The Top "Career Tests", Why they Don't work and What Does (Part 2 - Extended DISC and Everything DiSC)
Irena Chaushevska Danilovska
CoFounder of Space Coast Valley, FL I PhD Researcher in Applied Neuroscience and NeuroEntrepreneurship I ICT Women Entrepreneur of the Year 2023, EU #Startups #PeakBrain on Earth & in Space #BCIs #NeuroTech #SpaceTech
Origin. There are numerous different DISC test providers many of which with questionable quality and none of them with direct relation to the original creator(s). Most of the test providers claim that their versions are based on the Carl Gustav Jung model for human behavior outlined in his 1921 book, Psychological Types or on William Moulton Marston's theory from 1928. According to Marston (a physiological psychologist), the behavioral expression of emotions could be categorized into four primary types labeled by him as Dominance (D), Inducement (I), Submission (S), and Compliance (C). Neither Jung nor Marston ever performed scientific measurements to confirm their theories.
Ownership. The DISC model is a public domain. The U.S. company John Wiley & Sons, Inc patented their version as "Everything DiSC?" in the 2000s with reference to the initial theories. On the other side, the company Extended DISC International from Finland claims that their Extended DISC? System was developed in 1994 solely by their founder Jukka Sappinen without any reference to the abovementioned early creators, although it is based on the exactly the same concept. This company aggressively sales its version through resalers in many countries including the U.S.
Acronym. For some of the test providers D. stands for Dominant, I. stands either for Inspiring or Influence, S. stands for Supportive or Steadiness, while the description for C. varies the most and stands either for Cautious, Correctness, Compliance, or Conscientiousness, yet as you might assume, all providers claim that their very version of the assessment is the best one.
Price. The pricing models also vary significantly - so some provide the test for free, others charge as little as US$ 15 for the test with a report, while third demand first you to submit a very specific description of your company and needs in order to receive an offer suitable for your brand name and the depth on your pockets.
Limitations of the DISC test (with a focus on Everything DiSC and Extended DISC) and why not to use it if you aim for business success:
Reason 1: According to their webpage Everything DiSC "is designed to help participants better understand themselves and others and to improve working relationships, strengthen management skills, elevate leadership impact, or tackle a conflict". Extended DISC offers broader applications: leadership development, sales training, team building, communication skills training, customer service training, career development, self-awareness development. Yet both, Everything DiSC and Extended DISC, are not designed to be used for identifying the best possible internal or external candidates for the company job positions, but rather to improve the communication style of the current employees at the positions at which they already are. Although some may claim that this is a valuable usage, matching the best people with the right jobs is extremely crucial for everyone involved.
Reason 2: Although DISC describes 4 styles, the model is, at its core, two-dimensional. The vertical dimension is described as a level of activity, ranging from active to thoughtful. The horizontal dimension runs from questioning to accepting. Depending on the results the respondents are qualified as having one of the 4 styles or being between 2 styles i.e. a total of 8 somewhat different styles of behaviour, which is too little of a distinction to be able to understand and describe the colorful differences between various people, their unique personalities and capability and potential for success in his/her job position.
Reason 3: DISC is basing its whole model on the employees' emotions?!?! It measures only their emotional response depending on their perception of self in relationship to their environment in terms of whether a person views his environment as favorable or unfavorable and whether a person perceives himself as having control or lack of control over his environment. Although by learning yourself and others you could try to adjust your behavior with different people in order to communicate better, yet that will not make you from the "right material" to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a Regional Sales Manager for an international giant. You'll need to have a wide range of very specific personality traits that are much more stable than one's emotions and are resistant to unfavorable conditions and/or unexpected changes or challenges in the environment.
Reason 4: Everything DiSC test provides assessments and interprets results for only 4 job roles in the company: leader, manager, individual contributor (general employee), or a salesperson, which is very limiting knowing that most of the companies have tens or hundreds of different job positions and levels of seniority with important differences in the skills and personality requirements even when in the same category such as management.
Reason 5: Extended DiSC is disclosing at their webpage that the DISC questionnaire takes only 10 minutes to complete which makes the questionnaire too short to be serious and reliable tool for any serious workforce assessment that requires extensive evaluation of the respondent personality traits and working styles and deliberate repetition of some of the questions to increase the validity of the results.
