Recently I had the absolute pleasure of working with the Upper sixth form students from The Grange School 🎓
I’d been in conversation with the Head of Upper Sixth for a while as they wanted to better prepare their young adults for the next step into further education or the start of their career path. Either way, the school believes that giving them an insight into their own personality and that of others around them would be of significant benefit.
Before we enter into “at this age (18/19) their brains and personalities are not fully formed” I get it, and both the school and the students were aware of this also. However, working with the school we educated the children weeks before about what to expect and not to expect. And as they emerge into adult life and are heavily influenced by others, it is likely their personality will change slightly, but it is unlikely to be a seismic shift from one side of a DiSC map to the other.
I spent two days with 5 groups, running 10 short punchy sessions around themselves, and their preferences in communication and, for a large part we focussed on the other styles and how to adapt communication to be more effective. We expressed our “priorities” seen in the photo as “superpowers” and they fully engaged in collaborating with those different to themselves to complement each other, as well as being naturally inclined towards those of a similar personality style. The engagement of the students was more than I hoped for, the school did a great job in setting up the assessment, as nearly all 76 students felt the profiles were very accurate and resonated with them.
I agreed to do this piece of work because I was curious as to how well it would be received by the students and how accurate it would be. Also having a 12-year-old myself, and being a school governor I see the benefit of this education for young adults. If I’d known at a much younger age how my personality impacted others and thought more about how I could tailor myself, I could have avoided some communications that were traumatic for both parties...
The feedback from both The Head of Sixth form and the students has been great, it could have gone either way but I'm thrilled they were able to take away such positive learnings..
Just a few quotes from the students to share:
✔ I really enjoyed getting to see how my personality varies in different scenarios.
✔ Useful to help make the most from all interactions
✔ Able to get a deeper understanding about ourselves and reasons for the way we act sometimes.
✔ I thought the DiSC profiles were a very good insight into systems which I do subconsciously beforehand
✔ I really enjoyed finding out people who were similar to me on a DiSC profile that I had never thought would be.
✔ I found that the most useful part was the section where you saw how to cooperate with other 'types'
✔ I thought the insight into how other people view things was really interesting
#DiSC #personalityprofiling #empowerment
