Digging into DiSC History

The most recent iteration of the behavioral styles concept is DiSC but the theory currently underpinning DiSC dates back to 1928. That was the year that William Molton Marston wrote a book called The Emotions of Normal People. In his book, Dr. Marston proposed a system of psychology that used the acronym of DiSC for the first time. Marston’s idea was to prove brilliant but not many people actually remember that he was the father of the DiSC concept. One reason is that Marston was a Harvard trained psychologist working at Columbia University. He may have proposed the DiSC concept but, because it came out of academia, no one owned it. Another reason Marston’s groundbreaking work in the area of human psychology is often neglected is because there was someone else working in the same field, at the same time Marston was. Carl Jung developed, wrote about and created his theory about archetypes - early models of personality description. His research, which formed the basis for the Myers Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI), was published around the same time that Marston developed and wrote about DiSC. Jung was a well-known Swiss psychiatrist with much higher visibility than Marston but both made significant contributions to the area of study that would become known as psychometric research and the use of psychometrics relative to personality. Jungian archetypes and Marston’s DiSC theory are the foundation on which just about every four quadrant model on the market today are based on, many of which don’t even carry the DiSC name. Read the full article Digging into DiSC History

The Concept Behind DiSC

What manager hasn’t said to himself, at least once in his professional life, that his job would be so much easier if it weren’t for all the people he had to deal with? Odds are there isn’t one person who manages employees who hasn’t uttered that phrase. But getting work done through other people is what most managers are paid to do. What if you could get everything you need to understand, manage and motivate your team and your customers in one small box? What if the key to harnessing human nature was in a package the size of a disposable lighter? Never going to happen? Well, it has. It is called DiSC and it sounds more like the magic decoder ring you used to get out of a box of breakfast cereal or something you would wear on your wrist than a powerful management tool that can change the culture and productivity of a company. Read the full article The Concept Behind DiSC - You do the Math