On the first podcast of 2020, Adam J. Salgat sits down with Shirley Tipton – Our Community Listens to facilitator, trainer and Extended DISC trainer.
Shirley breaks down Extended DISC, how it gets its results, and why Our Community Listens utilizes it in its communication course.
She also gives listeners concrete examples of each DISC behavioral profile by relating them to well-known figures in our culture. The two discuss what behavior style makes the best leader – you might be surprised by her answer – and also whether or not you could get different results at different points in your life.
AI-generated dictation of the podcast audio
Please note that this transcription was completed using AI software. Occasionally, unanticipated grammatical, syntax, homophones, and other interpretive errors are inadvertently transcribed by the software. Please excuse any errors that have escaped final proofreading.
Adam Folger:
Hello, and welcome to Our Community Listens Podcast. My name is Adam Folger. And with me, today is facilitator for Our Community Listen and extended DISC trainer, Shirley Tipton. Shirley has been with Our Community Listen since the very beginning, working out at Aspen, Colorado, but has recently moved to California. Thanks for coming on the podcast today, Shirley, how are you doing?
Shirley Tipton:
Hey Adam. Great, happy winter day.
Adam Folger:
Up here in Michigan, we’re about to get about a foot of snow. So, it’s going to be winter here, no problem.
Shirley Tipton:
Remember your jacket young man.
Adam Folger:
I will. As we begin our podcast series for 2020, we want to start just like you do when you sign up for a class. One of the first things we ask people to do is to take the DiSC assessment. So we thought today would be a great opportunity to learn more about it, and who better than the extended DISC trainer Shirley. My first question for you, Shirley, is to give us a little bit of background on what is DISC anyway.
Shirley Tipton:
Sure. So DISC is a behavioral assessment, or sometimes called an inventory and it comes out of the early work of people like Carl Jung. It is both theory and science, I guess you could call it in today’s lexicon, open-source. No one owns DISC, although there are quite a few companies that deliver the assessment tools or inventory. And ideally, the results of those assessments are used ethically for self-awareness, to increase our individual success, to improve our relationships, to make things better at work, it’s all about our hardwired behaviors.
Adam Folger:
And as we learn through Our Community Listens training, knowing what someone’s hardwired behaviors are helps us communicate better. Right?
Shirley Tipton:
Well, not only that, I mean, that’s really the goal, right? In communication skills, training our foundational course. But in that self-awareness not only do we learn how to communicate with others, but we might also learn how to get our own needs met. We might also learn how to be more accepting of ourselves and in today’s world, it can be really hard when we get missile attacks on who we are as a person and how we behave. So one of the ways we use the results of the inventory, or the assessment is to help people really get an understanding of themselves and to embrace the fact that they’re not broken, that we’re each perfect.
Adam Folger:
That is a very good reminder. One that I think we sometimes forget when we talk about our training, because it’s not just communicating with everyone else, it’s also communicating internally.
Shirley Tipton:
You bet. And some of us have those voices in our heads that are going kind of non-stop, right?
Adam Folger:
Right.
Shirley Tipton:
And sometimes those voices come from other voices that we’re hearing. So using the extended DISC, which is the company that we use for our training, really helps us quiet in those voices and people to get just I think a better understanding of themselves and others.
Adam Folger:
So you mentioned this just briefly, but why does Our Community Listens choose to use DISC assessment?
Shirley Tipton:
One is to become more self-aware. And once we become more self-aware then we translate that into being more others aware. So if I can get an idea of how I’m hardwired and how I might show up most of the time in my world, it might also help me get some insight into the behaviors of other people, and how they’re hardwired. Ultimately, most successful people are really self-aware, they know who they are deeply, and that information not only will help us improve relationships, but can really give us a great foundation for being inspirational leaders.
Adam Folger:
Yeah, that was one of the questions that you gave me in our pre-show interview work was, do I need to be someone else to be successful? So if you go through this DISC assessment and you’re not noticing, or you’re noticing certain things about yourself, do you need to change to be successful?
