Get ready, this is a bit of a rant.

Nothing happened to set me off. There was no “precipitating event” this morning.  This is just a frustration of mine that has been building for some time. Ready? Here goes…

Why do we blame other people when we don’t do everything we can do to fix or change a bad situation?

Parents blame teachers and teachers blame parents for poor test scores. Managers blame employees and employees blame managers for poor business results. Parents blame teenagers and teenagers blame parents for misunderstandings.

I completely support the idea of holding people accountable for their words, actions, and responsibilities. I believe that people are responsible for both their actions and their failures to act.

I also believe that you cannot hold someone else accountable if you have not, first, done everything in your power to fix the situation.

Doing my part has nothing to do with you doing your part. It’s my responsibility to do everything in my power to make things better whether you choose to cooperate with me or not.

The moment that I make my contribution to making things better contingent on you doing your part, I abdicate my responsibility.

Yes, I understand that people get frustrated and give up when other people don’t eventually cooperate. I get that.

I’m not suggesting that we should keep pursuing relationships that have no hope of reciprocal effort or that we continue to work in environments that are toxic or dangerous (either emotionally or physically) beyond our ability to change them.

I am suggesting that we make sure we have done whatever we can do before we even begin to think about pointing our fingers at other people.

Here’s my personal responsibility pledge:

From this day forward, I pledge to always give my best and fullest effort to a business, organization, cause or relationship that I am involved in before I start blaming other people for its failure.

Will you join me today in taking the personal responsibility pledge?

Related posts:

1. Victim or Victor – You Decide

A few weeks ago, I read an interesting article titled On the Job, Nice Guys May Finish Last. The title immediately caught my attention, and I had to take a look.

In reading the article, I saw an immediate connection to my work and for other people interested in using the DISC model in their professional and personal lives.

The point made in this article is particularly significant for people with supportive tendencies (people who are people-oriented and reserved).

People with strong supportive traits are great at building relationships, easing tensions, helping others, and holding a team together. And, as Dr. Christine Riordan says in the article I mentioned above:

People with this natural personality trait may be less likely to face confrontation or other difficulties at work.

I’m not suggesting that having the supportive trait is a problem (it happens to be a strong secondary trait for me). I am suggesting that people with this trait commit themselves to learning the skills of assertive communication.

People with supportive traits often use passive communication strategies in an effort to ease tensions and reduce conflicts. While these strategies are sometimes useful and necessary, I recommend learning to use them intentionally when appropriate rather than as a default because they are more comfortable.

Consistently passive communication and conflict avoidance can create situations where conflicts go unresolved and continue to simmer under the surface until they explode and destroy a team or family. In addition, passive communication can make people, like the lamb pictured above, susceptible to “predators” in the workplace. Both scenarios can have  major negative impacts on your career.

Learning to apply assertive communication techniques can improve the odds of successfully confronting and resolving conflict situations at work by stopping the spread of destructive conflict and confrontation.

Related posts:

1. Communication Tips: Connecting With Reserved, People-Oriented People
2. DISC Model FAQ’s: Could I Have More Than One DISC Behavior Style?
3. DISC Model FAQ’s: Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?

A Question to Ask of Yourself:
How do I better control myself?

I often hear people ask questions about the DISC model that indicate a desire to use the model to somehow change others.

Rather than using the model to label, categorize, or stereotype people, I suggest a different approach: use the DISC model to find ways to connect with other people in better, more effective ways.

Towards that end, one question that I suggest you ask yourself is this:

How can I use the DISC model to better understand other people and change my behaviors so that I communicate more clearly?

My message is pretty simple: get over yourself.

Learn to adjust and modify your words and actions so that they are heard and understood more quickly and more clearly by other people.

This is what I strive to do every day. I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The more I work at it though, the better I get. And you can do it, too.

Do this, and you will significantly improve your effectiveness as a leader, team member, or parent.

Related posts:

1. DISC Model FAQ’s: Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?
2. DISC Model FAQ’s: Could I Have More Than One DISC Behavior Style?
3. DISC FAQ’s: Can I Change My Personality Style On Purpose?

… And What You Can Do About It

Have you ever told yourself that you wouldn’t do something? Maybe you said you wouldn’t eat too much at a party. Maybe you told yourself that you wouldn’t speak too soon at a meeting. Or maybe you just told yourself that you wouldn’t break the speed limit on the way home from work.

