What Is Your DISC Style at Work?
Four ways of behaving under pressure, on two simple axes
DISC is the model behind most workplace team-building sessions, and its appeal is that it is simple enough to remember on the day. It puts you on two axes - whether you move fast or carefully, and whether you focus on the task or the people - and the four corners give you a style. It describes behaviour rather than character, which is both its honest limit and the reason people find it useful at work.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about how you behave at work specifically, not at home. DISC is a model of workplace behaviour and the two can differ a great deal.
What it measures
Which of the four quadrants your working behaviour sits closest to: Dominance, fast and task-focused; Influence, fast and people-focused; Steadiness, measured and people-focused; and Compliance, measured and task-focused. Most people show two, with one clearly leading.
Based on: The four-quadrant DISC behaviour model (Marston, 1928), with the research caveats stated
Possible results
D - Dominance
Fast and focused on the result
I - Influence
Fast and focused on the people
S - Steadiness
Measured and focused on the people
C - Compliance
Measured and focused on the task
Common questions
My company uses DISC. Is my official result wrong?
Not wrong, but not an official anything either - there is no single authoritative DISC. Several publishers sell different questionnaires built on the same 1928 idea, and they do not always agree with each other. Treat whichever result you have as a useful description of your habits at work, which is the level at which the model earns its keep.
Why do I feel like two of the styles?
Because you are, and that is the normal result. The four are corners of two continuous axes, not four boxes, so most people sit on an edge between two of them. A strong secondary style usually explains more about you than the primary one does.
Is there a workplace test with better evidence?
For predicting how someone will actually perform, the answer from decades of personnel research is conscientiousness from the Big Five, combined with a work sample or a structured interview. It is a far less satisfying answer than a four-letter style, which is roughly why the four-letter style is the one that got popular.
Sources
- Marston, W. M. (1928). Emotions of Normal People (the origin of the four-quadrant model). Harcourt, Brace & Company.
- Jones, C. S., & Hartley, N. T. (2013). Comparing correlations between four-quadrant and five-factor personality assessments. American Journal of Business Education.
- Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology. Psychological Bulletin.
An honest note This one is in the Fun section, and it is worth saying why clearly, because DISC is used in serious settings. William Marston proposed the four-quadrant idea in 1928 and never built a test from it; every DISC questionnaire in use today was created later by a commercial publisher, and this one is ours and is not affiliated with any of them. The independent peer-reviewed evidence for the model is thin: its predictive validity for job performance has not been demonstrated in the open literature, and personality researchers generally regard it as a communication vocabulary rather than a measurement instrument. Use it to talk about how a team works together. Do not use it to hire, promote, or decide what someone is capable of.
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