Shirley Tipton:
No, you don’t. Despite the messages that we constantly get from today’s hyperactive media, be better, do better, take this course, change. Well, maybe a little bit, but ultimately we would hope that by becoming more self-aware and embracing our hardwired style, that we can be most successful when we’re maximizing our own behavioral tendencies, our own behavioral styles when we embrace who we really are. And we really want people to have that gift of being exactly who they are, using that knowledge to reduce stress, also to increase cooperation, to improve relationships, and then there’s that real bonus of resolving conflict. Like when we can be truly self-aware and be curious about the behaviors of other people and why they’re behaving that way. We have a much greater opportunity to resolve conflict, not to mention the talent that we might gain in learning to get along with our mother-in-law.
Adam Folger:
It’s a very good point, especially when people maybe have the same style, for example, I know my mother-in-law are similar people and at times we can butt heads because we both either want to have a little bit of control over his situation. And so when I’m able to sit back and kind of self-reflect and say, I know what she needs, I need to understand that I can allow her to have that and I can find my need met in another space.
Shirley Tipton:
Isn’t that a gift?
Adam Folger:
It does make holidays a little easier, and it makes birthday parties a little easier, and it’s taken time for that to come about. My wife and I have been married eight years now, through the teachings of Our Community Listens, it has made a difference in my life in that way.
Shirley Tipton:
We love hearing that, that’s just the greatest thing you can say to someone who’s a facilitator of this material, that it makes a difference. And we’ve seen that in so many ways, and we hear about it all the time. And that’s really our ultimate goal, is we want people to have happier families, happier workplaces, to not only feel cared for but to feel caring for other people. And I just have seen so many times where when we can increase that understanding of why someone is behaving the way they do, how that translates into real caring in communities and individually. It’s important.
Adam Folger:
Absolutely. Can you tell me a little bit about the four styles? We can start right up front with D if you want to, or we can do them backwards, whatever order you want to do it.
Shirley Tipton:
Yeah, let’s go in order. So DISC, D-I-S-C, the individual letters relate to four behavioral styles. Now, keep in mind that this work has been going on for decades. And a lot of the research done by a lot of people has resulted in some general understandings about human behavior. And that human behavior is pretty darn predictable while we’re all unique, pretty predictably unique. So when we look at that very broadly, we come up with these four categories. The first one that D stands for someone who is direct. Right?
Adam Folger:
Okay.
Shirley Tipton:
D style can be very strong-willed, strong-minded, they love challenge, they’ve loved taking action, D style is very goal and results-oriented, D style will focus on the goal, really will drive results and they’ll get the job done. Someone who has D behavioral tendencies can be very focused on task and sometimes forget relationships, or people, right? So a D style person is really going to drive those results that you want, but they may need to slow down a little bit and think more about people and less about task or action. If it helps to understand D style a little better, there’s some celebrities, you can think of are famous characters. So a D style might be Darth Vader.
Adam Folger:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:09:14].
Shirley Tipton:
One of my favorite basketball players, Michael Jordan, Jerry Seinfeld, both in real life and the character he plays in his TV series. So those are really typical D style people.
Adam Folger:
That’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, you think of someone like a Michael Jordan, I am a sports fan. He was the kind of guy that when I was growing up, you knew he was going to get the ball at the end of the game. In this sports setting, it was very normal to see him take direct action, He was the one who was going to take care of the ball.
Shirley Tipton:
Absolutely. It’s number 23, right?
Adam Folger:
That’s right.
Shirley Tipton:
Yeah. So, again, focused on the goal, nothing short of championship-level play, and he’s translated that into his business world as well, he’s still focused on goals and results. That’s something else I want to add as a little aside here Adam, about DISC behavioral styles, they typically don’t change over our lifetime. So we fall into these behavioral categories, fall into, we grow into them usually by the time we’re an older adolescent, 16 to 18. And then those behavioral styles will stay pretty consistent, absent, really life-changing events for the rest of our lives.
