I have been receiving a slue of emails at my brian@bwgibson.net in response to my 10/20/2014 “Connecting with DiSC Scenario” blog. Most of my responders were young professionals. I read each email thoroughly and discovered a common theme of people wanting to know how they could adopt the Marston’s DiSC model into their every day life.
First, you need to understand where YOUR personalities lies within the DiSC model. Are you a result-driven, bottom line High D, perhaps with a low i side to your personality that is good at persuading others and enjoys building relationships. Maybe you’re a High S who places emphasis on cooperation and dependability with a low C side that is slightly obsessed with accuracy and enjoys getting down to the nitty-gritty details of a project or game plan. Whoever you are, thoroughly understanding those dimensions within your self are critical to the continuous learning process of how to effectively connect with others.
The second step would be to observe your current circle of friends or co-workers and identify where 4 or 5 of them exist within the quadrants of Dr. Marston’s DiSC model. Once you identified these roles spend some time examining the daily interactions between these 4 or 5 chosen individuals. Are they able to effectively communicate with one another? Are they connecting in a positive and productive manner?
Next, how does your personality style fit among these 4 or 5 chosen individuals? Is the message you’re attempting to send a clearly received message to your audience ? Or is there confusion or perhaps errors in how these messages are received? This is commonly referred to as “noise.” If so, how could you revise your message in a way that it is communicated from their point of view?
Speaking from the listener’s point of view is the most important yet most commonly neglected component in effective communication. This helps to reduce and hopefully eliminate the “noise” confusion between the sender and the receiver. Mastering this skill will help you to connect better with most everyone you encounter.