William Moulton Marston, first set the foundation of DISC in 1928 in his book, “Emotions of Normal People”. He identified 4 “primary emotions” along with their associated behavioural responses. Since then, the DISC model has been employed to help people gather a better understanding of themselves and others around them. Many models have been developed and experts continue to find out methods to enhance the learnings from the assessment and make the model more relevant and simple. One such product family is Everything DiSC launched by Inscape Publishing in 2007.
Everything DiSC is a suite of application-specific products based on the third generation research-validated DiSC assessment. Constructed on the earliest representation of the concept, the Everything DiSC model uses a circle to describe the styles and the position of the participants within the DISC model. Although all points around the circle are equally meaningful and interpretable, the DISC model discusses four specific reference points:
Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness.
Advantages of using Everything DiSC Assessment:
RELATIONSHIPS
For the team, the assessment places everyone on the DiSC circle as a Dot. This helps the participants to quickly visualize themselves and their comparison with others in a simple and straightforward manner.
GROUP DYNAMICS
Everything DiSC also allows a team to visualize their composition and the impact of the composition upon the effectiveness of the team. Further, it helps in understanding the problems that some members may be experiencing due to the difference in their styles.
ADAPTATION & STRESS
DISC facilitates in better flexing of styles to adapt to situations and people by giving insight of different styles. Everything DiSC profiles shade areas in the re-presentable to showcase the areas on the DiSC map where they might have difficulty stretching.
INTEGRATION OF THE FOUR STYLES
The circular model establishes the continuous nature of DISC by showing how the primary emotions combine and separate. Participants can clearly comprehend how the different styles merge into one another and where they fit within that blend.
MEMORABILITY
It has been established that people remember the information in chunks of smaller, unified pieces. Everything DiSC, with its circular model, combines the four scales into one integrated model of information making it more intuitive and memorable.
APPLICATION LAYERS
Everything DiSC allows the participants to see the applicability of the differences and their relevance to their field or profession. This increases the value of the insights for the participants as they don’t need prior knowledge about abstract personality and behaviour theories that are not relevant to them. Thus, it helps them relate the understanding better with their goals and development needs leading to an improvement in their effectiveness.
Therefore, although all the assessments based on DiSC are powerful tools for understanding the behaviour, Everything DiSC provides the participants with a much simpler and intuitive representation. It allows participants to develop a better understanding of relationships and group dynamics. It also gives knowledge about the comfort and stressful zones along with the applications in accordance to their goals and needs. Hence, it leaves the participant more enriched to develop a focused and customized action plan.
