DiSC TEST AND WHO-DO
DiSC TEST AND WHO-DO
The DiSC Test measures personality and identifies your Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness. WHO-DO measures your core nature of work: Mover, Shaker, Prover and Maker. The two complement each other very well!
DiSC TEST and WHO-DO podcast:
More information about DiSC Test and WHO-DO
DiSC Test explained: https://www.onlinediscprofile.com/what-is-disc/
WHO-DO Assessment: https://thepeoplecatalysts.com/who-do-assessment-welcome/
Podcast Transcript
Karla Nelson: And welcome to the People Catalyst Podcast Allen Fahden.
Allen Fahden: Karla Nelson. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.
Karla Nelson: Yay. You got them all covered there.
Allen Fahden: Got it all covered yes.
Karla Nelson: No matter what time of the day it is.
Allen Fahden: Yeah, when people are listening. Yeah.
Karla Nelson: There you go.
Allen Fahden: And a happy next week too.
Karla Nelson: Yeah. Here we go. Exactly, because you never know obviously. It’s funny, sometimes the listeners, we’ll get a new listener and then they’re just downloading all of the podcasts. They’ll go back like two years, and so it could be two years from now.
Allen Fahden: Well that’ll be eight months of their life they’ll never get back. No, it’s better than that.
Karla Nelson: Yeah.
Allen Fahden: It’s transitional, it’s revolutionary. Okay.
Karla Nelson: Here we go. Well, and today’s podcast is really super cool. We’ve been talking about this, my goodness, you’ve been probably training on this for 20 plus years, Allen. And we have a lot of people that replied, and even with our new beta tests for the assessment that you can go to thepeoplecatalysts.com and take advantage of that now that we’re getting the validation study done on the new assessment, is that they bring up DiSC test consistently, right?
Allen Fahden: Yes.
Karla Nelson: Because it’s a very well known assessment. And what we’re going to talk about today is the difference between the personality assessment, which is there’s tons of them, there’s Myers Briggs, there’s DiSC test. And we’ve talked about doing some podcasts on these so people can understand the differences. But they are truly a personality assessment, where the WHO-DO™ method and our assessment is based off of work. It’s your core nature of work. And we’re going to talk about personality versus work in the podcast so that people can understand. You can add to it, I mean if you utilize a personality assessment, you also, because the object of the exercise is to get work done. So understanding personality and your core nature of work, and then also how you can use them in conjunction with each other. So we’re going to go through a couple examples of that.
And yeah, and I love this, Allen, you brought up this quote from, what was the gentleman’s name? Edward-
Allen Fahden: Edward Rickenbacker.
Karla Nelson: Yeah, great quote. He has a six word formula for success. “Think things through, then follow through.”
Allen Fahden: And that’s all you have to do. And then you’re going to be successful.
Karla Nelson: Yeah there we go, it’s just that easy, right?
Allen Fahden: Yeah. It’s just, the only problem is that no one seems to be able to do that. When we think things through, we argue. “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” “Oh, that won’t work.” “Well, it’s a good idea.” “Well, we’ve tried that before.” “How about another idea?” “No, that’s ridiculous.”
Karla Nelson: Yeah. And then the other side of that is, “It’s not my idea, so …”
Allen Fahden: Yeah. “Forget it, I’m not supporting that.” And then the other thing is, even once you agree on an idea, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it done. And that’s just legendary in about every company in the world. And that is we miscast people, we put people in the wrong order, we put them in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so what happens? The project just dies. Or it doesn’t get delivered on time, or the work is substandard. So you can’t solve this with a personality profile. And so there is some space there that needed to be invented, and that is how do you get people doing the right work, doing the right thing at the right time in the workplace?
Ideation and Implementation
Karla Nelson: Yeah. And I think that bringing up those two steps, right, it sounds so easy. Think things through, and then follow through. That almost sounds like ideation implementation, right?
Allen Fahden: Yeah.