Adam Folger:
That’s interesting. And I want to come back to that after we get through the rest of the I, the S, and the C because I have a question about that and how it pertains to what I’ve noticed in my own kind of behavior in the last few years. So I’ll let you continue though if there’s anything else you want to add about D’s, go for it.
Shirley Tipton:
No, I just think, D’s are also the smallest percentage of the population.
Adam Folger:
They are.
Shirley Tipton:
And D style can get a really bad rap from people who aren’t D style, who can think unfairly while they’re just overbearing. Or they’re difficult when actually that D style has a lot of talent and a lot of… I don’t know, a lot of direction, right? Because they like to direct, that can be offered to teams, and families, and communities in getting to the goal.
Adam Folger:
Got you.
Shirley Tipton:
So we want to embrace D.
Adam Folger:
All right. Let’s move on to I.
Shirley Tipton:
All right. So I stands for influence. I style folks are typically pretty optimistic, can be really outgoing, they love people, I style is very relational. I style is the person who remembers everyone’s birthday in the workplace, and we’ll make sure there’s a cake, or a card or something, will organize around people and events like that. I’s can be also very creative, they really enjoy sharing ideas, can bring a lot of energy into the room, and can also be really good entertainers. I styles might be someone like the comics, Jim Carrey, and Robin Williams. when you think about them, right? Use a lot of hand expressions, and facial expressions, and bring just this exuberance into any space that they occupy. I style’s going to focus on people first and foremost, that’s what gets them out of bed in the morning, it’s relationship.
Adam Folger:
It’s that connection to other people and knowing that they’re relied upon by other people?
Shirley Tipton:
Absolutely. Which by the way, if you think about what I just said about D style, it can be really annoying, if you’re a D or a C style, especially, and I’ll talk more about C in a moment. But you can start to see how we might annoy other people that aren’t hardwired like we are. And that’s again, reinforcing this idea of why we go for self-awareness with this particular assessment tool in our trainings.
Adam Folger:
Interesting. And yes, like the celebrities you mentioned, they definitely are bombastic, larger than life type personalities who, when they walk into a room or you see them on TV, they are commanding an audience there. They love getting that feedback and that connection you can tell.
Shirley Tipton:
Absolutely. And since I started with a Star Wars theme, I want to just self-disclose that I’m a huge sci-fi nerd. So I style keeping with the Darth Vader in Star Wars theme, I style would be Han Solo.
Adam Folger:
Okay.
Shirley Tipton:
Charming, loves being people and can take unnecessary risks, that can also be a hallmark of a nice style.
Adam Folger:
How about we move on to S steadiness.
Shirley Tipton:
Right? So S is the steady-eddie, S can also stand for service. S style has a real need to serve a higher purpose, and by that, I mean, serving something that is outside of them. S’s love to help people, help organizations. They’re really good at working behind the scenes for no credit whatsoever. Like they’re really content to keep a low profile where I style prefers to be the center of attention. S prefers to be standing behind the eye or the D style. S is all about steadiness, harmony, tradition, peace, can very naturally be really great listeners, but S’s don’t like change much.
Adam Folger:
So that’s where steadiness comes in. Right? So when change comes in that kind of rocks, what is steady to them.
Shirley Tipton:
Absolutely. S style is that person that you want on your team when you’ve got a really long project to do. S style is the keeper in the family of the family traditions, will make sure that only certain dishes are used at certain times because that’s what their grandmother did. Right? And that is a great value to an S. In the Star Wars world, and S style would be Luke Skywalker.
Adam Folger:
When you were talking about, doing things behind the scenes and not looking for credit. That is very much what I feel Luke is like in the movies, someone who’s going to do what needs to be done, but in the end, he doesn’t need his name on it.
Shirley Tipton:
Right. And he was not happy about the change that came to his life when he left his home, where he had been raised and got thrust into something else. That sudden change was hard unlike other S styles you might think of in the public arena are the cartoon character, Charlie Brown, Mother Teresa, and my personal favorite Mr. Rogers.
Adam Folger:
Mr. Rogers, yes.
Shirley Tipton:
Are all examples of S style.
