Extended DISC Personality Profile Styles – ‘D’
The Extended DISC Personality Model is not just four personality types. Unlike most other psychometric assessment tools, Extended DISC recognises 160 variations of the four main D.I.S.C styles. I love working with people with Extended DISC because there is no sense of putting people in a box or of dealing with stereotypes.
However, there is benefit in understanding the characteristics of the four main personality styles – D for Dominant; I for Influencer, S which is for Steadiness, and C which is for Compliance.
I am going to focus an article on each style to help you better understand where you might sit on the Extended DISC Diamond.
The diagram (right) shows the DISC styles laid out in 4 quadrants.
The Extended DISC ‘D’ style
If you are a competitive person, who likes to win; with ability to see the big picture and know exactly what you want, you are likely to be a D Style. D Styles are goal oriented, wanting to make progress and take action towards their vision of the future. They do not like to get bogged down in details, and can become quite impatient if things are going slower than they want.
The D style is often seen as quite self centered as they really do want the world to revolve around them. They make decisions fast, and love the challenge of tough competition and taking risks and bringing change. They can get bored easily if everything becomes too calm and routine. Their attitude to teamwork is that it is a great way to get other people to assist them to achieve their goals. If it is not their team and their agenda they will tend to struggle with teams, fearing others will slow them down. They like to be in control of what’s going on in their world and prefer to be in charge rather than a team player.
Their main strengths: D styles can keep people in line; are motivated by independence and challenges, they can set goals, dare to take risks, can generate new ideas, have a willingness to change and do not let jobs become routine.
Their main challenges: D-styles can be impatient, overbearing and even rude. They are often not very good listeners and prone to make snap decisions. Others may perceive D-styles as somewhat self-centered, demanding, blunt and overly aggressive.
D Styles make good leaders of projects and large organisations. They will benefit from assistance with processes and details from the S and C styles, and from the I style for the building of emotional connections with people.
Interestingly only 12% of people are D styles – which is probably a good thing. We would not want ‘too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.