Karla Nelson: But when you actually break that down, the two steps to our method. Wow, duh-dah. And the thing is, is that without a process, that’s why when you’re thinking things through, you’re in your head, right? And then different people argue for different reasons. Everybody’s been in this meeting before, right? Where it’s just consistent, as you would say, it’s like shooting trap. Idea, bang. Idea, bang. Idea, bang. And it’s tiring. Right?
Allen Fahden: Totally yeah.
Karla Nelson: And then it’s completely different when you get to the implementation, right? Which is, now we have to follow through, but if you don’t have the right people at the right place and doing the right thing, then you’re just stepping all over each other. And most of the core natures of work, they cancel each other out. So if there’s not a process to both thinking things through and then following through, what ends up happening is is just chaos.
Allen Fahden: Absolutely. And there are so many ways, just as in the beginning stage when you’re thinking things through, there’s so many ways to kill an idea. There are also so many ways to kill an idea when you’re in the implementation phase. For example, if you give it to a shaker, an idea person to do it, they’ll say, “Well, I started trying to do this and it got really boring. And so I had a better idea. So I did the job, but I actually did it on a different idea.” “Oh, thank you very much. We just lost two weeks.”
Karla Nelson: Yeah, exactly. And so let’s go through just a couple of these, because obviously we can’t go through all the permutations. Let’s go through like the sauciest ones.
Allen Fahden: Saucy.
DiSC Test Explained
Karla Nelson: The ones you’re just like, “Whoa, okay. I’ve seen that, I’ve been there and it’s happened before.” So let’s talk about, so DiSC, D-I-S-C. So D stands for if you’re a driver, I is inspiration. It really just means a people person. An S is that you-
Allen Fahden: Supporter.
Karla Nelson: … like stability, right? It’s stable. And then the C is compliant. So you like to follow the rules.
Allen Fahden: Yep.
Karla Nelson: And so let’s talk a little bit about what a high D shaker would do. So a high D driver, that’s an idea person, with a high D prover.
Allen Fahden: Yeah. So one of the things that it’s important to know is that shakers and provers are what we call a red light relationship, they’re natural adversaries. They tend to cancel each other out. The shaker says, “I got an idea,” and then they prover can immediately see around corners and tell you what’s going to go wrong. And this never goes well. Now, couple that with, add to the mixture a new ingredient, which is they’re both high Ds, they’re both dominant people. Then you have a meeting just completely hijack with these two people arguing, one coming up with ideas and defending their ideas, and the other one telling them what’s going to go wrong and defending their concerns with the idea. And it derails the meeting and it’s nuclear. It’s like a scorched earth kind of a meeting. And most of the people are just trying to calm everybody down or whatever.
Karla Nelson: Yeah, and so understanding-
Allen Fahden: Those are fun.
Karla Nelson: Yeah, exactly. And shaker prover, that mixture is already, like you said, a red light relationship. But as soon as you throw the high D and the driving aspect of it, so now your personality is going to just press with your core nature of work. And it’s going to be different both, in ideation and implementation. But at the same time, you put those two people together, they’re just naturally wired to be not only adversaries because of their personality, it’s going to just press it even further. So let’s talk about, I think this is kind of interesting, different take on it that we can analyze, which is a high D shaker, so you still have the driver that’s a shaker. But then a high S prover. Now remember, S, they like things stable. Right? They don’t want-
Allen Fahden: Stable. And also a people person who’s supportive.
Karla Nelson: Yeah.
Allen Fahden: So they care about somebody else’s feelings. So this is a great set up too.
Karla Nelson: So we’ve got a high D who doesn’t care that’s running people over, shakers that likes to come up with their own ideas and have their own ideas supported. Although you have a high S, that’s a prover that naturally in their core nature of work, likes to poke all the holes and things and see around corners.
Allen Fahden: Yeah.
Karla Nelson: But is a high S and likes things stable and is a supportive individual.
