Developing Self-Awareness with a Personality Assessment
In almost every team I work with, people aren’t fully aware of the impact their own behaviour is having on the people they lead, the people around them, and the culture they’re building.
This is why self-awareness is so important.
Self-awareness means:
- Knowing why you think, communicate, and behave the way you do.
- Being honest enough to know your blind spots and understand your impact on the people around you.
- Being willing to ask for help or admit a mistake, without treating either one as a hit to your credibility.
Most of what we do and say happens without much conscious thought. We don’t think twice about it until it creates friction with someone who’s wired differently.
A personality assessment like Everything DiSC puts a name to what’s usually invisible.
DiSC gives you more than a “personality type label.” It also gives you a way to understand communication and behavioural preferences, tendencies, and comfort zones.
Self-Awareness: Seeing Your Own Comfort Zone First
DiSC assesses two dimensions of behaviour.
- Pace: are you naturally fast-paced, active, bold, ready to move? Or more moderate-paced, calm, thoughtful, deliberate?
- Focus: do you lead with logic, analytical, questioning, detail-first? Or with people, empathetic, accepting, relationship-first?
We tend to have a natural preference to lean one way on each. Put them together and you get the four DiSC styles:
- D (Dominance): fast-paced and logic-focused. Direct, results-oriented, firm.
- i (Influence): fast-paced and people-focused. Enthusiastic, outgoing, collaborative.
- S (Steadiness): moderate-paced and people-focused. Even-tempered, supportive, and patient.
- C (Conscientiousness): moderate-paced and logic-focused. Analytical, reserved, precise.
Most people have one style or a blend of two styles which represents your comfort zone: your natural style for approaching work and relationships when nothing’s pushing you to do otherwise.
Once you can see your own personality style, you can start to see its impact on a meeting, a decision, or a relationship.
You can also see where you might need to flex or stretch outside of it.
Other-Awareness: Extending That Same Understanding to Your Team
Self-awareness on its own only gets you halfway.
The other half is understanding that the people around you have their own comfort zones too. Their comfort zone is just as valid as yours.
This is other-awareness. A colleague who wants more detail before committing isn’t being difficult. They’re just more logic-focused. And someone who wants to connect before getting down to business is leading with more people-focus.
Once you can read the difference, you stop judging and assuming the worst. You give people the benefit of the doubt and credit for good intentions instead of writing off their approach as wrong.
This kind of understanding can go a long way towards resolving friction.
A personality assessment is one of the fastest, most structured ways to build self-awareness and other-awareness at the same time.
Instead of guessing at why you and a colleague keep missing each other, you get specific, concrete language for your differences.
In a workshop setting, this learning and understanding shows up fast. Someone will say, okay, you’re more analytical, that’s why you want the details before you decide. I’d rather get in, make the decision, and get out. You’d rather connect first, because the relationship matters to you.
It’s the same conversation as before, without the guessing about what the other person is up to.
A team ends up with a way of working together that fits everyone in the room, including the people who communicate nothing like you do.
If you want a clearer picture of your own style, and a better read on the people you work with, a personality assessment is a good place to begin.
Options for DiSC assessments and tools
As an Authorized Partner and Facilitator for Everything DiSC®, we work with the full catalogue of assessments Wiley offers.
Everything DiSC Workplace®, delivered through the Catalyst™ platform, is where almost every team starts.
Workplace is the foundation the other assessments build on, and it comes with an online platform where team members can see each other’s styles and keep learning after the session ends.
From there, the right next step depends on what you’re solving for:
- Agile EQ goes deeper into stretching and flexing your style to meet different situations.
- Productive Conflict looks at how each style shows up, and derails, in disagreement.
- Management applies your style to specific leadership behaviours like directing, delegating and developing.
- Worksmart develops leaders with giving feedback, managing conflict, navigating change, motivating and empowering their team.
- Work of Leaders walks leadership teams through vision, alignment, and execution.
- Sales helps salespeople adapt to a customer’s preferences and expectations.
Where to Start
You can learn about our full range of DiSC tools and training here: https://honeconsulting.com/services/everything-disc/
We’d be glad to walk you through what the best options could be for you and/or your team. No pressure, no obligation.
Or start with our free Better Leaders, Stronger Teams, Healthier Workplaces assessment to see where you stand today.
Randy Kennett is the founder of Hone Training, where he works with organizations across Canada and internationally to develop better leaders, stronger teams, and healthier workplaces through practical, evidence-based training and facilitation. For more than 17 years, he has partnered with government agencies, universities, nonprofits, and private-sector companies to create lasting organizational change.
More on self-awareness, reading the styles around you, and what DiSC does for a team
What Everything DiSC Actually Measures (and Why It’s Not Just a Personality Test)
A closer look at the two dimensions behind the four styles, what your own report covers, and how the 15-minute adaptive assessment works.
What Changes When a Team Learns Each Other’s Communication Styles
The three shifts that show up once a team can name each other’s styles: more understanding with differences, less taking things personally, and a shared language for friction.
How to Strengthen Your Ability to “Team”
Where style differences fit into building trust and cohesion, including a team whose leader’s blunt delivery was landing very differently than he intended.
What Does a Better Leader Actually Look Like?
Why self-awareness comes first in leadership development, plus the answer to the question that always comes up in DiSC training: which style makes the best leader?
Better Leaders, Stronger Teams, Healthier Workplaces: A Framework for Organizational Development
The full three-pillar framework that self-awareness sits at the front of, and why leadership, team, and culture work can’t be solved separately.