By Priscilla Luzader Pipho

I’ve been certified in Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessments for a decade and have used it in personal and professional life for more than 30 years. So what led me to getting certified in Everything DiSC last fall? I’m still enamored of MBTI for its depth and science and research. I’ve seen such amazing similarities in the 16 personality types, as well as significant differences. I will always, I think, be a student of MBTI, and in fact my mother was a Myers-Briggs trainer in the 70s so I have deep roots there. And yet, I felt I needed to learn this “new” behavioral assessment because I was encountering people and programs referencing DiSC, including Patrick Lencioni whom I greatly admired for his team applications.  

Here’s what I’ve learned so far. 

DiSC language was developed in 1928 by William Moulton Marston who wrote Emotions of Normal People and used the terms Dominance (D), Influence (i), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C). This foundation would be developed and expanded over the years and came into mainstream use in the 80s. For the last 40 years the DiSC profile has been refined and improved and has captured the attention of business trainers and professional coaches.

At the core, the DiSC profile is a straightforward description of behaviors, tendencies, and priorities. The use of graphics makes the concepts easy to understand, using a circle with dots to show one’s self-assessed leanings. The two-dimensional scales measure from fast-paced to moderate-paced and skeptical to accepting. Because the visual descriptions are so intuitive, it’s easier for facilitators to use in helping teams work together.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, with roots in 1920s psychologist Carl Jung, was developed by the mother-daughter team Katherine Briggs and Isabelle Briggs Myers. The instrument was used as early as the 1940s and has been refined over the decades and adapted to its current form. The assessment has been taken by more than 50 million worldwide, is widely used in academia and by industrial psychologists and by top Fortune 100 companies worldwide. 

I first learned about MBTI from my mom who was learning about how to use the tool and practiced on us kids. As a teenage girl, I thought she was nuts and I wanted nothing to do with it. Later in life I found the assessment was being used in virtually every job I started, and I began to see that my mom had been on to something pretty amazing. My Mom, Marthanne Luzader, actually wrote a few books that I still use in my consulting practice. I used MBTI in training teams for 20 years and became certified as a trainer 10 years ago because it provides such a short-cut to understanding others and ourselves by giving us a common language for how we communicate. MBTI was one of the first certifications developed for training and coaching in businesses; now there are hundreds.

The complexity of MBTI makes it perfect for executive coaching or for teams. It provides a vehicle for going deeper into why we make decisions, how we take in information, where we gain energy, and how we interact with the outside world. It’s a tool that can be used as easily in business as in personal relationships. The MBTI can cause people to feel vulnerable because it can reveal one’s personal nature.  It is recommended that facilitators engender trust and ask permission before sharing someone’s type. What I love about using MBTI is the “aha” moments when people make the connections and become hungry to learn more. There are many depths to plumb with the MBTI. 

DiSC is still new to me, but my initial impression is the shorter learning curve. The graphics, the approach, and materials make it an easier instrument to understand. Additionally, the materials allow for easy comparison to others within an organization via reports, and publisher Wiley continues to add new tools such as Agile EQ and Productive Conflict. DiSC tends to describe behaviors rather than personality traits and some prefer the more detached assessment for the workplace.

CPP, publisher of MBTI, has created new online tools that are interactive and easy to use for training, and has even developed a mobile app that is great for teams to use in comparing their results. Myers-Briggs is much more accessible than it was when it first started becoming widely used, even than when I was first certified, let alone my mom in the 80s.

Either MBTI or DiSC provides a common language for how we know ourselves and others. It gives us words for talking about how we communicate with one another and how we can get better. Whichever you chose, use it long enough, and consistently so that your team develops a shared experience. I believe that MBTI leans more towards who we are at the core and DiSC tends to reveal behavior-based personality, but they both can provide great insights. Facilitators might prefer MBTI for coaching and DiSC for teams, but it’s often what the client prefers.

Whichever you choose, DiSC or MBTI, either way you can’t go wrong. Both are great tools for gaining insights about how we work together; our similarities and our differences. Either path you choose will help you with knowing and being known.