133 | My First Personality Test - DISC?

People have been asking me (for years) about my personality type. What enneagram am I? What other random test situation? I have actually never really paid attention to all that, so now I’m starting a series where I take a personality test and discuss it! Today it is the DISC test, an OLD one from the 1920s mainly used in business.

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Colorful words may be used. don't be alarmed.

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DISC Test - https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/

Info on the test - https://www.ionos.com/startupguide/productivity/disc-assessment/

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TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the uncurated life podcast. Today is the first of what I think is going to be several personality test episodes. I'm Cindy Guentert-Baldo. And if this is your first time here, welcome, I would love it. If you subscribed and hung out. Hopefully after you're appearing all of this today, you'll be fine with that.

And if this is not your first time, welcome back. If you want to take this test and you haven't before it'll be linked in the show notes, let's get right into it. As a preface. I have had so many people since I've started doing YouTube and everything else. This whole online creator situation, I have had so many people ask me what type of personality I am, what Enneagram I am, what fucking I N G P w.

Five that I am. I don't know. I don't actually do a lot of personality tests because I don't usually have the patience to sit down and do that. I have taken some of, there was one quiz I took a long time ago that maybe I'll try and find again where you're supposed to answer a bunch of questions about your values.

And then they take every all like a hundred and something religions, and then they decide which ones you're the closest to. And I remember doing that in my top three. We're secular Quaker, Unitarian Universalist, which is what I became and secular humanist, which is also what I said that there's that maybe I'll do that one again.

See if it's. Maybe add that in the political test, whatever, but personality test wise, the one or two that I've taken was like decades ago. And so I thought that this would be a fun little segment to have on the podcast every once in a while, because personality tests are in my mind, both garbage and interesting.

So I'm fine with both of those things, right. You should have heard last week's episode. When I talked about the Lula rich documentary. Which is garbage and interesting. Right? Anyway, so I am going to take the test today and then I will report back afterwards. So I'm not going to fill my, I'm not gonna record myself actually taking the test because that could take a long time and it might skew the results.

But I'll talk about the test. I will pause the recording, take the test, and then immediately afterwards report back on what I found and what I think about. Okay. I think that's going to be interesting if you think this is a cool format or a good idea, please let me know at Lama letters on Instagram, let me know in the stories.

If you take the test as well, let me know what you get. I'm so curious. And if you know of personality tests, you'd like me to try. I would love it. If you let me know in the DMS on. Also, just as reminder, if you haven't signed up for my newsletter, it is where I am giving you guys monthly peaks into everything you can reply to it.

And I can take your in your info interest. Can I talk now on which personality test to try or what podcast episodes you would like the info for that is in the show notes and October's freebie is currently available unless it's not October anymore than it might be a different freebie. You'll find out anyway.

Let's move forward. Today's test is an old one and it is the D I S C test. I pick this one because it's a shorter test. It's just, so it's an easy one to start with. Right? The D I S C stands for dominance influence, steadiness and compliance. The test is linked in the show notes. I'm sure there's different versions.

The one that I will be taking is linked. It's like 1, 2, 3 test.com or something it's linked. If you want to take it with me. One of the things I found when I Googled this is some criticism of the test specifically in like corporate work situations. A lot of these personality tests are utilized by companies to, I don't know, psychoanalyze their fucking employees instead of just giving them like better wages.

I don't know. That's not good into like an anti-capitalist rant right now, but I wanted to read you some of this because I think it's kind of enlightening on the test. I got this from a website called  dot com. It's like some. Fucking shit that has a bunch of corporate-y bullshit, but whatever, I thought that the criticism was interesting.

Right? So this is a quote from the website. The DIC assessment is among the most widely used personality tests in the corporate world, but it has been under scrutiny. Critics say that the assessment tool is outdated scientific findings in personality, psychology post 1920. So that's when the test, the test.

Early 20th century, post 1920 are not considered an empirical science-based foundation does not exist. Quality criteria such as validity are values that should be measured, actually being measured and reliability. Our results. The same every time are not fulfilled. The fact that D I S C personality tests seem to make applicable statements can be traced back to the Barnum effect.

According to this, we like to ascribe to desirable widespread or vague statements, although they're applicable to many different. In the last few decades, new assessments and personality psychology have been designed that speak of five key personality types, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Four personality types alone are no longer regarded as true to our time and quote. That was a lot of jargon. But what I gleaned from that was that a, this test is outdated based on what we know about psychology and. Aside from the fact that like the personalities it's testing for are outdated, the way the test is kind of built is kind of vague.

