This is the final article in a four-part series covering the concepts, applications and history behind DiSC®. It's one thing to take the profile and learn about behavioral styles but it's surely another to understand how to put DiSC to work for your organization. This series of articles will help you understand the theory behind the DiSC model while also providing insight into the sales, management and workplace applications.
One Company Gets DiSC
By 1978, Marston’s book had been on the marketplace for 50 years but there was no easy way to make his words on paper work as a tool to change businesses. Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was a household name, being tossed around board rooms and conference rooms as “must have” training, but implementing MBTI practically requires a degree.
By this time, different industrial psychologists had worked with both concepts and tried to build different kinds of tools using Marston’s theory and Jung’s archetypes without much success. John Geier, PhD was the first to successfully operationalize the DiSC model in the form commercialized by Inscape Publishing.
Inscape Publishing offers the original DiSC© instrument, says Barry Davis. “Marston didn’t propose measuring it; he just proposed that the world consisted of these four psychological types and that we could make meaning of them and understand people better if we understand these generalized notions about how people function.”
“Our original tool was called just the DiSC Personal Profile System. Then we created the DiSC Personal Profile Software, which was an electronic way to do DiSC.
Recently, Inscape Publishing changed the way it packaged its DiSC systems, literally. “We used to sell assessments. Four years ago, Inscape Publishing took everything it had learned about DiSC and organized it into a system called DiSC Facilitation System,” explains Barry Davis, Vice President of Product Development and Marketing at Inscape Publishing.
Introduced in early 2008, this product and approach mark yet another step forward in helping Training and Human Resource Managers successfully use DiSC in their companies.
“We have really moved from just selling assessments, to selling all of the tools that are useful in applying DiSC to a specific organization or training need. That is really a big change,” says Davis. “We still have PhDs on our staff, psychologists, who develop the assessment and measuring part and the reports but we also have instructional designers, writers, video creatives, editors, web developers and marketing researchers. We have all of the functions under this roof.”
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Full Series of Articles
The Concept Behind DiSC: You do the Math
Digging into DiSC History
Putting DiSC Management to Work
One Company Gets DiSC