Adam Folger:
Interesting connection to Mr. Rogers and hearing the word steadiness and the kind of work that he would do with children. And I think about how a lot of kids who struggle because they don’t have something steady in their life. They don’t… Maybe it’s parents, maybe it’s environment, whatever it might be. There’s some uneasiness, and it’s interesting that Mr. Rogers falls into this steady category, and working with kids, maybe it’s not coincidentally at all. I guess.
Shirley Tipton:
I would think not. I think he was probably naturally drawn to that, he was also an ordained minister, so he is very clearly hardwired for service. Remember, we’re talking here about hardwired behaviors, and the hallmark of S is service. Now, I don’t want to discount in any way the other behavioral styles, it doesn’t mean other people don’t care about service, but for an S service is like breathing. It’s like air, they do not have to think about it, it just comes naturally.
Adam Folger:
So let’s move on to C.
Shirley Tipton:
Sure. So C style. C stands for conscientiousness. I also like to think of it as someone who’s always critically thinking. C style really wants to be correct, can be perfectionist, like to plan ahead, are really good with managing a lot of detail. C style like systematic approaches, and we’ll check, and recheck for accuracy. C style looks at a large spreadsheet on Excel and thinks it’s a thing of beauty.
Adam Folger:
Right. It’s all organized. They can-
Shirley Tipton:
Very organized. Yeah. So, C style is really good at making sure, for example, in a workgroup that things are done well and correctly, and that the data is correct. The last thing a C wants to do is make the wrong choice, so in that analytical world of C style behaviors, a C style will perhaps come up with six possible outcomes, and we’ll go through a thought process of pro and con for each possible outcome to select just the right one. Now, inherent in that process, C style can also fall into analysis paralysis, in wanting to be perfect they have a hard time actually making a decision.
Adam Folger:
I’m smiling because my wife has a high C. And when we were just at the ice cream shop a few days ago, she was the last one to choose her ice cream because… And she tasted four different ice creams. So, it was a little bit of that of analyzing the situation and can’t quite decide, because she’s a little afraid to choose the wrong one.
Shirley Tipton:
Absolutely. And that is a wonderful trait to have when you need accuracy.
Adam Folger:
Yes.
Shirley Tipton:
Right? And too, like my husband has a lot of C style. I can absolutely rely on him to make really good decisions that are data-driven.
Adam Folger:
Right.
Shirley Tipton:
Or really good decisions having analyzed the best choice for the family, because I know he’s put the time into it. Right? And that’s important.
Adam Folger:
Yeah, absolutely. And when I think about that with my wife’s profession, as a special education teacher, she needs to have that data-driven information, working on IEP for each student and needs to be in that checklist mode. It works really well in that space, pick an ice cream, it took a little while, but that space, it worked out well. I’m-
Shirley Tipton:
What a gift that is Adam, for those children, that they have someone who’s looking at them individually and making decisions based on the most data they can possibly get in the best interest of that child. I mean, that’s a great example of how C style shows up in the world in the best possible way. Now, you may remember a moment ago, I talked about I style being very relational, and D being very task-oriented. Well, S style is also very relational and C style is also like D very task-oriented. So we tend to, in those four categories have a subset of either task or action bias over relationship or people bias.
Adam Folger:
Got you.
Shirley Tipton:
So important to note that as well.
Adam Folger:
I thought to continue down your Star Wars theme.
Shirley Tipton:
Yeah.
Adam Folger:
Trick to your last Star Wars characters going to be for our C conscientiousness.
Shirley Tipton:
Right. So I’m going to ask you, Adam, thinking about what you know about Star Wars and DISC, who do you think the C style is in that Pantheon of characters?
Adam Folger:
A very analytical person in all of those, and afraid to make decisions, or afraid to move forward sometimes seems to be C-3PO.
Shirley Tipton:
Right on, it’s exactly C-3PO. Yeah. You bet. And another person probably, with very high C style would be Bill Gates. And also an example of how you can be successful regardless of your behavioral style.