Whatever it was, you told yourself that you wouldn’t do something that you either normally do, wanted to do, or habitually do, and you eventually “gave-in” to the temptation.

Well, there’s a good reason for this behavior, and Dan Heath gives more details about it in this article over at Fast Company. I suggest that you check out the article for more details. For now, here’s the short version: self-control eventually runs out. In other words, you can only resist so long before you “run out” of self-control.

Your limit might be different from mine, and we all have a limit.

So, what does this observation have to do with this blog?

Since one of the recurring themes here is “get over yourself,” the concept of depleting self-control is vitally important to understand.

Whether you are trying to change your behavior, your team member’s behavior, or your child’s behavior, remember that everyone has a self-control limit, and when you exceed the limit you invite failure.

You invite failure to comply with rules, failure to cooperate, and failure to do things in new and different ways.

This is an observable and repeatable psychological phenomenon. Like so many of the things I write and speak on, I don’t suggest hiding behind the behavior. Rather, I suggest understanding the behavior and then making plans that recognized the reality of life instead of wishing that things were different.

So, what do we do with this observation?

Here are three suggestions to get you started with applying  this principle in your efforts to change your behaviors or to influence another person’s behaviors:

1. Get away from tempting situations as quickly as possible.
   Since we know that self-control will eventually run out, if at all possible, remove the temptation to do things the old way or to partake in some forbidden behavior.
2. Give people (or yourself) a break.
   If you ask someone to change their behavior in a particular situation, make some time for them to get away from it for awhile so that they can replenish their “supply” of self-control.
3. Make big changes in small steps.
   Smaller steps do many things to make change easier to accept. One benefit of smaller steps is the reduction of effort required to remember the new way of doing things. If the effort to remember the new way is small, the time to “self-control” exhaustion is longer. This longer temptation resistance time increases the odds that the new way of doing things becomes easy to remember before our self control runs out.

Photo by NomadicLass.

Related posts:

1. Being Too Nice Can Hurt You
2. A DISC Model Question You Should Ask of Yourself
3. DISC Model FAQ’s: Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?

Guy Answers the Question:
Can I Change My Personality Style on Purpose?

People often tell me that they believe that they have changed their personality style, and then they ask me if I think this is possible.

My general answer is this: It might be possible. I don’t think it is probable.

In short, I don’t think that your core, inner, basic personality style changes unless you experience some type of major psychological or brain trauma.

I do think that you can learn to behave differently in different situations. I think that you can learn to adapt, mold, and shape your behavioral style to increase your effectiveness in a broad range of situations.

However, changing your words and actions does not change your personality style.

Further, why would you want to change your personality style? Assuming that you fall in the range of normal human psychology, your personality style is just another expression of “normal.”

Wanting to change your personality style implies that there is something wrong with your natural one.

In the vast majority of people, there is nothing wrong with their personality style. So, why try to change it?

As we consider the question raised in the title of this post, we have to carefully distinguish between who we are and what we do.

Personality style relates to our perceptions, interpretations, priorities, and reactions to the world around us. Behavior style is often related to our personality style, and it is influenced by many other things. Personality style is part of who we are. Behavior style is merely what we do. They are definitely related. They are not exactly the same thing.

So, can you change your behaviors in response to the world around you? Absolutely you can!

Can you change your personality style? Not real likely.

Related posts:

1. DISC Model FAQ’s: Can Your Personality Style Change Over Time
2. DISC Model FAQ’s: Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?
3. A DISC Model Question You Should Ask of Yourself

Guy Answers the Question:
Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?

As I teach, train, and coach using the DISC model, people hear me say that I encourage them to change their behaviors to fit the situation and to better connect with other people.

Sometimes, people ask me if consciously changing behavior is phoney or fake. This concern raises another common question about the DISC model, and how I recommend people use it to connect and communicate more effectively.

In answering this question, I often refer to a Thomas Jefferson quote:

In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

As I see it, choosing a behavior, word, or tone that will improve your communication effectiveness is not a moral or ethical issue. It is just a matter of style.

We often change our behaviors for different environments. For example, most people recognize that appropriate behavior during a wedding ceremony is likely to be different from appropriate behavior at the celebration party after the ceremony. Different environments call for different behaviors.

As long as your intent is not to defraud, manipulate, or somehow deceive the other person, behaving in a way that might be uncomfortable or unnatural for you in the interest of connecting with them is not fake or phoney. Rather, I see it as working to create a better environment for the other person.

