You wouldn’t believe the lies I have heard told by others who believe they are telling the truth when teaching DISC. Because the information was initially misrepresented to them, they continue to fabricate, confabulate, and reenforce things that are NOT true.  

I’ve taught close to 100,000 people during my over 50 years of professional training.  If you want to count my half hour to multi-hour professional speeches, add another couple 100,000 to that number.  I have taught over a dozen different professional topics as well as entire university courses on management topics.  Teaching about DISC behaviors and Motivators is one of those area, and the topic of this article.  

What kind of lies or myths am I talking about?  

One of those myths is: DISC measures someone’s personality.

Truth: DISC measures someone’s behaviors.  Our personalities are much more complicated than just our DISC behaviors.  Someone who tells you DISC measures personality is saying that either becausethey just sell DISC assessments and nothing else, or because they don’t even truly understand what DISC is and is not.

Another mythis when trainers say your DISC behavior style does not change over time.  

Truth: People can change their DISC style and in many cases, it does change over time.  If people could not change their behavior, there would be no need for clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social works, coaches, or any professional who helps people make behavioral changes. 

A thirdmythis the need tofocus only on the D, I, S, or C style(s) above the DISC graph midline.  

Truth: Look at all 4 DISC graph columns when understanding behavior.  Just looking above the midline is like trying to do a task with one hand tied behind your back.  Understanding someone’s style is difficult enough.  Why try understanding their behavior by using less information than you have available.  Use all four main DISC factors to better understand someone’s behavior. They all give very useful information.

Why Mention The Above?

If you have a heart problem, do you go to someone with hardly any training on treating hearts?  Of course not!

If you have a tooth ache, do you go to someone who isn’t a professional dentist?  I hope not!

If you want to sell or buy a home, do you go to someone who is a part-time Realtor, or someone with years of experience buying and selling 100s of homes.

So why learn about something as important as to how to 1) understand and work with others, or 2) hiring the right person, or 3) adding someone to your team, or 4) most effectively coaching others, from someone who uses or teaches DISC part-time rather than a professional who uses DISC professionally each and every day.

What Are The Benefits To You of Learning the Truth About DISC

Many people take the short cut of learning about DISC in a 2 to 4 hour program from someone who teaches DISC as a side line.  Why?  Usually because it’s less expensive.  My comment to that?  How much is it costing you because of the mistakes you make because you are inappropriate trained in how to use DISC?  It is probably costing you $1,000s to $10,000s.  At the least, it is probably leading to you feeling frustrated, angry, and you losing valuable time dealing with the mistakes you make because you don’t know the truth about DISC.

In this and the next article we look at twelve benefits of attending a DISC certification from a DISC professional.  Inclusion of the below benefits is really the minimum of the benefits you should be receiving from any good DISC certification.  

Benefit #1: Learn the TRUTH about what DISC is and what it is NOT

Some people will tell you DISC measures personality.  I mentioned that in Part 1 of this article.  They will tell you DISC is all you need to know when working with people.  That is totally CRAZY!   DISC is a great beginning, but NOT the end all.  A good certification will teach you how to use DISC and also what it’s not good at doing.  For example, DISC (and there are dozens of DISCs available, some of which are not very accurate, so choose wisely) can be used to understand someone’s behaviors and communication styles, among other things.  No DISC is appropriate for use in clinical therapy.  

Benefit #2: Get a deeper understanding of the D, I, S, and C

A good certification will teach you how to 1) identify behavioral patterns, 2) interpret, understand, and decrease stress, 3) avoid common misuses that damage trust, 4) the benefit of DISC blending, and many deeper uses of the DISC science.   For example, you’ll learn the impact and how to use the blending of the four DISC primary behaviors.  When using the TTI DISC (the one we use), only 7% of the popular is a true dominate DISC (with one dimension about the graph midline and the other three DISC dimensions below the DISC midline).  Therefore 93% of the population is a blending of the four basic styles.  In a good certification you will understand what blending is and how to effectively use it.   

Benefit #3: Share techniques and build confidence in how to appropriately use DISC

A good certification will share techniques to better understand and better use that understanding when coaching, hiring, management, building a team, and other purposes.  You will learn more, have experiential learning in the certification, and use other techniques to help you be more competent and fell more comfortable using the DISC concepts.  The certification should be much more than just a “talking head.”  At the least, you should have to do exercises where you learn and get feedback on your actions in the exercises.

