Wiley Releases Article Comparing Everything DiSC with Other Industry Leading Assessment Tools

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Wiley Releases Article Comparing Everything DiSC with Other Industry Leading Assessment Tools

One of the most frequent questions that we get about Everything DiSC is about how it compares to other leading assessment tools. Recently, Wiley, the parent company behind Everything DiSC, released an article with a thorough comparison that we think is valuable to anyone considering these tools for their organization. We recently sat down with Mike Todd, CEO of Learning Unlimited to get his take on the value that this article brings.

Article: DiSC vs. MBTI, CliftonStrengths, Predictive Index, and Insight Discovery

Why do you think that this is an important article for anyone considering Everything DiSC?

Well, the bottom line, from my point of view was this was the first time I saw a good competitive analysis or real comparison among the different assessments that are out there. And from my point of view, I hear from people all the time and even wondered myself about how different assessments stack up against each other. And this article does a wonderful job of laying out the basics, unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Do you often get customers who ask you about how Everything DiSC compares to other tools?

We get that question all the time. Not only do the people that get certified with us for Everything DiSC, but routinely when people learn about the kind of work, I’m in, they will frequently say or reference some of these other references or some of these other tools that are listed here. And they are always curious to know how they stack up because people always have their own impressions about what the benefits and pluses are versus you know, one versus the other.

And everybody has their favorite frequently without really knowing much about the others.

Who will get the most out of this article?

I think for anybody that is in the profession of human resources and in a leadership role inside their organization, these personality profiles and assessments are becoming increasingly popular, organizations are constantly trying to figure out how to get their people to work together better. And these tools, all of them, contribute to making a workplace a better place.

So frequently, I would say it is the H.R. folks, as well as the executives inside of organizations that would be interested in this kind of information and being able to see the side-by-side comparison.

What is your experience with these tools and how do they compare to Everything DiSC?

I have run into all the others in the marketplace, and we use a couple of the other ones I routinely use. CliftonStrengths as a Gallup Certified Strengths coach, so I know that tool very, very well.

And Myers-Briggs is a tool that we have used over the years internally for ourselves and have even facilitated around the others. We have had clients use them, but we have not used them directly. DiSC from our point of view, going back 30 years, is the one that we always pull out as the primary go-to. Just because it is so straightforward, it is so simple, it is so easy to make a common language inside your organization.

It tends to give people the most insight that they can do something with to get some results in their relationships, as opposed to some of these others that are sometimes a bit more complicated and just have languages that are not as easy to speak.

What are your insights about the purpose of these tools?

I would say primarily, the purpose of Everything DiSC is about relationships and culture building, so it is about as applicable as you can get. CliftonStrengths, again, is one that I love and know very, very well. It is very much focused on self-insight in terms of understanding yourself and your own strengths and themes of talent.

The MBT is also a lot like CliftonStrengths in the sense that it is more self-insight as well. Predictive Index is the one that some of our clients have used, but we have never used it directly, and that is primarily because it is more of a hiring tool. I know it has some broader application, but that’s usually where organizations start when they use predictive index and then discovery or insights.

Discovery is also like DiSC, but not as complex and not as robust, but it is about relationships and culture building much like DiSC.

Back to Everything DiSC. You know, its purpose, from our point of view, and the reason we still use it here 30 years in the business, is just that it really has the ability to stick inside an organization. It is the one tool that if you bring it into your organization, you do not have to worry about it being one of those, “Oh yeah, we took that tool back in 1993. I remember it. It was neat, but we did not do anything with it.”

All these tools have that same risk, but if you’re wanting to really implement something in your organization strategically and have it stick Everything DiSC is the way to go because there’s really no other assessment that’s straightforward that both gives somebody their own insights in terms of their own behaviors, but then also helps strengthen and build an organization’s culture.

What are your insights about the complexity of these tools?

As far as complexity goes, no doubt about it, most of these assessment tools are very straightforward and simpler and Everything DiSC falls in that category.

The most complex, I would say is Myers-Briggs. Just because you have sixteen different types to wrap your head around, once you get the methodology down, you can use it. But it is virtually impossible to pick up on the nuances of your colleagues and your workmates unlike DiSC and some of the others. So that really ends up being a challenge.

Probably secondarily would be CliftonStrengths, even though it is straightforward, you are talking about 34 different themes. You have to wrap your head around it as opposed to again, Everything DiSC, which is four basic styles with 12 distinct letter combinations, but the simplicity of it, I would say, is really one of its bestselling points.

Why does the Everything DiSC Model stand out from the other tools?

The Everything DiSC map or model as compared to these other competing assessments really stands out because while it’s very simple visually when you plot your dot and see where your style is and where your dot location is, which tells you your style, all you need to do is be able to plot a work colleague’s dot on there and you can instantly see how similar you are or how different you are in a variety of different ways.

