Why I use DISC with almost every client and student
If you have worked with me, whether as a coaching client, a couple, a hypnosis student, or a corporate team, you have almost certainly completed a DISC profile. I use it with nearly everyone, and people often ask me why. Here is the answer, along with a little of the history behind this remarkable tool.
Where DISC came from
The DISC model began in 1928, when the Harvard-trained psychologist William Moulton Marston published Emotions of Normal People. At a time when psychology was focused on illness, Marston wanted to understand how ordinary, healthy people behave. He described four styles of behavior that we now call Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness.
Marston was a fascinating man. He pioneered early lie-detection research and created Wonder Woman. But he never built a questionnaire. That came later. In 1956, the industrial psychologist Walter Clarke created the first DISC-based assessment to help businesses understand their people. In the 1970s, John Geier at the University of Minnesota developed the Personal Profile System, the forerunner of the DiSC® tools used today.
DISC belongs to a family of practical assessments shaped by the 20th century’s great need to understand people quickly. During the Second World War, Britain’s War Office Selection Boards used psychological testing to place people where their strengths would count. That spirit of fast, practical insight carried straight into post-war business, and it is exactly why DISC still works so well today.
What a DISC profile shows you
A DISC profile is like a mirror that talks back kindly. It doesn’t label you as good or bad. It describes how you tend to behave, and why. In a single report, you can see:
• Your natural strengths: what comes easily to you, and where you add the most value
• How you respond under pressure: the shift that happens when you’re stressed, and what triggers it
• What motivates you, and what you fear: the things that drive you and the things you work hard to avoid
• How you communicate best: and how others can communicate with you
• Your ideal environment: the conditions in which you do your best work
My clients are often amazed by how accurate it is. Just recently a student told me, “It always blows me away how accurate these things are.” It isn’t magic, and it isn’t me being clever. It’s a well-established instrument that gives consistent results, and it gives us a shared language for things you may have felt for years but never been able to put into words.
How I use DISC in my practice
I first worked with DISC in the UK as a consultant with Thomas International, helping well-known corporations that were struggling with team issues or wanted better engagement. Later I adapted it for families and couples. I was using DISC long before the internet existed, when every profile was scored by hand. You marked the words most and least like you, I tallied them on paper, and we plotted three graphs together. That way of working taught me to read the shape of a profile and the movement between the graphs. That movement is often where the real story lies: where someone is under strain, or adapting to a situation that doesn’t suit them. Computer scoring is faster now, but I still read every profile with that same eye.
Over the years I’ve evolved and developed my own DISC instrument and reporting method. It builds on the classic three graphs, adds a seven-band intensity scale so we can see how strongly each style shows up, and follows a structured eleven-part report. Every profile is still read personally by me, with the same eye I developed scoring by hand, and every report comes with a one-to-one conversation.
With coaching and hypnosis clients, DISC helps me engage with you quickly and on your own terms. If you need facts and logic, you get them. If you need warmth and reassurance, you get that. I may be one of very few practitioners in my field who builds personality profiling into hypnosis and coaching work, and I’ve found it makes a real difference to how fast we make progress.
With couples, DISC is one of my most valuable tools. So many arguments are not really about the issue. They’re about two different styles colliding. One partner wants to sort it out now, and the other needs time to think. One wants detail, and the other wants the big picture. Seeing both profiles side by side takes the blame out of it. Very different people can be wonderfully complementary once they understand each other.
With my hypnosis certification students, I profile each person’s learning style so I can keep everyone engaged and teach in the way they learn best.
With students and young adults, DISC can shed light on why certain tasks feel so hard to start, and point toward careers that fit their natural style.
With corporate teams, it improves communication, reduces friction, and helps leaders get the best from their people.
What DISC is, and what it isn’t
DISC is reliable. People get consistent results, and the publisher’s own research shows strong consistency over time. But it is important to use it properly:
• It describes behavior, not ability, intelligence or worth.
• It is not a diagnosis and not a box. Everyone uses all four styles to some degree.
• It should never be the only reason someone gets a job or doesn’t. Even the publisher advises against using it on its own for pre-employment screening.
Used well, as part of a thoughtful conversation, it is one of the most helpful tools I know for building self-awareness, easing conflict, and helping people grow.
Curious about your own profile?
If you’d like to understand yourself, your relationship, or your team a little better, I’d love to talk. Every DISC report from Big Horn Wellness comes with a personal debrief, because the real value isn’t the report itself. It’s what we discover together.
DiSC® is a registered trademark of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.