Allen Fahden: Yeah. And it’s a big, big difference. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. You’re sitting in the first meeting we talked about, and you just like, “Can we get these people to be quiet?” And in the second meeting, one of the people, the high S prover, is being quiet. Why? Because that person can think of all kinds of stuff that can go wrong but doesn’t want to say it because it might be embarrassing to the person who has the idea, or they might be friends outside of work and they don’t want to pick on them. Or they just don’t even want to start an argument, they want everybody to get along. So now you’re dealing with the opposite of trying to get somebody to be quiet, is you want to bring them out. Because what’s going to happen is if you have a high S prover in a meeting, and there’s an idea just sailing through easily, that’s when you want to ask them, “Okay, why don’t we run the process?” The process gets-
Karla Nelson: So they can speak up and have freedom to speak up.
Allen Fahden: Yeah. But they’ve got to be safe to speak up. And that’s why when it comes time to have people challenge the idea, because we need those challenges so that we can solve them and make it a better idea, then the shakers have already agreed to leave the room at that time. They don’t want to listen to somebody critiquing their idea. So instead what we do, we have the shakers leave the room, the high S prover we say, “Okay, blow every hole you can in this idea. Nobody’s here who’s feelings can get hurt. Let’s go, bring it. Come on, bring it on all out. And you’ll be doing everybody a favor because we can solve these challenges.”
Karla Nelson: Yeah. And I think in the ideation stage you bring up a great point. Sometimes we can keep everyone in the room if they understand the process, but if they don’t, there is a little nugget of brilliance there, which is just have them leave the room. So that when the idea is challenged, the individual, especially if you look across personality, they could feel attacked because you’re poking all the holes in their idea. Right? And so even though the provers love that they’d poke a hole. So if you have a D prover versus an S prover, you have to create that space and this is the brilliance of overlaying the core nature of work and the process with then the personality of the individual that you’re dealing with. And I think that’s where you can get some real, as you would say, the juice, right?
Allen Fahden: Absolutely.
Karla Nelson: Because the object of the exercise is still always going to get something done in business. Right? It’s not about the potluck on Friday or seeing kumbaya or that we love each other. Like I can work with anyone that I don’t even like, and they wouldn’t even know the difference because well, as a mover, we don’t have a, I always say, “Dog in the fight.” We look at people and go, “Okay, the object of the exercise is to get something done.” Of course, talking to the D-I-I-D person, we’ll get into a little bit of a story afterwards. But I think the personal versus work and how you said Allen, opposites attract. But there is a difference between the personal, like you were saying, the high S prover with the high D shaker, because they might have a friendship outside of work. And how we behave differently in our personal life, especially when there’s something at stake.
And I think that is kind of an interesting overlay that personalities bring to a table that is, okay, one is personal life, one is work life.
Allen Fahden: Right. And we’ve actually worked with the team where there was that high D shaker and that high D prover. And so they were adversaries in meetings, but they were like best friends outside of work. And it’s like what? How can this be? And it turns out they would go to movies together and then they’d go have a cup of coffee afterwards and say, “Okay, what was your take on that?” And they’d always be interested in the other person’s point of view.
Karla Nelson: Because it was such a different perspective.
Allen Fahden: Because it was such a different perspective and they learned from each other. And they got to be great friends in this ritual of going to these movies which is wonderful. And so that’s an example of a people who are natural, let’s say naturally adversarial, or could be adversarial in the workplace. Once you get them out of the thing where they’re actually doing something or need to do something that’s important, or where it’s at stake or it’s work, then the whole game changes. And so that is great.
Now what happens is that oftentimes, let’s say a shaker, that’s an idea person, will talk to the maker and say, “Wow, you’re just the person I wanted to be. I could never do anything. You’re so organized and you’re so patient. I just love that about you.” And then the other person says, “And you’re so creative and I love that about you.” And so they get together and everything’s wonderful until they start living in the same place. And then the business of the relationship, things like cleaning the house, paying the bills. Decisions they make all of a sudden become a huge problem.
