DISC

I got my DISC assessment results today. I filled out an online questionnaire a couple of weeks ago. The individual results were presented today.

I ended up getting a solid C. No surprise there of course. The effort was somewhat self describing in that if you had to guess what it was going to be beforehand for yourself and others you would have been pretty close most of the time. So it kind of tells you what you already know. Just puts more of a label on it. Although we're not supposed to call it a "label".

It was interesting in a way because the assessment includes a lot of profiling text about you individually. Even though it is composite and computer generated it was fairly accurate. One thing that came up with me is about details of personal life away from work. In general I don't say much about that or ask others about it. However others do volunteer more naturally.

In general it is well known that getting married, buying and/or selling a house, and breeding tend to be disruptive things which can generate a lot of time away from work during the day. And that's OK with me and with most people. It is generally well known when someone is going through such a process. Given that, it's really quite alright if someone sends an e-mail saying they will be "away", "out of the office" for some "appointments", "for a while" "this afternoon".

I don't dislike the people individually, but I really don't want to hear your afternoon itinerary of appointments with your mortgage broker, inspector, lawyer, realtor, etc. I really don't want to know the details. There was a good culture where I used to work. People were generally more vague and guarded about such things. It was a bit like the code of the NFL locker room. You didn't talk about, or especially, ask about people's personal business away from the field.

So that's that I guess. It makes me think about how DISC "scales" though. In the sense of aggregating the DISC profiles of team members to attempt a composite DISC of the team as a whole. Or even of an entire organization. I wonder if it could become part of recruiting and attempts would be made to "manage" it in the sense of having target percentages for the 4 types within different teams and job functions/management etc. An interesting subject in a way.