Related posts:

1. A DISC Model Question You Should Ask of Yourself
2. DISC Model FAQ’s: Could I Have More Than One DISC Behavior Style?
3. DISC FAQ’s: Can I Change My Personality Style On Purpose?

Guy Answers the Question:
Can Your Personality Style Change Over Time?

People often say that they think they had one personality style as a child and a different one as an adult. While I suppose that is theoretically possible, it is not very likely.

I do not claim to be a licensed mental health professional, psychologist, psychiatrist, or neurological system expert. I have spoken with thousands of people in various environments and done lots of reading on the topic. Based on everything I know today; I believe that our primary, basic personality style is determined by about six years old.

That simple statement then begs the question: Are you born with your personality style or is it developed over time. I’ll write more about this later, but the simple answer is: both.

And, before I go much further, let’s clarify a point: the DISC model actually estimates your behavioral style rather than your personality style. The distinction can be subtle, and it is still a note worthy distinction. Still most people use the words personality style and behavioral style almost interchangeably.  In conversation, I often switch back and forth between the phrases myself — not because I see them as the same but simply due to slipping into colloquial speech rather than strictly accurate clinical speech.

Back to the topic of this post: can your personality style change over time?

Barring a major physical or psychological trauma, I don’t think so — at least not very much.

We might find ourselves in different environments (or contexts) that call for us to behave in different ways. And, changing your behavior to fit a situation does not imply that your personality style changed. In fact, I would go further to say that I don’t think that most people see major changes in their behavioral style either.

This last statement calls for some explanation.

Often when I teach or speak on the DISC model, I don not have the opportunity to delve into the subtlety of the information learned from completing a full DISC assessment that produces graphs that show the blend and intensity of the four DISC style in both the person’s environmental, or adapted, style and their basic, or natural, style.

Here’s the quick distinction between environmental and basic styles.

For most people, their basic style represents the most consistent part of who they are. It usually represents how theythe think about, feel about, or otherwise interpret and process the world around them. It reflects the type of environment that would be the most comfortable for them.

On the other hand, their environmental style represents how they behave in response to their world. It may or may not be the same as their basic style. It’s usually not terribly different, but it can be for some people. The environmental style reflects what people have done to their behaviors to function, survive, and succeed in their environment.

Environmental style can change over time as people find themselves in different environments. Basic style tends to stay pretty much the same over a person’s lifetime.

I also believe that most people can learn new ways of behaving and interacting that make them begin to look as if they have changed their personality. For example, I have learned to tell stories and jokes to entertain and engage people while I am presenting, and I still prefer to be alone. I still have a reserved personality even though I have learned some outgoing behaviors.

In keeping with the theme of this blog, the big idea is this: don’t hide behind your personality or behavioral style, get over it.

With study and practice, all of us can learn to adjust our behaviors for greater connection, relationship, and influence with others.

Related posts:

1. DISC FAQ’s: Can I Change My Personality Style On Purpose?
2. DISC Model FAQ’s: Can I Have One DISC Style at Work and Another DISC Style at Home?
3. DISC Model FAQ’s: Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?

Guy Shares Two Questions to Help
You Control Your Anger

A question that often comes up in my conversations and training sessions regarding conflict resolution is this:

How do I control my anger?

Great question. Sadly, it’s often the wrong question.

Anger is not really a primary emotion. It does not come first. It may come quickly. It just doesn’t come first. Anger is generally the result of something else.

If you imagine at your emotional container like a bottle filled with a carbonated beverage and sealed with a stopper, you can develop a simple model for understanding what happens when you get angry so that you can attack the anger at it’s source rather than trying to control it after it happens.

So, we have our emotional container represented by a bottle filled with a carbonated beverage. Now, we shake it up, and we get an explosion of foam. The foam represents anger.

Have you ever had a sink full of foam when you were trying to wash your dishes? If you have, you realize just how difficult it is to get rid of the foam. Well, anger is the same way. Once it blows out of us, it is really difficult to reign in and clean-up.  It would be better to stop the foam (anger) before the explosion.

One tactic for controlling anger at its source is to recognize that by removing what came before the foam, we never have to deal with it at all. Since anger is a secondary emotion, we can dig past it to the primary emotion behind it and deal with that rather than trying to deal with the anger.

In many cases, the primary emotion triggered by an event in our lives will be one of two things:

1. Fear, or
2. Hurt/Pain (either physical or emotional)

If we can learn to identify which of these is at work in us when we start to feel “angry,” we can deal with the primary emotion in a way that can remove or reduce it. When we do that effectively, we get our anger under control by never letting it get ramped-up in the first place.