So it's entirely possible to take it more than once and get different answers. I'm going to take this test now and I will report back on both my personality types that it gives me what I think of the test. And do I agree with this criticism based on my extremely unscientific mind. So let's do quick pause and we'll be right back.

All right. I am done taking the test and I decided to pay for the extended report. For the sake of science. I imagine I'll be doing a lot of that during these episodes, but that's okay because my podcasts are sponsored by my patrons and you should check out www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more anyway, before I let you know my thoughts on the test in both digging into the test a little bit more and realized that I didn't give you a good kind of explanation of what these things are.

Um, and I have little bit more information cause I have this, uh, bigger report that gives you some more info on what the test actually is. I thought it would fill you in on that and then let you know my thoughts on the test and how I scored. So we talked about the four types, right? Dominant, influence, steadiness and compliance.

Well, they have definitions for those dominance describes the way you deal with problems, assert yourself and control situations. Influence describes the way you deal with people, the way you communicate and relate to others. Steadiness describes your temperament, patience, persistence, and thoughtfulness, and compliance describes how you approach and organize your activity, procedures, and responsibilities.

The D I'm going to read from the report. The DIC theory is often visualized as a quadrant where the top bottom and left right sides represent specific behavioral tendencies. People who score high on dominance and compliance tend to be more task oriented, where people who score higher on influence and steadiness are more people oriented.

Those scoring high on dominance and influence are generally more assertive and active. And higher scores on compliance and steadiness give rise to calm and more cautious, cautious behavioral styles. So what they also say is that the dimensions of the DIC are not dependent on each other. So you could score in one of the areas and it doesn't determine your score.

Like if you score high in one area, it doesn't necessarily negate your score in another area. One of the things that they do. And part of the reason I paid for the results is that your test results. And I saw my results. Give you. Like which one you're the highest in, and it shows how you breathe. They all break the four breakdown, but there are 15 profiles that have been identified as a good coverage of the possible outcomes based on your score overall on each of the things and those 15 outcomes in alphabetical order are the achiever, the coach, the counselor, the creator, the enthusiast, the evaluator, the individualist, the inspiration.

The investigator, the objective thinker, the perfectionist, the persuader, the practitioner, the results oriented and the specialist. Um, I don't know which one I am yet because I haven't scrolled down that far before I do. I'm going to give you my thoughts on the actual test that I took on this website. I found it to be.

Really general. I felt like, and I think this is the same in a lot of personality tests, there were the same questions being, or the same prompts being given. Phrased slightly differently. So the way this test ran was that they gave you a series of, I think 28 different little blocks of prompts, and each one has four prompts and you were supposed to pick the one that was the most like you and the one that was the least like you, and they weren't necessarily related to each other.

They were just four things. And you pick the one that was most like you and the one that was least like you. And there were 28 sections of that. The problem I was running in. Was that there were some where I could hardly choose which one was the most like me. And there were some where I didn't feel like any of them were like me.

And so those were the hardest ones for me to answer. Matter of fact, I didn't answer one. I just put the one that was least like me kept going and it wouldn't let me finish the test. The other real issue I ran into with the test. And again, I'm not a psychologist. I don't know any of that shit, but I'm like, The other thing that kind of irked me was that when you finish the test, it takes you to a page to get some more information on you, to help figure it out.

And the first thing it asks your gender and only offers the binary choices of male and female, which as we all know, gender is a spectrum, not binary, but moving forward. So my DIC score I'm scrolling down. So

in order. I scored the highest on dominance and then the next highest on influence the next highest on steadiness and the lowest on compliance. It doesn't surprise me. Now, when I saw the original results before I bought the report, it actually showed it on a pie chart. And the way the pie chart looked was that a little over half of my answers indicated dominance.

And then of the other half that was left, it was like a sliver of compliance and then pretty much equally distributed between influencing steadiness with a little bit more of influence over steadiness. So the next section on the report says your responses indicate that you want to assert yourself and like to take control, enjoy competition and challenge are self-sufficient and individualistic and all go.

Our goal orient. I tend to be direct and positive with people like to sweep people along with your forcefulness are persuasive, especially when seeking help or commitment, get restless and bored when involved in routine and repetitive work and activities need change and variety in your work. And non-work life may be impatient with people who are less dynamic than.