Benefit #4: Reduce risk

Many people use DISC for hiring.  Yet, they are not trained on how to use the reports when hiring.  Many DISC assessments are not even compliant with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) law and should NOT be used to assist in hiring decisions.  There are many other legal issues you need to learn about that a good certification program will train you on mastering.   For example, who owns the reports and how are reports secured/protected by the provider?  

Benefit #5: Work with people who are resistant to taking a DISC assessment

A good certification program will give you techniques to reduce resistance, objections, and skepticism about taking and then using a DISC report.  For example, we teach how to do a face validity check and how to correct any inaccuracies in the report.  These and other techniques help in reducing resistance to taking the assessment.

Benefit #6: Use DISC for better and higher quality team functioning

Would you like to know what behaviors your team is missing or have in over abundance?   Would you like to know your team’s culture or the dominant values and the effect the culture and those values are having on your team’s success?  How about learning how the team can improve on its shortcomings?  A good certification program will show you how to handle all these and more, as well as how to use DISC with teams in addition to individuals.   The DISC team report we use and focus on in our certification program is incredibly versatile.  There are dozens of aspects of the team for which the report gives insights.  

Benefit #7: Enhances leadership quality

Being a leader is hard work.  You need all the accurate and useful tools you can obtain.  Correctly understanding everyone’s behaviors, including the leaders, is crucial for any leader to be effective.  Understanding everyone’s true potential for accomplishing assigned tasks, is immeasurable.  What happened the last time you made a mistake on assigning someone to do a task they did have the appropriate behavior set to perform?  How painful for you and them was it when they didn’t succeed?

 Accurately understanding DISC will prepare you to minimize behavioral assignment mistakes.  Because of the assessment our certification attendees receive, they actually have more tools than just the advanced and accurate DISC that we use.  Depending on the certification people enroll in (DISC & Motivators OR Emotional Intelligence Certification), they will also have tools to better understand what motivates someone’s behavior, people’s level of emotional intelligence, and how to understand and use 25 leader competencies.

Benefit #8: Helps create a shared organizational language & understanding of DISC

A good certification program shows people how to and motivates staff to have a common language.  This enhances communication within and across departments and speeds up communication, actions, and organizational success.  This allows for quicker scalability of organizational activities, because people also more quickly understand each other.  For example, there is better clarity and understanding of what to expect.  There are common behaviors associated with people who are dominant Ds, Is, Ss, and Cs.  You know what to expect & what not to expect from each of them. Things happen more quickly and in a more predictable fashion. 

Benefit #9: More effective hiring and onboarding of new or reassigned people

How much more effective would an organization be, if new staff and their supervisor worked effectively together from day one of that new staff’s experience in the organization?   How much more productive would an organization be if it could do within organizational transfers that truly aligned position needs with the realigned staff behavior preferences and skills?  The answer to both: significant!  A good certification program shows people how to do exactly this.  In fact, our certification actually shows you how to use one of our tools (Comparison / Onboarding Report) to do both of the above.    

Benefit #10: Better monetization and professionalism 

Better understanding of DISC leads to better monetization by the person competent in DISC and a perception by others that this person also has significant professionalism.   For example, our certification shows you how to use the “Time Wasters” section of the report to more quickly obtain new coaching clients and for leaders to improve staff time management.  Other things we do in our certification help you better communicate with staff, know the value someone brings to the team or organization immediately, and how to motivate people without using money.  All these quickly help you monetize our certification and enhance people’s perception of your professionalism.  Additionally, we show you how to use DISC to better hire, which is another way to both monetize DISC certification and suggest your greater professionalism.  These are just a few of the many ways our certification, and any quality certification, will help you monetize and quickly pay for the cost of the certification. 

Benefit #11: Deeper personal insights for self-development & personal improvement

What are your goals for self-improvement?  Is this part of your personal performance evaluation or your employer’s expectations?  Would you like to better understand your own strengths and limitation?   How about better communicating with people at work, home, or other environments?  Or how about decreasing your stress at work or home?  How beneficial would doing all these things be for you?  A good certification program will help you meet these personal goals and more.  Our certification surely does.

