Red Green Repeat Adventures of a Spec Driven Junkie

Evaluate Free DiSC Tests

As a leader, I am looking for ways to improve productivity of myself and the team. My neighbor introduced me to Manager Tools and their advice has been invaluable in becoming a better leader through practical methods. I’ve done an MBA and read leadership books, Manager Tools is highly effective in making you a better manager.

Recently, their hall of fame podcasts on rolling out DiSC Personality Type to your team part 1 and part 2 got me wondering: what is my DiSC personality type? Can I learn to be a better leader through this test?

The most important part is: as the leader, you must take the DiSC test first and share it with the team before asking them to take the test.

Quick Introduction: DiSC Personality

Before moving further, I just want to introduce DiSC meaning and emphasis:

  Meaning Emphasis
D Dominance results, confidence
i Influence persuading others, relationships
S Steadiness cooperation, dependability
C Conscienteniousness accuracy, competency

source

DiSC Image source

Each one of us have a preference for one or two these qualities. Remember, none are bad, just a preference. Just like seeing a cup half full or empty.

Is this cup half full or empty? image Photo by manu schwendener on Unsplash

At the same time, one cannot be all four at once. There are certain preferences that stand out above others.

You can learn more about DiSC here

Free DiSC Tests

I tried out three free online DiSC tests and will share my experience in using them. The goal is to help you (and your team) decide which of the free ones to use. The three I found were:

  • DiSC Personality Testing
  • Tony Robbins DiSC Test
  • 123Test DiSC

DiSC Personality Testing

website https://discpersonalitytesting.com
number of questions 13
all statements known up-front no
question style choose statement

This test required picking from four statements that finishes the statement:

In my work environment, it is most/least important to me

Pick one that is the most important and another lest important. A sample question:

DiSC Personality Testing Question Sample

I definitely felt this test was long because statements could have different focus. One statement would be about coworkers and another about results.

This conflict is probably part of the test design, to choose between a concept internal to you (i.e. results) or external to you (i.e. your coworkers). I felt this allowed a bit of gaming the test if you knew you wanted a certain result.

A possible design that felt this test took more effort: as the statements showed up twice, I read the same statements twice: once for most important and again for least important.

Tony Robbins

website https://disc-app.tonyrobbins.com/disc.php
number of questions 14 for DiSC, 10 for value
all statements known up-front no
question style sort words

Tony Robbins impressed me by giving a free DiSC test, which also includes a Values test. I will only talk about the DiSC test, but one must complete the values test to get their DiSC result.

The question style was short: sort four words in order from most like me to least like me.

For example:

Tony Robbins DiSC Question Sample

Although the item operated on is only words, sorting four words in order felt harder. Dragging four words in order 14 times is not as easy as it sounds.

This testing style was more abstract as it only used words, which I liked. So even if one knew DiSC well, it would be harder to achieve a specific result.

123 Test - DiSC

website https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/
number of questions 28
all statements known up-front yes
question style choose statements

The test format is four statements, choose one that is most like you and one least like you, without any context.

The questions were all laid out on a single page and there were 28 in total.

A sample:

123test DiSC Question Sample

Similar to DiSC Personality Testing, I found evaluating the statements took time and effort, especially when compounding multiple conflicting ideas into different statements.

One difference is the statements were only presented once, a thumbs up/down icon were on every statement so you would see each once and select which would it be.

Another nice part of the presentation is the questions are all laid out at once, so there’s no form submission (great to take offline!) This also allowed changing answers after responding, which other tests did not allow. This could be a good or bad thing. Good to re-evaluate previous answers after seeing new questions. Bad that it allows one to answer for a specific result as they can see all the statements.

Results

In general, my DiSC results from all tests were similar. I did my best to be impartial but I start to see patterns amongst the tests after the third time.

So any of them would be accurate enough for a cursory understanding of someone’s DiSC profile.

Note: each free test has an upgrade to a more ‘in-depth’ report, which I did not try.

Conclusion

DiSC is an personality tool that gives insight into your personality preferences, helping you be a better leader for your team.

I found three free DiSC tests online and even with slight variations in testing methodology (i.e. words vs. statements) still gave the same result.

If you want a cursory understanding of your DiSC profile, I would recommend any of the three listed as they gave similar results.

Out of all three tested, I found Tony Robbins’ test to be the best as it only used words for its test, allowing me to think less and try to answer for a specific result.