Have you considered giving the Everything DiSC Workplace® assessment to a recent graduate? I just did that. I have a young friend who received both their high school diploma and associate’s degree this year. I thought they would find the results interesting and it would be something we could talk about when they came to visit.
They didn’t take the assessment right away and I was a little worried that they thought it was a stupid gift. When I asked them about their results, however, this is what they had to say:
“It’s elaborate. Usually you get a vague outline that’s just enough to be applicable.”
They felt it was quite accurate, and while it felt similar to other assessments they’ve taken, the Workplace profile was much more explicit and useful.
Some people might worry that an 18-year-old might not have enough self-awareness to get an accurate result from a personality test. That’s why I’m glad Everything DiSC® uses computerized adaptive testing. It ensures greater accuracy by adding questions when a preference is not clear from prior test answers.
I didn’t need to worry about my young friend feeling unsure. Their dot ended up on the outer edge indicating a strong inclination to this style. When we talked about that they said, “Whatever I am, I’m very aggressively that.” Knowing them, I think that’s true.
I also had some concerns about how “adolescence defines a critical period for the personality development of young adults.”1 I didn’t want to present them with anything that was negative or that put stress on their self-concept. Fortunately, Everything DiSC uses nonjudgmental language.
Like everyone I’ve ever known to receive their results, they spent a long time looking at their own style and talked about that. But they preferred the portion on how they relate to others. This is an area that can be a struggle for them and we talked about their roommates’ possible styles and how they might communicate better with them.
We chatted for some time about our own styles and the styles we think their parents might be. I wonder if their additional preference for action might reflect their mother’s strong i preference and might not appear in an assessment taken 10 years from now or not at their mother’s computer.
We both admitted how we sometimes act from the more maladaptive side of our styles. The profile made this type of conversation much less preachy than it might have been if I tried to talk about these issues without the DiSC® context.
I asked them what they thought of getting a personality test as a graduation gift.
“It’s great. This will help me with writing a resume, with how to pitch myself. It gives you good solid adjectives.”
I’m happy that I gave this gift. It gave them a new tool to use in their life and it helped us have a really meaningful conversation. Since we have very similar styles, it also helped strengthen our bonds. We had several “Oh, I know. Isn’t that the truth?” moments.
1Adolescents’ Personality Development – A Question of Psychosocial Stress, Frontiers in Psychology, December 2021
