February is the month of love and this month we are looking at applying DISC when you have finished work for the day.
If you have read more of our articles, you might have gathered that we love the DISC tool! What’s not to like? A tool that helps you to understand yourself and to understand others so that you can build better relationships. Useful and interesting!
We spend a tremendous amount of time in the workplace and the DISC tool is often used in that context. DISC is like a language with four distinct dialects and once your understanding of another person increases, it is simpler to build better relationships.
There is an upside to learning a language for a specific purpose which is that you now have the skill and can use it in other areas. If you learn a second language for business purposes, perhaps you are learning Spanish for a business project to make communication easier with your colleagues in Spain, the happy side effect is that you can now speak Spanish and use this knowledge when you are on holiday with your family or friends.
By learning the language of DISC to build a better relationship with your Manager or to better communicate and improve results with a team reporting to you in the workplace, you now have a tool which you can use with your “team” at home!
Our family relationships have as many obstacles to navigate as our workplace relationships and there are additional factors to add to this familial mix. We can think of familial love as being unconditional, but is it, really? The old saying “you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family” suggests our relationships with family are for life but many people choose to estrange themselves from family members for a whole range of reasons. If relationships get tough or become unacceptable in the workplace we can leave and find another place of work but if problems arise in a family we often feel we have to stay and ride the storm. After all “he is your brother”, “you know what Dad is like, but he is your Dad”, “your sister always does that, but she will come round”, “your Mother is upset, make peace with her”.
We can’t solve all family problems with a tool like DISC. However, a deeper understanding of yourself and of others applies in the family as much as in the workplace. We can’t erase the past but it is a valuable tool to take a step forward and see if you can improve your communication and the way you respond to family situations in the future.
We have so many stories about people’s reactions to learning about DISC from our work over the last 25+ years. It is common to hear feedback like this:
I have to get home quickly and apologise to my wife. I have been married for 37 years and I realise I must have been annoying her for all that time.
I have spent my whole life looking for my adoption papers as I never felt like I fitted in at home but now I just see I am an I style and my parents and my brother are all C style! No wonder I have felt this way for my whole life, they must be as confused by me as am by them!
Wow that is so spot on, have you been stalking me?
I am getting one of these for my brother!
I just thought my children had become awful teenagers but I think I can make some headway with them knowing what I know now. I don’t think I have been helping the situation.
Now I have seen my DISC results I can see I need to work on my empathy. Oh, my poor wife, she has been right all along but please don’t tell her if you ever meet her!
I have been married for 50 years if only my wife and I had used this in year one!
Christmas Day was the best year yet, after all these years everyone had tasks that suited their DISC style and we really did rejoice in the differences!!
This explains A LOT! My family have been telling me this for my whole life!
This was hard to read but also very true and nothing I haven’t heard before. Maybe I can make some changes.
Isn’t it interesting how you can have three children from the same parents and they can all be so different?
We have put all this investment in at work with DISC and yet I don’t put half this effort in at home with my family with my most important relationships
Keeping things simple in a complicated world.
To learn more about the DISC tool and how you can learn to identify different DISC styles. Come along to our free lunchtime session. Full of powerful insight into the world of Everything DiSC® (part of the Wiley group) in just 30 minutes you will learn something! We run a learning session every Monday.
If you are a people development expert, independent consultant or coach and would like to benefit from a like-minded and supportive network of people get in touch at discover@discsimple.com to find out how you can become an associate.