And that I'm independent and uninhibited feel restrained by rules and restrictions prefer to be measured by short-term rather than long-term results and are willing to take an unconventional approach. I tend to agree with probably about three quarters of that. The things I think, where I feel like this is not at least in my understanding of myself.

The biggest things are that I get restless and bored in routine and repetitive work and activities. That is so not true. I am a creature of habit and when my routines and repetitive things are disturbed, I get really, really grouchy. That was the one I think I, uh, I disagreed with the most on this list. I also, I agree with the direction.

And like sweeping people along, but I don't know how persuasive I am. So that one is a question mark for me, but a lot of this is very much me, so I agree with that. So my profile from that list of what was it, 12 mine is the results oriented. And I'm going to read this to you. You are individualistic, demanding and persistent.

You seek out challenging situations and are responsive to competition. You should be able to handle the daily stresses and pressures of work in life. However, when really pushed, you may become rather irritable and fault-finding people see you as a take charge sort of person who is self-confident and strives for results.

I mean, the part that's cracking me up here is the one really pushed. You may become irritable and fault-finding. Yeah. Yeah, that's accurate. Here are some key words that people often use to describe the results oriented profile, demanding direct egocentric self-assured change oriented, frustrated by lack of progress, persistent, determined, stubborn, independent, and quote own person.

Now I kind of take a little umbrage at egocentric, but at the same time, Isn't that something an egocentric person would say, I don't know. Oh, my prime value for an organization, because this is through a corporate website. Is your driving forcefulness and determination to achieve goals? Uh, tactic and strategy for increased effectiveness says, you appreciate need to.

I need to appreciate that some people may not be as dynamic and forceful as you avoid confrontation by developing your empathy and increasing your tolerance. Impose a little extra self-discipline when faced with details and routine work. And see here is again the point where I feel. This isn't exactly me is that, um, I already do avoid confrontation for the most part, because I really dislike it.

I consider myself to be fairly empathetic and, um, like I said, I really like details and routine work, but now this is interesting most, unlike your profile. The perfectionist, the profile most opposite to your profile is the perfectionist. You will most likely not recognize yourself in these descriptions of the perfectionist conservative, very modest, logical, always systematic, factual, non demonstrative, deliberate, careful, precise.

Accurate predictable and controlled. They're not wrong. I pretty much see myself in zero of those.

Whew, non demonstrative, logical conservative. No. Now here's the interesting part. So I'm looking at the appendix here, which gives you a little bit of a description of all of the different ones. And the one that I'm looking at that I feel like might be a little bit more accurate for me, but again, who fucking knows, right.

Is the persuader, which has some. Some overlap. Right. But the persuader is optimistic, enthusiastic, self-confident persuasive, sociable, change, oriented, independent, persistent, decisive, direct, and demanding. I feel like that is a little bit more, a little bit more, uh, accurate to me. I just took the test and that's, that's what it told me.

So do I, do I think that this test is completely on the nose? No, it's a personality test. Like it's full, it's totally like impacted by my decisions. And there may be a point where maybe I'll come back to this in a year and take it again and see if the same thing happens. But overall, I would suggest that it's not completely off the mark.

I feel like there are a few spots where it feels wildly inaccurate for me, but overall it does feel at least somewhat. Reasonable. I don't know. So I would love to hear from you. About not only what your personality not being pleased, do not pay, do not pay for the 1499 additional PDF. Maybe what you can do is if you really want to just take your score and then give yourself a little.

And the grid would need to be divided into four equal parts D and I on the two top left and right. And then see an S on the bottom left and right. And then kind of just fill in sort of which section has as much as it does. Like whichever one is the most, give it like the biggest and you can kind of see how it fits and maybe just Google it.

I just don't. I spent the money cause I can write it off, but don't spend the money. That's ridiculous. Unless you really want to then spend the money. But I'd love to hear if you take this. Tag me in Instagram stories at @llamaletters. And let me know what you got and tell me that you did it. And if you have any specific personality tests, you'd like me to take in the future.

Let me know in the DMS, this was very odd, but whatever, at least it was a short one. I know that there are some longer ones, I guess. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, don't forget to sign up for the newsletter and check out the Etsy shop, check out the Patreon, do all the things, man, do all the things. But at the very least, if you don't want to do all the things, tag me on Instagram stories that you're listening to this because I'm glad to be back.

And the only real way people know about the podcast is through word of mouth. And that is AOK by me. Thank you so much for watching. I promise to knock it to confrontation and until next time friends, peace out.