Adam Folger:
I think a lot of times people have a tendency, just a general tendency to believe that if there’s a CEO of a company or a leader of a group that they see them in that D kind of style, and they assume that maybe they’re a D personality. So I’m curious, is D the best style to be a leader? Or is there a style that is the best to make a leader?
Shirley Tipton:
So we tend to think all of us that are our boss, or our leaders, or CEOs are D style, and many of them are, it’s true, but the best leader is found in every style. Absolutely, all of them make great leaders, and we have lots of worldwide examples of great leaders from all four behavioral styles. One of the things we focus on in teaching around communication and leadership is learning to develop your own skills from your self-awareness, of your clear natural strengths within the behavioral style.
Adam Folger:
What I think is interesting about this leadership concept too, is that someone might be a leader in a certain, let’s say a certain field because it matches up with their behavioral style. Would you agree with that?
Shirley Tipton:
Yes. And we want to be careful about not making stereotypes, or embracing stereotype types around that. So one of the things we hear sometimes is that most CPAs are C style.
Adam Folger:
Sure.
Shirley Tipton:
Well, there are many who are, but not all of them are. I have a really good friend who’s very high over the top I style, who’s also a really great CPA.
Adam Folger:
Got you. Yeah, so it doesn’t mean you can’t excel on something that doesn’t necessarily stereotypically fit the DISC profile so.
Shirley Tipton:
No, you can make the most of what you’ve been given and how you’re hardwired again, that’s what we want you to do, using the DISC can really give people that opportunity to say, “Yes, that is my clear natural strength, I’m going to embrace it and run with it. I don’t need to be that other person.” Sometimes we’ll fall into that trap when we see someone else that we admire, who’s very successful. And we think I need to be more like them to be successful, there may be some truth in that, but we’d encourage you to think really hard and long about that before you attempt to make those changes. And instead, think about your career natural strings and how to further develop them.
Adam Folger:
How can an assessment determine what is natural for an individual?
Shirley Tipton:
So you may recall, I spoke earlier about how humans are predictably unique, and with all the research that has gone into developing DISC science, as we know it today. We have learned very clearly what behaviors within cultures constitute behavioral styles, or how you fit into those behavioral styles. So this particular assessment, the extended DISC takes about 15 minutes at the outset to complete. And it’s a series of questions and you’re asked to choose word pairings, doesn’t make a lot of sense, can be very difficult to puzzle through if you spend a lot of time on it, but how this assessment works, and by asking you to select those word pairings. Yes, supercomputing and algorithms have changed this world tremendously, your answers then go into analysis using these algorithms by computer to fit into those predictably unique behaviors for humans.
So it’s this amazing process that extended DISC has developed, they’ve been doing this internist since 1994. They’re based in Helsinki, and they’re one of the few companies that does really extensive validation every year. So they are constantly checking their data and by the way, they validate and make adjustments by language. So, for example, the extended DISC assessment, you might take in the United States, as someone who’s born here would be different than the assessment you would be given in the United Kingdom. So even though they’re both in English, the assessment itself is changed and adjusted based on the culture in your country. So it’s this amazing supercomputing that helps determine what is natural for that individual, and then the real genius in this, the natural styles are what you don’t pick.
Adam Folger:
That’s interesting.
Shirley Tipton:
Isn’t that bizarre? It seems so counterintuitive.
Adam Folger:
Right.
Shirley Tipton:
How that works, Adam is if you consciously make a choice, right? You have to think about it. It’s something that you’re making a choice about. The other answers are the ones that are actually evaluated or analyzed for unconscious behavior. That just blew my mind when I first was trying to learn this, and as I was going through training to become a certified trainer.
Adam Folger:
Yeah.
Shirley Tipton:
Because we can choose our behavior, right?
Adam Folger:
Sure.
Shirley Tipton:
I get up in the morning, I choose my behavior.
Adam Folger:
Yes. We talk a lot about choice, and I’m a firm believer in the power of choice.
Shirley Tipton:
That’s we choose behavior, but the unconscious behavior is how other people see us. It’s who we are when we are most ourselves, the way I behave when I’m not choosing a behavior is very different than the behavior I exhibit when I’m under pressure. So an example might be first date behavior, no one ever in the history of dating, showed up on a first date as their true self. Right?
