DiSC training is to understand which styles work best where and how to use this information. Knowing how to get the best from each behavioural style means that they can all work for leadership roles, provided you know where to apply them. We go into more detail in which DiSC type is best for leadership.

6. Is it better to mix DiSC styles on a team?

There is no real benefit to trying to engineer a team or leadership setup that is purely one DiSC style or a mix of several. Each style has its own benefits in different situations, and the amount of time you would spend trying to hire and socially engineer teams based around certain styles just would not be worth the investment.

As with choosing the best style, it is far better to understand how each style interacts with others. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of styles will result in better communication and collaboration, which is far more useful for a successful team.

7. Will a DiSC style be different at work than at home?

The answer to this question is both yes and no. A DiSC assessment measures behavioural style, including how we react to circumstances that might present us with stress. Also, we are all a mix of several styles, and it can be incredibly difficult to pigeonhole someone into just one DiSC style.

So, when we are at home, it is fair to assume that we are fundamentally the same people as we are at work. The core aspects of our personalities and behaviour should not differ drastically in personal and professional contexts. For example, if you are a conscientious person at work, it is likely that you will display aspects of the conscientious behavioural style at home too.

However, because a DiSC test is a measure of behavioural responses, there may be some differences if you were to answer questions based on home-related questions. As such, you might find you sway more towards a dominance style at work and a conscientious style at home, depending on who is asking the question and what will be influenced by your response.

All of this is perfectly normal, as a behavioural test is never going to be consistently applicable. A person’s responses to the questions could change daily and would certainly be different in personal and professional situations.

8. What is the rarest DiSC profile?

The rarest DiSC profile can change depending on where in the world you are giving the test as well as the year and context in which it is taken. Generally, though, the dominance style is considered rarest, as confirmed by an Extended DiSC validation study. However, DiSC Profiles found that the compliant style is the rarest, if only by less than half a percentage point.

It does not matter much if one style is rarer than others, though, as there is not much you can do with this information on its own. Completing DiSC training will improve your awareness of your own style and will make you better at determining other people’s style.

So, the only impact this information might have is that you get less practice identifying one style. Provided you know how to interact with each behavioural style, though, you will be sufficiently equipped.

9. Can a DiSC profile predict suitable jobs and positions for respondents?

The short answer is no, a DiSC profile cannot predict which jobs a person would be best at because it is not a hiring tool. Companies do sometimes use behavioural testing as part of their hiring processes, but this is not what the DiSC test is designed to do. Although you could apply some of the results from a DiSC test to certain jobs, each style is going to have inherent weaknesses that might not make it suitable for these jobs.

This is not to say that some jobs will not have a higher representation of one behavioural style over others. For example, a sales department might show more dominance style people than, say, steadiness people. But there are lots of factors that can affect this correlation, so it is not particularly helpful to focus on it.

10. How do blends of styles work?

Unsurprisingly, people are more complex than the results of a behavioural test can show. While it is generally accepted that we will fit mostly into one category, we are all a mix of each of the four behavioural styles to differing degrees. For example, a person might be mostly influential in the way they interact with others, but become more of a steadiness style in the way they approach workplace tasks.

It is fairly common for people to share traits between similar styles, such as dominance and conscientiousness, or influence and steadiness. Although these sound fairly different, they share traits like how outgoing they are or how readily they question existing processes. These are known as style blends and, generally, opposing styles do not blend as readily as matching styles.

What to do with DiSC results

DiSC tests can be a great way to facilitate more effective teamwork in the workplace. As mentioned, though, what you do with the test results is more important than the results themselves. This is why a DiSC assessment should ideally be supplemented with some training on what styles mean and how they work together.