DiSC®& Extended DiSC® profiling tools

April 24, 2012 : General Team Building

Team Development Developing Teams

The concept known as the law of the instrument, “Maslow’s hammer” or a golden hammer, is an over-reliance on a familiar tool. As Abraham Maslow said in 1966 –

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail!” (Abraham H. Maslow 1966. The Psychology of Science. p.15).

Here at Maximillion we take this on board. The breadth of tools that our team of Lead Facilitators are accredited to use means that we have a range of solutions and insights to offer to the many and varied issues, opportunities and challenges that our clients bring to us.

In this blog Mike would like to introduce you to two such tools:

DiSC® is a personal assessment tool used to improve work productivity, teamwork, and communication. DiSC is non-judgemental and helps people discuss their behavioural differences. If you participate in a DiSC programme, you’ll be asked to complete a series of questions that produce a detailed report about your personality and behaviour.

DiSC profiles help you and your team:

  • Increase your self knowledge: how you respond to conflict, what motivates you, what causes you stress, and how you solve problems
  • Learn how to adapt your own style to get along better with others
  • Foster constructive and creative group interactions
  • Facilitate better teamwork and minimize team conflict
  • Develop stronger sales skills by identifying and responding to customer styles
  • Manage more effectively by understanding the dispositions and priorities of employees and team members

Extended DISC® System is designed to provide decision-makers with information about individuals; their behavioural style, strengths, development areas, skills, opinions, perceptions and expectations.

Extended DiSC measures emotions. Extended DISC measures the unconscious behaviour and compares it with the conscious adjusted behavioural style, allowing the measurement of emotions. It goes way beyond regular DiSC in this regard. We can then look at the emotions being communicated by the respondent at the time of completion of the questionnaire, such as stress levels, uncertainty of his/her role, insecurity, frustration, pressure to change etc. It also enables the report to define the influence of the present environment on the respondent’s motivation as far as certain needs are concerned. This is vital information both for the individual and the organization.

More behavioural styles than in any other instrument

Extended DiSC assumes that an individual has reaction modes for all behaviour styles, of which he or she prefers some more than others. Recognizing some 160 different styles, Extended DiSC allows an individual to be more flexible and dynamic (adapting) in his or her behaviour. Other DiSC based programs assume an individual is either a feeling or thinking type, recognizing only four styles. Even Myers-Briggs, one of the best known assessment systems around, recognizes only 16 different styles.


Mike Tierney
is one of Maximillion’s Lead Facilitators and accredited to use DiSC and Extended DiSC in our range of facilitated team development programmes. For his profile, please go here

If you would like to know more about DiSC, or any of the many other tools in our toolbag, or for more information on other related areas of interest in organisation development, facilitated team experiences and learning & development in Edinburgh, Scotland and across the UK please contact Sandy Smith 0345 901 1422 and sandy@maximillion.co.uk. Alternatively, send us an enquiry.

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