Adam Folger:
Okay. Yes, and it’s been a long time since the first date because I don’t what you’re talking about. And absolutely, you’re really trying to polish everything to make yourself seem as entertaining, or enjoyable as pleasant to be around as possible.
Shirley Tipton:
Same is true for job interviews.
Adam Folger:
Yes.
Shirley Tipton:
Meeting the in-laws. Anytime we’re under pressure, we will select behaviors that make us look best. Now, some of those behaviors might be our natural self, I don’t want to gloss over that too much, most of the time, they’re not. So this particular assessment, the extended DISC really gets at the behaviors we demonstrate, we choose most of the time, which leads to creating a picture of how other people see us.
Adam Folger:
I had mentioned this earlier in the podcast when we were first on the letter D. I had taken the DISC assessment a few… Well now it would be almost five years ago, and what I remember most specifically is that I did not have any letter D in my DISC assessment, and it made sense at the time. I mean, there were parts of me that thought, well, I am kind of direct, but in the end, I do prefer to kind of take a back seat or be someone who likes to fulfill for the D, someone who likes to take action underneath direction.
Shirley Tipton:
Right.
Adam Folger:
And, and that still holds true. But what has changed in my life in the last few years, since my DISC assessment first, and one of the biggest is fatherhood. So having to kind of be in charge of little ones and make sure they’re safe, and make decisions as, do we need to take them to the doctor? Do we need to do such and such? And all the little things that you’re in charge of as a parent. And also in the last few years, I’ve been trying to grow my own personal side business, so I am my own boss and I’ve been having to make decisions, push myself forward to find clients, and kind of get out there, and be in front of people more often. So I haven’t taken the DISC assessment recently, but is it possible to take that now and potentially get different results? And even though we’re talking about it being innate built behavior, set even before I turned 20.
Shirley Tipton:
So the answer to that question is, yes, you could take it again and you might get different results, but probably not as long as it’s the same assessment with the same vendor, in this case, extended DISC.
Adam Folger:
Got you.
Shirley Tipton:
Something to note too is that one of the cool things about S style, remember that S style wants to serve a higher purpose, something outside of them. It might be a new career, it might be a charitable cause it might be our families, whatever that higher purpose is, S style can show up like a D.
Adam Folger:
Got you.
Shirley Tipton:
Yeah.
Adam Folger:
S and I were my two… I was kind of split between S, C, and I, but S was the highest of the three. So that’s interesting that you say that.
Shirley Tipton:
Yeah, it can. I mean, S’s this can be extremely results, and goal-oriented.
Adam Folger:
Surely, thank you so much for taking time to talk to us today about the extended DISC assessment and everything it encompasses. Can you give our audience two key takeaways from our podcast?
Shirley Tipton:
You bet. The first one I would say is the golden rule only works for people just like you, right? So if we treat people the way we want to be treated, that’s going to be great for someone just like me, but it’s really going to annoy someone who is my opposite. So that’s where DISC can be super important, is extending that golden rule to a place of treating people the way they need to be treated, the way they want to be treated. And that’s my second takeaway that utilizing the concepts of DISC, embracing them, practicing them, can be one of the greatest gifts that you can give to the people in your life. By being curious about who they are and why they’re behaving the way they are, especially when you don’t understand it. So by embracing DISC, it can open up a whole new world of friendships, potential opportunities for success, resolving conflict, my two takeaways.
Adam Folger:
Shirley, thank you so much for those two takeaways, and the inspirational words. It’s much appreciated. Thank you for your time.
Shirley Tipton:
It’s my pleasure and a deep honor. Thank you for doing this for Our Community Listens.
Adam Folger:
If you have any suggestions about subjects for our podcast, feel free to reach out through our Facebook page. And if you’re interested in taking a class, visit ourcommunitylistens.org. Thank you again for listening to our podcast and don’t forget each word, each action, each silent moment of listening sends a message. Therefore, you are the message.
