This article presumes a general knowledge of DISC profiling.

‘I don’t think that’s right.’

The woman was adamant. She looked around, searching for support from her colleagues.

‘I’m a dominant profile. There’s no way I’m anything else.’

‘Okay, well what did the assessment come up with?’

‘It says I’m not. But I am.’

Cue some scoffs in the background. I could tell the woman’s colleagues were holding themselves back. Clearly they didn’t agree with her.

‘Why don’t we go through the rest of the program and see if you have the same conclusion at the end?’

I’ll always remember that moment. By the end of the session it was abundantly clear this woman was not a dominant profile — perhaps to everyone but herself. Her profile was an equally fantastic one, where her captain energy wasn’t dominance.

Even though this one particular instance remains vivid to me, self-mistyping is not uncommon. If I had a dollar for every time someone adamantly declared their DISC assessment was wrong… I’d be a reasonably rich woman.

A common pattern of self-mistyping is what I have dubbed the Dominance Fallacy. It perhaps reflects the fact that I work with people in sales and leadership; combined with past societal frameworks suggesting being ‘ruthless’ or ‘emotionless’, ‘overconfident’ or ‘powerful’ are the ways to become a successful person. It also presumes people see the dominant as encapsulating these traits, which is another issue.