And I’ll give you a great example. I met a shaker and I always forget where about 20% of the dishes went. So I would unload the dish washer, and I’d put the 80% where it belongs, it’s clear, plates go with plates, that’s pretty easy. But you get to something like an orange juice squeezer. And so I’d put it next to the salt because salt began with S, and squeezer began with S. And then I’d immediately forget where I put it. So I was no longer allowed to touch the clean dishes, to unload the dishwasher because it was a disaster. And I’d put it in a different place every time, and I called out, “There’s a good idea.”
Karla Nelson: Yeah. And so as you apply it to work, the nature of the relationship changes, right? And then you overlay what we’re talking about here, which is DiSC, a personality profile. And an interesting thing when I learned about DiSC, and of course I’ve done Myers Briggs and I was trying for all of them. There’s an assessment that I likely have either studied it, and I’ve definitely taken it. And what I found interesting, and this is probably, I don’t know, a good 20 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, when I took DiSC, and there’s … So for every assessment there’s also a different lens that you can go deeper. So the DiSC profile I took showed the internal, so how you are internally with your team. And then externally, how does everybody else outside of that see you?
And so one of the things I learned is I was an ID. Like out of 199 on both of them. But what I learned was internally I was a D, so with my team I was like, man, I didn’t even realize I could leave dead bodies behind me. And it was simply because I just wanted to get things done and I wanted them done right for the customer’s because those were the people that were paying for everyone’s salary, right?
Allen Fahden: By internally you mean inside the team and inside the company?
Karla Nelson: Inside the team.
Allen Fahden: As opposed to outside versus with the customer. Right?
Karla Nelson: Yes. Exactly. So the customer would walk through the door and I would instantly be, or I’d be on the phone, a high I, which is very engaging and very people orientated. And what was happening, and this is not a core nature of work because I was a mover in both instances. Right?
Allen Fahden: Right.
Karla Nelson: I was still a mover internally and externally. The difference was is my personality then, the team would go, “Wow, you like our customers better than you like us.” It was like, “You’re a high I and you’re engaging with all the customers, and then all of a sudden you’re expecting us to do all of this work.” Well think about that from a personality. Okay. And honestly, I was like, “Dude, those guys pay your salary. That’s why I’m doing that. That’s why it’s so important that we do this and we do it right.” But think about the … And I had a lot of Ss and a lot of other Is that worked for me at the time. But me not understanding, right, even at the time I actually didn’t know I was a mover, but overlaying that within the personality, because I was a mover both internally and externally. The difference was is, who was I working with and what is their personality? Because the object of the exercise again, once you take care of that customer because they were the ones that were paying the bills.
Allen Fahden: Yeah. Yeah.
Karla Nelson: So I think that’s really interesting is both in ideation and implementation, and that goes back to Edward Rickenbacker’s quote, the formula of success is think things through and then follow through, is really two help people rearrange the work. So have the work fit the people. And then understand on top of that that not only are people different when we’re doing work, but then their personalities can also overlay a different layer…
Allen Fahden: Yes.
Karla Nelson: …that can give you more insight.
Personality Tests and Role Management
Allen Fahden: And I think this is really important because generally people use personality profiles to solve specific problems like these two people aren’t getting along, this person is always hijacking our meetings. And they tend to be communication problems. And they’re very valuable for communication problems. But for the last 50 years we’ve done personality. And that’s it. So we solved the communication problems, but we still have the same underlying causes. And the underlying causes is, “I’m miscast. I’m doing the wrong work. You’re asking me for the wrong things. You’re dooming me to 10 hours of work that somebody else could do and 30 minutes because it’s their core nature and it’s not mine. It’s my dragged down awful work.”