Several months ago, I read the results of a study that said a key predictor of domestic violence was the inability to clearly articulate emotions. The strategy I am proposing here aims at improving your skills in the area of expressing what is really inside rather than letting it build to the point of explosion. When we back-up the chain of emotional responses to the key, underlying, primary emotion, we can often express our fear or hurt more clearly so that it never escalates to full-blown anger.

How do you apply this approach?

When you feel anger welling up inside you, stop and ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I fear?, and
2. What is causing my pain?

If you can find an answer to these questions and then express the emotion in a healthy way, you just might avoid the need to clean-up the foam of your anger.

(I don’t mean to suggest that getting angry is always a bad thing. It’s just often a bad thing, if you want to preserve relationships. I’m also not suggesting that this is the only way to get your anger under control. It’s just one way to do it. If you have other suggestions, please leave them in the comments section below.)

Related posts:

1. Effective Communication Skills: You Don’t Know Until You Ask
2. Conflict Resolution Insights: Why Conflicts Escalate
3. Resolving Conflict Lesson: Watch Your Step

Guy Answers the Question:
Could I Have More Than One DISC Style?

One of the frequent questions that comes up in my training classes on the DISC model of human behavior is:

Can more than one DISC behavior style fit a person? or

Could I have more than one DISC behavior style?

In a word, the answer is: yes. In fact, emphatically yes!

The four quadrants of the DISC model do not define four neat and tidy “categories” of people. The four quadrants represent typical or general behaviors of people who share certain perspectives. Each quadrant does not, in and of itself, represent a “type” of person.

We Want to Understand, Not Stereotype or Label

The four DISC types simply provide an objective and descriptive way of looking at, understanding, and communicating about different behavior, communication, and leadership styles so that we can better understand ourselves and others.

Think Blends, Not Boxes

Only a small minority of people (about 5%) would agree that only one of the four DISC descriptors totally describes their viewpoint or perspective. Even this group of people will have some of the other traits. They just don’t have them to a strong degree.

As a general rule, most people have more of some of the D, I, S, or C traits and less of the others. When a trait is strong in a person, we call the trait a “high” trait for that person. This is simply a shorthand nomenclature for discussion purposes, not a label we can use to box people in to a neatly defined behavior pattern.

About 80% of people will have two traits that are “high” traits and two traits that are “low” traits. About 15% of people will have three traits that are “high” traits with the remaining trait being “low”. While DISC profile assessments will not produce a profile with four “high” traits (it’s not mathematically possible within the parameters of the assessment), it is possible to have roughly equal proportions of all four traits in what is known as a “level style blend.”

This blending of traits creates profile results that have 41 basic types. When you consider all of the various ranges of intensities of traits within the 41 basic types, you can get 19,680 basic style descriptors starting from the four original quadrants.

So, can you have more than one DISC type? Absolutely you can, and you probably do.

Related posts:

1. DISC Model FAQ’s: Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?
2. DISC Model FAQ’s: Can Four Styles Really Describe Everyone?
3. DISC Model FAQ’s: Can Your Personality Style Change Over Time

1. Tell them how they’re feeling or what they’re thinking.
2. Explain to them why they did what they did or said what they said.
3. Decide for them what they will want from a given situation.
4. Analyze them and their behaviors.
5. Help them to be more like you.

I could continue with the list, but I’m sure you see the point. Any time we do any of the above using the DISC model, we are using the model as a weapon against the other person rather than as a tool to understand them more completely.

I teach the DISC model. I use the DISC model. I like the understanding it gives me of people with other viewpoints and perspectives. And, I recognize that it only reveals general patterns of behavior that apply to populations of people rather than absolutes that apply to individuals.

The model and the terms used as descriptors in the model come from statistical averages of population behaviors and perspectives. Using it to define, label, or box-in another person violates one of the first things I learned in my college statistics class:

Never use a population statistic to describe an individual observation.

I encourage you to learn how to understand other people. I even encourage you to study the DISC model as a simple way to learn how to see the world from another person’s perspective. I strongly discourage anyone from using the model as a weapon to harm, judge, or manipulate others.

Related posts:

1. DISC Model FAQ’s: Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?
2. DISC Model FAQ’s: Could I Have More Than One DISC Behavior Style?
3. DISC Model FAQ’s: Can Four Styles Really Describe Everyone?