• Home
  • About Sherry
  • Work with Sherry
    • Career Power Hour
    • Job Interview Power Hour
    • Get Boldly Visible At Work So You Get Promoted
    • Job Search Confidence
    • VIP 1:1 Career & Leadership Coaching
    • Breastfeeding support in Bromley
    • BOOK A CONVERSATION
  • Success stories
  • Resources
    • PODCAST
    • ONLINE COURSES
    • DOWNLOADS
    • • FREE Manage Your Career with Confidence and Purpose
    • • FREE 99 Action Verbs To Make Your CV Stand Out
    • • FREE The Ultimate Job Interview Checklist
    • • FREE 15 Tough Job Interview Questions & How To Answer Them
    • • FREE Women’s networking directory
  • The Book
    • About the book
    • Sample chapter and reading
    • About the author
    • Media
    • Interview with the author
  • Blog
  • Speaking
  • Contact Sherry

The Confident Mother

Helping ambitious women in technology fully unlock their leadership potential

23rd October 2014

Students behaving badly

Tonight I ran three workshops at my local school for A’ Level students and their parents at the Career Fair.

I did a whistlestop tour through the DISC behaviour profile tool. It’s a fun workshop to run and gives people insight into their behaviour and that of others. It’s a tool that I use with all my coaching clients.

Let’s explore DISC now. First decide whether you are outgoing or reserved. Next are you task focussed or people focussed? Do you want to get the job or task done? Do you focus on the achievement? Are you more interested in the people aspect? In the feelings?

If you are outgoing and task focussed, you fit the D of DISC. Ds are determined, dominant, decisive, motivated by challenges, appear to be direct and self-assured, and tend to focus on results. They don’t want to appear vulnerable or being taken advantage of.

If you are outgoing and people focussed, this is the I of DISC. Is are influencers, inspiring, impulsive, independent, they prioritise people and communication, are motivated by social recognition, feel restricted by too many rules and regulations, are persuasive, enthusiastic, and optimistic. They fear rejection.

S style are reserved and people focussed. They prioritise people and collaboration. Ss are steadfast, systematic, supportive, tend not to panic in a crisis, can be predictable. They are motivated by stability and status quo and don’t really like change, especially unplanned change.

Cs are reserved and task focussed. They are cautious, conservative, compliant, creative thinkers (problem-solvers), conscientious. They prioritise accuracy. They like to deal with facts, good with detail. They hate unjustified criticism.

All of us have a preferred behaviour style – typically we have two and possibly three dominant styles. For example, I am a strong C and D. I am conscientious, I value knowledge and expertise, I am an action taker and like to get things done but I want them to be done properly. That doesn’t mean I’m not good with people – I am a qualified counsellor and people love the space that I hold for them as individuals or in a group.

In my workshop, everybody decides their dominant style i.e. D, I, S or C. I split the participants into their profile groups i.e. all Ds together, all Is together etc. I give each group a collection of celebrity photos and ask them to discuss in their group which behaviour style seems most suited to that celebrity.

It’s fascinating to watch the groups work. The Ds are quick, decisive and always finish first. The Cs take their time and want to get it exactly right. The Is – well they talk a lot and often forget about the task in hand! While the Ss worry about getting in the way and take it more steadily.

Understanding our own behaviour style is so valuable – it helps us to communicate better, but more importantly if you have an appreciation of the different behaviour styles, you can see why different styles might clash. This can then give you the confidence to deal with the situation appropriately. For example Ds and Cs are likely to want to get to the point. Cs are likely to add in much more detail. Whereas the Is may well give you a long story before the Ds will jump in and ask them to “just get to the point”. So when you notice you are always getting annoyed by a particular work colleague or somebody on the PTA or even your partner or neighbour, perhaps you are experiencing a clash of behaviour styles, in which modifying the way you communicate could well resolve the issue for you.

As the students and parents work together, I see lots of lightbulb moments! NOW I understand why I just don’t work well with that teacher. At last I understand why my colleague is driving me nuts!

Find out how you can bring a DISC profiling workshop into your college or workplace and Get in touch today.

 

Article by Sherry Bevan / DISC / behaviour style, Coaching, DISC 9 Comments

Comments

  1. Josie says

    23rd October 2014 at 9:16 pm

    You’re so spot on with this. Finding out what people’s personalities and behaviours are like are crucial for relationships to work. Maybe we should do this before dating?! Very useful and something we should all bear in mind.

    Reply
    • SherryB says

      24th October 2014 at 5:31 pm

      Love the idea of doing this before dating – though perhaps takes the spontaineity and romance out of it.

      Reply
  2. Ellouise Heather (@EllouiseHeather) says

    24th October 2014 at 9:12 pm

    DISC profile is such a useful tool for understanding ourselves and our interactions with other people. I much prefer it to any other style of profiling I have come across. I wish I had been aware of it when I was at college!

    Reply
    • SherryB says

      24th October 2014 at 9:43 pm

      Yes I love it and every time I run a workshop, it’s such great fun too. And you can see the lightbulb moments happening for people.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Round-up of the last few days | Girls Night In says:
    31st October 2014 at 1:08 pm

    […] Thursday 23 October An introduction to behaviour styles, using the DISC model. You can learn more in snippets posted each day on my Facebook page this week. […]

    Reply
  2. Are you an earthworm like me? | Inspiration Party says:
    18th November 2014 at 1:32 pm

    […] written about DISC before if you’d like to know a bit more about it. Or check out my […]

    Reply
  3. Are you good enough to run your own business? | Inspiration Party says:
    10th February 2015 at 10:30 am

    […] compliant and conscientious (C in DISC world – you might want to look at an earlier blog to understand more about DISC profiling). So launching a business without a clear roadmap might […]

    Reply
  4. Identify your skills and strengths to go back with confidence | Sherry Bevan Consulting says:
    20th May 2015 at 8:33 pm

    […] I work with clients individually and in my group programmes, I use DISC profiling which gives incredibly accurate insight into the type of person you are. Whether you like to work […]

    Reply
  5. Are you an earthworm like me? | Sherry Bevan Consulting says:
    7th August 2015 at 4:32 pm

    […] written about DISC before if you’d like to know a bit more about it. Or check out my […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Josie Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Subscribe to Blog

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email.

Looking for something?

Categories

Archives

Recent posts

  • How to get ready to find your dream job during the summer holidays
  • What I’ve learned about how to be successful
  • How to job search successfully on LinkedIn
  • How to be sure that your employer values you
  • How to articulate your ambitions to protect your gender pay gap

Copyright © 2022 · The Confident Mother · Website design by Helen Taranowski Design