So the point I want to make here is that if only we discovered work, doing the right work, in other words your core nature of work, and we fixed that one first and you still have an opportunity, it’s never too late. It’s like if you’re going to do one, whether it’s personality or the core nature of work, if you do the coordinator of work first about, oh, 70 or 80% of the personality problems will go away. That doesn’t mean that personality profiles aren’t important, it’s just that you’ll have to try to do a lot less work with them.
Karla Nelson: Well, and the object of the exercise is to get something done. So you can work with all four core natures of work and not like a specific individual, but make it a safe place to do the part of the work that they do well, and lead at the time that they are looked upon to lead. Because a mover shaker prover maker leads at different times, but you have to make that safe space so that … It’s not about critiquing who somebody is. It creates a challenge, and as you were saying earlier, you can have the others leave the room. So now it’s not a critique, it’s, “Let me do the part of the work that I’m good at.” And now you’re showing up in your brilliance versus regressing because, “Oh, am I going to hurt somebody’s feelings?” Or, “When can I say that?” Or, “Am I going to be valued for the part of the work that I do well?”
Allen Fahden: Yeah. And there’s another piece of liking somebody. You might think they’re fun or witty or whatever, but have you ever worked with a person where you like them, maybe have nothing in common, but they always give you what you need on time in a high quality. And they are just the wind beneath your wings, they support you with the stuff you need. And there are a lot of people that I just adore because they do that. And I don’t care if they’re interested in movies or not.
Karla Nelson: Exactly. Because when the object of the exercise is to get something done, it’s really critical to understand when that person needs, and what that person does really, really well. And again, personality profiles are fantastic and can be utilized with even deeper insight about that. However, in business, the object of the exercise is to get something done, not to sing kumbaya. It’s not the potluck on Friday. And I don’t know how many businesses ever ended up getting something back from the foosball table or the, what is it, the air hockey table in the-
Allen Fahden: The ping pong table.
Karla Nelson: I mean it’s great, we want to get along. We want to appreciate people and their personalities, and be respectful for that. But at the end of the day, the object of the exercise is to get something done. So understanding the core nature of work and what part of the work that you do and lead at what time, both in ideation and implementation. Or as Edward Rickenbacker so beautifully said, the six word formula for success, think things through, then follow through. Anything else you’d like to add?
Allen Fahden: Yeah. Just one little thing. And that is that that only when you do this, and it’s sort of like a relay team, you’re handing off the work from one great core nature to another that should be doing the work, and you get the people doing the right work at the right time because the project dictates that at the start you want natural starters, and at finish you want natural finishers in. Natural starters are movers and shakers, natural finishers are provers or makers. You’re not only, that’s a long sentence. You not only get the work done, you get it done well. In fact, many times you get it done beautifully because what you’re doing all the way through from the beginning of thinking it through all the way to the end of following through, is you are executing an idea.
And along the way, usually the idea gets worse, it gets dumbed down or compromises made. But when you work core nature to core nature, the whole purpose of it is to improve the idea as you go along. And so great ideas don’t get killed, they actually good debugged.
Karla Nelson: Yeah. Debugged and get better. And you get a hundred percent buy in from the team instead of sitting in our neutral corners or adversarial corners, whichever one you might happen to habit. Because we’re going to, based off personality, respond different. And I think that’s a great point, Allen, that you bring up is not only do you not kill ideas, but they just get better and better and better. And if you’d like to find out what your core nature of work is, we are doing our beta test right now for the Who Do assessments. So you can go to thepeoplecatalysts, and that is plural because we need you all, but we need you at different times .com. So thepeoplecatalysts.com, and when you take the assessment, as a thank you, we will give you the assessment after it is validated. And then also there’s about an hour of training that we put together on the thank you page after you take the assessment. So with that, thank you so much Allen. DiSC meets the Who Do.
Allen Fahden: Thank you Karla. The Who Do.
Karla Nelson: You got to have a who to go to. All right. Until next time. Thank you, sir.
Allen Fahden: Thank you.