How to Score Well On a DISC Assessment
Every week I find people searching for this phrase on Google. I imagine you are probably applying for a job and the employer uses these tools as part of the selection process. Or, maybe you are in a work environment where they want to benchmark their employees for recruiting, team alignment, or other reasonss. Whatever the purpose of the assessment, you want to come away impressing the company, recruiter, or manager assessing you.
Can You Fail?
Along the same lines I see searches come in about if you can fail a DISC Assessment. The truth is you can’t.
One misconception we see in the general public is the use of the word “test” when they refer to DISC. Distributors such as us don’t use that word for a reason. DISC is not a test. A test you can pass or fail or fall somewhere in between, but what DISC measures are behavioral styles. If you demonstrate that you are more conservative than demanding does that mean you failed?
You are a measure of the behaviors you use and adapt to. The only way to fail a DISC assessment is to lie on it. There is a tremendous amount of value that can be learned about you from these tools. Chances are your assessor wants to use DISC to see how you would fit with different team members, whether you’d be happy doing the type of work required, or how they may work best with you. You can only fail an assessment designed to pick up on your behavior styles if you tell it you behave in ways you don’t typically behave.
How it Works
The general way the DISC Assessment picks up on your behavior styles is by having you rank 4 different character attributes. For example;
Responsible, Sociable, Stable, Open-Minded
The assessments pick these words from a bank of characteristics that represent the different behavior styles. TTI Performance Systems Ltd, the developers of the DISC assessment we use, have tested these assessments in over 100,000 workplaces to verify the accuracy of these reports with successful results.
After ranking several of these words, the assessment can very accurately measure your rank of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance. If you want to learn more about what these mean I wrote a Crash Course on DISC here that you can visit.
By understanding how the assessment works, you can feel more comfortable answering the assessment truthfully. You can see that the only wrong answers are the ones that don’t describe you.
So What Are The Best Answers?
Image courtesy of TTI Performance Ltd
If there are no wrong answers, what are the best ones? To put this in perspective, it would be like me asking you, “what is the best personality to have?” Because there are thousands of possible combinations of behavioral styles and only a few percent of the population sit in each of the different behavior profiles, seeking out one specific profile is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Meaning, the assessor has a variety of behaviors they are seeking for.
Again, this makes the case pretty clear for being yourself.
That being said, you may think, “Well, even if there is no wrong answer, there may be certain behavior characteristics that I’m being evaluated for.” Are you in sales? Then they may want a higher D, with someone who is strong-willed, forceful, and ambitious. Are you in a highly technical or precise field? Then they may want a high C, someone who is exacting, cautious, and systematic.
If you take these assessments honestly, they will find your true strengths. I won’t deny that there are some people out there that advise you to take these assessments from the job’s perspective. You then have to ask yourself, “Why would I want to take a job or position on a team where I’m at odds with my own natural strengths?”
Do You Really Want To Lie?
The truth is, employers have a number of tools to profile and match potentials to a position. When someone tries to answer the DISC assessment in a manipulative way, the consultants who read the report can easily pick up on it.
That is just a basic reason not to manipulate these assessments, but the true reason is much deeper. The person assessing you is doing you a favor. They are making an effort to ensure whoever takes on that role will be matched in a way that cooperates with their natural behavior style. They want the candidate to feel like they are a natural fit, that the tasks they will complete will be engaging, and most of all, that the stress will be minimal.
If the results of your assessment don’t show you have the behavior styles that thrive in the job environment they are evaluating you for, count your blessings. We’ve been studying the assessment reports of thousands of professionals from a range of companies. When we coach someone and see that their profile is at odds with the job type they are in, it shows. They are stressed, unhappy, and often looking for another job. You can read my story for a personal example. Do you really want to do that to yourself on purpose?
The Best Way to Take DISC Assessments
We administer these assessments daily and as such have found many helpful suggestions for taking these.
1. Give Yourself Time: Depending on the assessment they can take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. That is not a general recommendation, trying to rush through an assessment will hinder its accuracy.
2. Do It In One Sitting, Without Any Interruptions: The question types can easily get mixed up if you take breaks or have distractions.
3. Don’t Over-analyze, Go With Gut Instinct: Some of the questions don’t seem sensible, it is by design. The best way to answer these is with your gut.
What You Can Do Next
If you want to see what one of the reports looks like for these DISC Assessments, feel free to download one here. We also have an Assessment series we wrote that may give you a better understanding of the assessments as well. The 1st part starts here.
I took the DISC a couple of years ago for a job I had taken. I had taken it years ago and came out as an “I” working for a very high “D.” While this ordinarily might not be a bad thing, this guy was extremely fierce and aggressive while I tend to be on the more relational side. The business relationship didn’t last, and looking back, I wish I would have taken more time to consider the test and the results from it.
Thanks Bryan,
It’s sometimes scary how well those assessments can understand us. You aren’t alone Bryan. We see where there can be conflict in teams from these assessments all the time. Having the assessment is one thing, but really applying it for personal development and understanding of your team is where these work their magic. Your site is amazing and it looks like you are definitely living your passion. Keep up the good work Bryan, I’d be happy to have you guest post in the future.
its the first time i know about this test
Thanks Byran for explaining it in detail
I’ve never done a disc assessment but have used the Honey Mumford learning styles questionnaire. The same rules apply about going with gut instinct and not telling lies.
