6/27/2015–At work, effectiveness is a measure of aggregate behavior. I can’t explain it much better than manager tools does, “Tone, words, work product, body language, and facial expressions” are behaviors which lead to effectiveness or ineffectiveness.
As I prepare to introduce students at Purdue to DISC, I think of ways to convey that message to reach all ears. Some don’t like manager tool’s detailed, kind of black and white approach, so to be effective will require finding popular qualities of MBTI in DISC and contrasting them clearly.
Regardless of the intent of DISC/MBTI creators, DISC can be used effectively while only focusing on behaviors within the workplace. Conversely, I’ve never seen an MBTI test or analysis which didn’t include commentary on “personality”, or “what you’re like at a party” or “at home with your socks off”. Therein lies the 1st weakness of using MBTI at work–it suggests we interact with people at work as if they weren’t at work. What about “when in Rome…” or the wisdom of knowing one’s audience (i.e. your audience is “Bob at work” not just “Bob”). MBTI may be better than nothing, simply because it reflects the platinum rule “treat others how they want to be treated”. But it falls short by neglecting the reality that people want to be treated differently at work than outside of work.
The 2nd weakness of MBTI, ironically, comes from its accuracy–there are 16 profiles (ESTJ, INFP…) It’s easy to find one of 16 which matches each person when you get that detailed. The problem is at work, we’re trying to decide how to behave and communicate with people–I can’t expect to memorize 16 personality types and then decide how to respond to an email/voicemail/face to face question, etc. However, I may be able to estimate what someone’s MBTI profile is within a group of 4 types, or so (out of 16). That brings us to DISC.
DISC–4 quadrants on a two-axis model–makes it easy and effective to make decisions on behavior in the moment. My company has a love of the 80 for 20 rule, and DISC definitely surpasses 80% effectiveness for less than 20% of the effort it takes to use MBTI well. Again, overall, MBTI is more accurate at describing a person completely, but not necessarily at work and far less efficiently than DISC. I think the high accuracy of MBTI also encourages people to act in ways which match their profile more than they naturally would, which discourages the platinum rule. They see how accurate their assessment is and think, “I’m an ISTJ, and that’s why I do this or that. I don’t do this or that because that’s more of an ENFP behavior.” This natural, sub-conscious, and ineffective idea prevents the ISTJ from learning the effective ENFP behaviors. Proper teaching of DISC however, makes it simple to give examples of all 4 types’ effective behaviors. For example, MBTI teaches introverts they gain energy spending time alone, and lose energy while interacting (vice versa for extroverts). This is so true, for me (an “I”). AND the lesson from my training class at work was to eat lunch alone often to “recharge”. DISC, on the other hand, would teach me (a reserved task-oriented person, or “C”) that I should be aware of my natural desire to eat alone, and to adopt the effective behavior of my opposite type and eat with people as a way to build my network and learn info I wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
DISC is more easily taught, learned, and applied than MBTI. It’s less accurate and still more effective, though MBTI is better than nothing.
QOTW–“What you are to be, you’re now becoming.”–Chuck
?FNW–Learning from 1st deliverable? Missed part–>deadline pushed back.