People who use DiSC » DiSC Profiles

Certified DiSC trainer interview

I spoke with an experienced trainer, Leslie Gorman, vice president of education and development at Hair Club. She has been using DiSC for over 20 years, recently moving from the paper version of DiSC Classic to the Everything DiSC suite of assessments.

Certified as a DiSC trainer in the 1980s, Gorman has updated her skills and training materials by purchasing Everything DiSC trainer kits. She uses facilitation materials included in the kits. “I didn’t have to create them from scratch. Plus I got updated on the research behind the change to the circle model. It’s nice to have a refresher every so often. I use them as a starting point and customize the materials for Hair Club.”

DiSC training is offered throughout the company, from the executive management team, to physicians, to sales consultants. Gorman spoke a lot about the consultative quality of the relationships within the company and with their clients. Everything DiSC Workplace is her choice for use during trainings with corporate and franchise staff and managers to help them work more effectively together, to relate better to each other.

Gorman also uses the profile in training Hair Club physicians. “Our challenge is that doctors are used to having health-related, rather than elective, consultations. Our doctors are still the doctor, but they also have to provide consultative services with many more choices. We help them on the consultation skills and on working better with Hair Club staff.”

She used Everything DiSC Management with the executive management team so they could learn each others’ styles and come together better. She referenced InsideOut Coaching™, another program she respects, and how “they dovetail very well together.” She uses both to teach managers how to have more effective coaching or mentoring relationships and provide better feedback to each other.

Since Hair Club sales are more consultative than transactional, Gorman uses Everything DiSC Sales extensively with sales staff. In fact, she in the process of revamping their entire sales training and will use DiSC to help their sales consultants “understand where there client is coming from and to build trust” with potential clients. As an example, “How do I as a D have a consultation with an S? How do I adapt my energy level and my language?”

Gorman also uses DiSC to her own benefit to inform how she offers training. She uses the Facilitation Report to see everyone’s primary and secondary styles. “It’s helpful for me to know what I’m going to be facing in an upcoming class.” Her sales trainings typically run around 80 percent I styles with a smattering of D styles. “My focus is keeping them on task and reining them in.” Her corporate classes are overwhelmingly S, then C styles. “For them I spend more time working on interactions.”

Developing leaders

Leadership is a highly desirable skill. One of our clients has built a successful business coaching others about business communication and leadership skills. She has used Everything DiSC 363 for Leaders with several of her own clients.

“Many of our clients are leaders in corporations or middle managers, and we’re working to further develop their leadership skills,” states Ellen Dunnigan, Accent On Business founder and CEO. “360s provide a view of what characteristics we are displaying or not. A person can see that they possess some, but not all, the characteristics they need to be a great leader.”

Most 360 tools ask a person to rate himself or herself on various traits and behaviors they commonly display. These tools also require others who work with the person being evaluated to provide feedback on the leader. The DiSC tool differs from many 360 tools in that it doesn’t allow for open-ended responses from reviewers. Ellen chose Everything DiSC 363 because of that difference. “Answers give to open-ended questions are not always constructive or even appropriate. There’s the potential to give unhelpful or even hurtful comments. You could write an essay about the person. 363 is not like that. I have to choose from a set of available comments the ones I feel best reflect the person. It gives the person constructive feedback.”

One of the important benefits of any 360 review, according to Ellen, is the opportunity to take the time to step back and take the time to look at whether or not we are displaying the characteristics we want to. We’re all so busy professionally and in our personal lives. This tool gives people the opportunity to look at themselves in a deeper way. They can evaluate how they act in accordance with their own values, with the interests of their employers, and build upon their successes.”

Another unique feature of DiSC 363 is that it provides insights a person can start using right away. “I really like that it gives people ideas on areas they can start to address in their future development.” She spoke of leaders who told their colleagues about what they had learned and what they wanted to work on. They then asked for feedback on how they were doing and to be told when they weren’t on the right track.

Ellen pointed out that neurolinguistics shows us that when we look at people who grow up in the same environment, with the same advantages or disadvantages, one person might succeed where another one doesn’t. This field points to communication as a deciding factor for success. A tool like Everything DiSC 363 for Leaders can help us define where we are lacking communication skills so we can takes steps to make ourselves better communicators, better leaders, and more successful in our chosen endeavors.

DiSC as a constructive tool

When you think of the construction industry you probably think of hammers and wrenches, not personality assessments. One trainer in the construction industry uses DiSC Classic 2.0 as a tool for his training of leaders in the field.

Michael Brunner, owner of CCS Construction Training, offers coaching, mentoring, and training to people in the building trades. He’s an experience trainer, age 66, who has used DiSC Classic for over 30 years.

“I do a lot of one-on-one coaching and teaching. The DiSC gives me an opportunity to know more about a person and how they’ll respond to my training,” says Brunner. Since his coaching relationships tend to last for months, this insight is helpful for him. It helps him plan how to keep his clients engaged and satisfied. “Before I meet them I learn how they are wired.”

His clients value the insights they gain from DiSC. “After they’ve taken the test, I ask them if they think it’s 75 to 90 percent accurate. Invariably they tell me it’s 90 to 95 percent accurate.”

Brunner’s clients tend to have come up through the ranks of the building trades. They have little formal management or leadership training unless they have they college degrees. “DiSC gives me and them a wide range of adjectives (pages 6, 7, 8, and 9)—a range of where they are in terms of strengths and limitations. I ask them to pick the ones they see that prevent them from attaining their next level. Then I ask them to pick two or three to work on for the next three to four months.”

“Seeing their own profile helps them focus on where they may use traits inappropriately or excessively. If they learn more about people—to value them more—they might get better cooperation and collaboration. ” He recalls that in the past, the person who yelled the loudest got the management job. Younger workers don’t accept that.

What DiSC style is most common among his clients? “In our industry we see a lot of Ds and Cs,” says Brunner.