It is all too easy for people to apply for jobs that they are not suited to and I guess this is a good tool to sort that out.
Honey Mumford seems a little softer in that its simply about learning styles.
They are great tools
Thanks Marty,
Sounds like you understand the benefit of being honest and following your gut when it comes to behavior assessments.
From the outside looking in, it seems like a good idea to lie and make these assessments all about a good fit for a particular job, but you’re really only hurting yourself.
Hope to see you on the blog more often Marty!
DiSC is a good tool in assessing individual on how an employer will choose the best employee to have or it can also be use on how another employee will work with cooperation with another employee. It will help us maximize our strengths by knowing our weaknesses.
That’s true. Many of our clients come to us for that purpose especially.
Thanks for your comment.
The thing that worries me about tests like this is how they can overemphasize traits you may have but can *easily* overcome. My husband has applied for a job as an executive director. Sadly, the test kept saying he preferred to follow rather than lead. This is not really true. He wants to be the one in charge. He actually needs to be the one in charge due to his high level of experience and training. He can handle it intellectually and he can also handle it socially. I’ll admit, the test suggested he preferred to be accommodating and work with others when he could, but he has no problem pulling the trigger to fire someone or direct them to follow his lead when he has to do so. But with the personality test in his profile, I’m scared they will think he isn’t ‘leadership material,’ which is a load of BS.
As for myself, I have even more reason to be leery of tests like this. Whereas my husband is moderately outgoing (as the test reflects) I am extremely, extremely introverted. On a Myers Briggs type test, I tend to answer 100% introverted or maybe only 1 question as an extrovert would. No one wants to hire introverts. They all want you to be an outgoing ‘people person.’ I am not, and I’m never going to be that type of person. I can fake it for very short periods of time–ie, an interview. I recall one interview where I had the person eating out of the palm of my hand, but I knew I was acting. The job was wrong for me, but not due to my personality so much as other factors–I didn’t get to meet with my immediate boss before being hired and I had moral qualms about working for insurance companies. Nonetheless, I could have done the work. It annoys me that more and more companies are doing personality tests and pushing people like me aside. I’m highly educated and competent. Yes, I need a job where I work alone more often than not (preferably involved in research and writing projects–which is hard to find). Still, even when I fit the job, I feel like tests like this could weed me out just because they want someone more outgoing. Sorry, I know this isn’t my personal soap box, but having seen my husband go through this and knowing I could face it myself, I felt the need to offer some criticism of personality testing in the employment arena.
Hi Heather,
I’m so sorry about the experiences you’ve had. Thank you for sharing such a thoughtful comment. This really helps develop the conversation and allows for a deeper discussion, and I appreciate that.
I actually agree with a lot of what you are talking about. A DISC test alone isn’t a complete tool for evaluating a candidate. Basically it looks at how we respond to problems and challenges, influence others to our point of view, respond to pace of environment, and how we respond to rules and procedures set by others.
As you can see DISC doesn’t pertain to personality, but more on the behavior side. I can’t really speak about Myers Briggs, since I don’t know much about that tool.
The DISC tests we run also show a candidates natural vs adapted behavior. When you mentioned acting outgoing and personal, that’s what we refer to as an adapted behavior.
A responsible hiring manager should have a trained behavior analyst look over the report as well as conduct a one on one debrief before drawing any conclusions from the data. This is one way to determine if the results have some areas that will be easily overcome like you mentioned.
The other thing is DISC doesn’t look at a candidates values and motivations. In your husbands case, even if his DISC showed he tended toward the team player role, his values might show he was Individualistic and had excellent leadership motivations.
As for yourself, don’t be so hard on yourself. Over the years of running these tests, data has been collected to verify the accuracy of the assessment and the applications. There is a very large population that falls on the introverted side and many hiring managers actually seek out these types for their careful, patient, systematic, and consistent tendencies.
There are strengths and weaknesses for every style. Not one is immune. Like you said, finding a job that required you to behave outside of your natural style (by “acting”) would not fulfill you. You’d be stressed and stretched beyond acceptable levels.
I don’t think you should have to change who you are, even for an interview or assessment. I would emphasize the strengths that come from your style type. Being steady, neat, tactful, open-minded, dependable, and a hard worker.
Best of luck for your husband and yourself. Hopefully you find the right fits for your next jobs.
Let me know if you have any questions about the test or how to turn them to your advantage.
I know these tests can be upsetting to some. You might interpret the questions in a different way, be experiencing harder than normal experiences in your life at the moment, or a number of things.
My hope was to give you a glimpse from what the employer or analyst sees.
I’d love to hear more of your questions.
Bryce
hi this causes me angst i’m about t take the Disc test for a big job i’ve already worked my way through selection process and 3 interviews..
this is frightening i wish somebody posted online the whole test to get D I S or C
My advice is to not beat yourself up over it. It’s really a good thing. Trying to get one kind of score will just make your results look weird.
So, find a cozy room and take it when you are in your best spirits. Be yourself. You don’t want to have to be a different kind of person at work every day do you?
And keep in mind that DISC is only one of the factors a company should use in hiring. Anyone who has been trained on the tool will work with you to understand what the results mean and where there may be inconsistencies.
Best of luck,
Bryce