DiSC Denomination: Dominant

During the past week I spent every day in a room with 20 other employees of my company in one of the many leadership trainings we will experience during our careers.

The foundation of the training was a personality test which we were instructed to take a week before the class, as we would be receiving a full report on the results on the first day. The test is called DiSC, and it measures a person’s generalistic style of approaching challenges.

D = Dominant
i = Interact
S = Steadiness
C = Compliance

Dominant characters like to feel in control, and are the people you can count on to take charge. They enjoy a fast pace environment.

Interact individuals are social butterflies and value relationships a lot more than reaching end goals. They are also in the “fast” category.

Steadiness people are detailed-oriented and like to take things easy. They are not super social, but they are very analytical. At the same time, they need the time to think about it and not be pressured.

Compliance workers are very focused on numbers and data. They will not make a move until it has been proven by policy, data or otherwise analyzed situations. This makes them slow in action, but accurate in detail.

It was not a surprise to me that I fell into the Dominant category. I was fully expecting it. What I didn’t expect was the rush of emotion that followed.

As soon as I was labeled a strong “D” I became the butt of every joke. Every time I did or said something (anything), others would point their fingers and say “D”!!! Not to say that I didn’t feed the fire myself. I joined them in the mocking. I just thought it’d be a lot more fun to make it a mutual mocking situation… meaning we both gang up on me.

Then it all started coming back to me. All the times in my annual review when I have been asked to “tone it down” or to “take a step back.” That’s years and years of people giving me the “feedback” that I have to change, and I’m just not good enough.

Needless to say, I cried my eyes out that first night. For as long as I can remember, I had always been encouraged to speak out first, to be decisive, to be determined, to not let things stand in my way, and to take control of my own life. It wasn’t until I joined this company that I have felt like my take-charge personality did not fit in. Like I was not good enough, and my intrinsic way to be was getting in the way of my own career. It’s as if I had been labeled with a big “PAIN IN THE ASS” sign on my back.

My manager assured me that they are not asking me to be someone else, but to be aware of how I come off to people and be able to control it. However, that is not what I am getting. What I am getting is action items like “don’t speak out first” or “ask more questions and give fewer statements” or “let others take charge and you take the back seat.” Sound reasonable pieces of feedback, right? After all, most people ARE that way: stay back, don’t draw attention to yourself, the less work you get the better, just talk when being asked to. My problem with this? I AM NOT THAT WAY!!! The reason I speak out first, raise my hand first, say my opinion first, is because that comes extremely natural to me. When you ask me not to do it, it creates an unimaginable internal source of stress and frustration within me.

I do think that it is important for a “leader” to understand how they come off and watch for times when they make others feel uncomfortable. Self-awareness is extemely important. I was hoping I wasn’t THAT bad, and fortunately a kind soul said as much: during one of the “go around the table and give your peers feedback” exercises, while everyone told me that I wasn’t doing a good job at asking more questions or speaking second, this one person did say “I just don’t see how your speaking first is hurting anybody — when you talk, we listen because you say things that matter. I just don’t see your style as abrasive or intimidating. You are fun, and not at all that bad.” You have no idea how good it made me feel to hear that. In a sea of criticism, a single beacon of light.

I guess this whole post is giving me away as someone who doesn’t take criticism very well… That kind of stinks, because I consider myself to be very self-aware and to be conscious of how I come off. I worry about people taking me the wrong way or being gun-shy around me. I try to handle those situations with velvet gloves. But for the most part, my decisiveness should be HELPING my job, not hurting it. Right?…

I did learn a valuable lesson, though. Sometimes I tend to shoot from the hip and make a 100% assertive statement without any real background behind it. I do that all the time, but it was never as clear as in this conversation with my husband:

Brian: I’m thinking of getting a treadmill. How much do those cost?
ina: Eight hundred dollars.
Brian: How do you know?
ina: mmmm… I don’t. That’s my guess.

By the end we were laughing so hard! He had been trying to get me to see that about myself: I make confident statements without fact behind them. It really cracks him up.

This commendable trait to speak confidently even when I have no idea what I’m talking about eventually got my team killed in a desert survival exercise. That was an eye opener for me. We were supposed to decide a strategy to follow after our plane crashed in the desert, and we had to decide what to do with the supplies we had. I was SURE we should all move together safely towards the nearest road we saw before crashing, and that we should figure out how to get food by assigning a hunting party. I got into an argument with another “D” in my team who wanted to just send himself off for help, which I totally disagreed with as it would guarantee his death. In the end, we went with my way. It turns out that the one person in our team who suggested to stay at the crash site was right, but she was too quiet for us to even consider her opinion as a viable option.

That made me realize that even though I might be confident about my way of doing things, it’s very important that I understand all points of view before making a decision. This is sort of how it went:

Peer: we should stay at the crash site, and bury the shotgun because it’s dangerous.
ina: (trying to do reflective listening) So you think we should get rid of the shotgun because it might create a dangerous situation for us, since levels of stress may be high and we might kick into survivor mode.
Peer: Yes.
ina: So how do you suggest we got food?
Peer: I don’t know, we could eat birds.
ina: And how do you plan to catch the birds?
Peer: I don’t know… maybe with something pointy?
ina: so you want to stay back and catch birds with the tip of the umbrella?

At this point her opinion seemed so nonsensical, that I got condescending and dismissive of her point of view. This made her feel self conscious and she shut down for the rest of the discussion.

As it turns out, the right approach was to stay at the crash site and to use the shotgun for digging or as a tool to build things. Food was to be disposed of and don’t even think of hunting, since food would increase the need for water in our bodies (humans can live 3 min without oxygen, 3 days without water, and 30 days without food). If we had actually worked as a team to investigate why she thought we should stay and why hunting wasn’t important, we may have gotten closer to survival. Instead, we were dead within a week.

It was all fun and games, but the truth of the matter is that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, and I really have to bring out more discussion rather than laying down the law.

Thanks for reading this far. In conclusion: I hate the fact I’m being asked to change, but if there is one thing I learned is that I don’t know enough to make decisions single-handedly. No matter how quickly my brain works in coming up with A solution, it may not be THE solution.

In the end, it was an enlightening week. Frustrating as hell, but definitely enlightening.

ina