Reason 6: Everything DiSC is available through an "Authorized Partner network of consultants, trainers, and coaches" that not only unnecessarily burdens the price of the test, but also opens the door for variations in qualifications and motivations, and subjective and biased interpretation of the results.
Reason 7: The company Extended DISC offers a (not compulsory) highly-priced online certification for the recruitment professionals starting from US$ 1,295 per person up to US$ 4965 for a team of 3. This offer "is supported" by a seal of the HR Certification Institute under which there is a quote: "The use of this seal is not an endorsement by the HR Certification Institute of the quality of the activity"?!?! and the only benefit of the certification is a better marketing on your services as a career coach or recruiter in front of a less informed audience. The second company that offers certification but for an undisclosed price is Everything DiSC. If you ask recruitment companies why they are still using this legacy model when there are much better options on the market, some will confess that it is because they have locked-in money for certifications years ago and they don't want to train their recruiters for a new product. So they continue to re-sale their old certification costs as "an edge" to their corporate clients and charging them high-end prices. I admit this makes a financial sense and is convenient for them, but the clients' who trust them and pay premium fees are stripped of the right to be served with the best solutions on the market that can ensure their business success and desired outcomes.
Reason 8: Moreover, if you are a smaller company that purchased the Extended DISC tests for your own needs, once you'll receive a report for any of your candidates the first sentence you will read will be "Comprehensive interpretation of these results requires the assistance of a Certified ExtendedDISC consultant". This means Extended DISC is pushing you to spend further on their "not obligatory Certification" but not even in a "pay-as-you-go" manner by adding to the price of each test a bit extra for a full and easily understandable online report, but with the same and old "locking-in tactic" by selling you an expensive certification that it will not be worthwhile for you unless you also use their test for the next 5 or 10 years. And what if your expensively certified in-house recruiter decides to resign just after 6 months??
Reason 9: And the "hard-to-demystify report" is composed of describing the person's style, for example, of an Influencer as someone "who has a good ability to influence others, likes to express his/her opinions and tries to persuade others to agree. He/she is not a very patient listener. He/she has to stand out in a group somehow; he/she finds it awful to be an average person in an average group" where is more than obvious that approximately 1/4 of all respondents are getting the same result, then continues by adding how this person motivates others, perform tasks, gets demotivated and how does he react under pressure with short and contrasting statements such as: "Uses people without being aware of it", "Strives for team's benefit as well", "Asks but doesn't listen" and "When necessary, forces himself to listen" based on a single answers in the questionnaire.
Reason 10: After 40 years of research and work, as they claim, Everything DiSC has publicly announced only 1 success story dated from 2009 while Extended DISC has published 4 short testimonials about the satisfaction with their assessments.
THE VERDICT: If you really need to (due to old certification or other nonbusiness reasons) use the DISC model test only as a nice-to-have add-on for self-reflection about the communication style of your employees but never as your main test for recruiting candidates, drawing career development maps or consulting a company to achieve significant business success. Don't bet the success of your company on a test that is basing its results, conclusions, and recommendations on people's emotions and their perceived version of the reality in the moment of giving the answers.
You can not make someone a significantly more successful CEO or COO or even a Team Leader just because this person will try to adjust his emotions the next time he will communicate with someone if he does not have the core personality required for his/her job.
Matching the best people with the right jobs is extremely crucial for everyone involved. Start today!
Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out to me if you have suggestions about assessment tests or other topics or questions I should address in my future posts. You can also email me at irena[at]nucxleus.com
Link to Part 1: The Top "Career Tests", Why they Don't work and What Does (Part 1 - Gallup's StrengthsFinder)
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1 年So where’s the rest of it? The part about “what does” work?
Executive/Leadership Coach; Center for Creative Leadership Adjunct faculty; Hogan certified; ICF certified, Psychologist, licensed in NC
1 年Very interesting article! And compellingly written. Where is the "What Does" part of your article, "The Top 'Career Tests', Why they Don't work and What Does"?
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2 年Thanks for sharing! Curious to know if you have by any chance reviewed the QUEST Profiler? https://www.eras.co.uk/psychometrics/the-psychometric-portal/the-quest-profiler