Benefit #12: Helps increase perception of and actual professionalism 

You’re a leader, manager, coach, mentor …  You’re at a meeting with others. People start asking you questions about people in their lives.  They share a few behavioral traits and ask your opinion on what they should do next.  I’d say you have created a great deal of respect for yourself as someone of knowledge; potentially, even wisdom.  That’s what will happen to you as you become a known expert in the DISC language and how to use it.  Add knowledge and use of motivators, emotional intelligence, or leader competency concepts, and your stature will skyrocket.  This is the type of reaction many of our certification clients receive soon after they complete our certification.  They know DISC!  They feel confident in their use of the concepts they learned and the reports they get from us.  A good certification program will do exactly that as people DO have more knowledge, DO feel comfortable using the concepts and techniques they learned, and DO positively impact the lives of others in their world.  

Whether you are a leader, a coach, someone who hires staff, a team leader, a member of a team, or focus on improving yourself, a good certification program should help you meet your goals and needs.  Search out a quality certification program.  We would be honored, if you would consider us in your search and even more honored if you would join us and the approximately 1000 others who are part of our certification community.

Let’s face it: this market demands more with less.

And while it’s tempting to think that hiring someone new will solve your productivity problem, most of the time, it won’t. The smartest leaders I work with aren’t expanding headcount—they’re maximizing the people they already have.

How? With behavioral insights and motivational alignment.

Productivity Doesn’t Come from Pressure—It Comes from Positioning

When I walk into a company, I often hear things like:

• “We’re just not getting enough done.”
• “Everyone’s busy, but we’re still behind.”
• “I feel like I’m managing personalities, not performance.”

That’s usually a sign that the team is misaligned—not unmotivated.

Using the Abelson DISC report, we help you understand how each person naturally communicates, makes decisions, handles pressure, and leads or supports. Then we map each person on the Abelson Behaviors Team Wheel so you can see strengths, gaps, and potential people conflict at a glance.

But here’s where most people stop short: they forget to ask why their team members show up every day.

That’s where Motivators come in.

DISC Tells You How They Work. Motivators Tell You Why.

You can’t get consistent performance if someone’s behavior fits the role but their motivation doesn’t.

Let’s say you’ve got a high S/C on your team—steady, methodical, great with details. Perfect for process work, right?

But if that same person scores low in the Utilitarian motivator—meaning they don’t care much about efficiency or ROI—you’re going to struggle if the job is framed around outcomes and speed.

You want to know:

• Are they driven by results or relationships?
• Do they light up when they get to learn and grow—or when they get to serve others?
• Are they wired for independence, collaboration, impact, or recognition?

When you align both behaviors and motivations, you unlock a level of energy, efficiency, and clarity that changes everything. Tasks get done faster. Miscommunication drops. Friction disappears. People stop working harder and start working smarter, together.

Motivation = Efficiency Multiplier

Here’s what we do with high-performing teams:

1. We plot all team members on the Abelson DISC behaviors Wheel and use that Wheel to better understand communication, decision-making, natural strengths, and many other behaviors.
2. We then plot them on the Abelson Motivators Wheel to reveal what fuels or drains each team member.
3. We then overlay the insight from the Behaviors and Motivators Abelson Wheels to adjust roles, responsibilities, communication styles, and rewards.

Now you’re not just assigning tasks—you’re aligning people with purpose.

Ready to Optimize What You Already Have?

Before you post that next job ad, ask yourself: Am I fully utilizing the people I already pay?

Because in this market, efficiency wins. And the most effective teams are the ones where people are in the right roles, doing the right work, for the right reasons.

Let’s make sure your team is aligned to perform—not just busy.

📍 Learn how at www.theabelsongroup.com/teams we use DISC & Motivators via The Abelson Report to help companies thrive 

📞 Or schedule a quick discovery call to talk about your team.  We’ll show you why we were featured on the July 2024 issue of Manage HR Magazine as the top team building service provider in the country.

To better performance through better alignment,
Dr. A
Founder, The Abelson Group

Hiring staff? How do you know the candidate has the right behaviors?

Coaches, want to better connect, motivate, & manage your clients?

Managers and leaders, want to know where staff will excel?

Understanding graphs will help you do all of the above & so much more!!!

Research and experience tells us effective teams are much better performers than are individuals.  When things are chaotic, in constant flux, or stressful, high performing teams are that much more important.  When led effectively, the team dynamic helps calm things down, helps people focus on doing what they are best at accomplishing, and leads to a much better outcome or solution.