And it gives both individuals or just the individual that is looking at the map a sense of where they need to stretch to be more effective. So that is one of the most elegant takeaways from Everything DiSC that you do not really get in any of the other models. You just do not see how simply expressed a relationship is on that model or on the model as opposed to the Everything DiSC model.

It is just that that map you can look at it and make sense of it right away. Whether you know the language very well or not, you know where you are going to have similarities and differences with somebody, and you know how you will need to stretch to be more effective.

How does the research behind Everything DiSC make it superior to the other models?

The bottom line, from my point of view, in terms of why research is important as it relates to these different assessments, is that Wiley is well-known as a well-established research organization.

They have been around for two centuries. So, when an organization’s been around 200 years, that tells you something right out of the chute. But in addition to that, they are also research organizations. So, they spend a lot of time paying attention to the market. They are based on the sciences. They are based on university education quite extensively. They have been in publishing for a long time.

From my point of view as a practitioner, I just love how current the research is. And if you want to stack up Everything DiSC compared to these other assessments that are out there, this article for me did an excellent job laying out the different reliability factors as well as the validity factors. And it also showed what I always suspected was that Everything DiSC is far above these others when it comes to reliability and validity and again being able to connect it to current market needs.

Wiley is constantly looking at its data and research to make sure that it is addressing what’s happening in the world and giving people what they need to solve the problems they’ve got in the workplace.

How is a model that is development focused outperform information-focused models?

One of the major advantages of Everything DiSC is that it really focuses on development more in terms of the insights and the information that you get with these other tools. The reality is these tools are all great because they give you information on yourself and being able to be more effective in your relationships and as a leader starts with learning about yourself.

The switch, though, that you want to be able to flip with all these tools is actually moving into a development mode. Now that I have got this information, what do I do with it? And that is another beautiful thing about Everything DiSC: they have really developed an entire process. Not only are you getting excellent information in this profile, but you are also learning how you can grow and develop with it.

And even having the opportunities with some real strategic insights for yourself to be able to jump in there and say, “Okay, I need to do something with this, and here’s what I can do with it.” Whereas you can take some of the others and go there, but it is not as instructive. It really takes more effort and energy to do that, for example, with CliftonStrengths and some of the other competing assessments.

And that is the beauty of Everything DiSC, Wiley is always helping learners figure out, “Okay, how can you now apply this? How can you do something with it?” Because the information and the insights of all these tools are great and interesting, and intriguing, and people like to learn about themselves. But the bottom line is the actual application and doing something with it.

And that is again another one of the beautiful things of Everything DiSC. They help you do something with it because it is focused purely on taking the insight and information and moving it into development. So, it is really about development in ways that these competing assessments, they just don’t go there.

Can you tell us about the digital experience behind Everything DiSC?

That is another nice thing about Everything DiSC. And again, having Wiley as the owner and publisher, they have been on the cutting edge for a long time of basically building out a more robust experience online in terms of digitally.

What can you do with this online to keep things going? Early on, Wiley realized that, hey, Everything DiSC is immensely popular. People love it to the tune of 90% or better. However, we have got some real opportunities to create a learning platform where people can really return and learn.

So, you get this exciting assessment experience on the front end. But now what do I do with it? Yes, I have developmental opportunities. I have these strategies I walk out of with assessment here. But how now do I see my colleagues and so forth?

So just in the last two years, in fact, when COVID started, Wiley had been working in the background on this very, very complex, yet straightforward process called Catalyst, or rather I should call it a learning platform where you go in and you take your assessment, but once you’re done, you then have a variety of interactive resources and skill builders.

You have podcasts in there that speak to you specifically based on your letter combination and style. You have the history and the research background built into that. And again, all this information is at your fingertips. It is easily accessible, and it is bridging that gap that Wiley saw around return and learn. And the cool thing is, this is just the start.

They are going to go deeper and wider in terms of making it more effective and useful because practitioners like us, as well as Wiley, for that matter, want people to continue to speak the language, they want people to continue to get the results. So, if you have a platform where you can go to learn even more about this and be able to take it to another level, that’s a beautiful thing about Catalyst. It is more robust than any of the competitors out there by far. And the cool thing is, it is only going to get better.

One feature that is just unmatched is the comparisons feature. So, if you take this with your organization, which most people do, you will see all your workmates and colleagues in the comparison area. And I can, for example, pull up James and say, “Hey, James, how do we stack up to each other on a variety of continua?,” and it’ll show where you and I are very different in certain ways. And it also gives you strategies and tips for being able to interact more effectively with each other.

So, from my point of view, it is almost endless in terms of its application. You have opportunities to build trust. If you are a leader, you can go in and pull up a new employee, or new direct report and see how to interact with them more effectively.

And again, just from a digital experience, nobody else has that kind of interactivity and it is only going to get better. And again, Wiley That’s what they do. So, I am excited about what technology is going to continue to do. But with the Catalyst platform right now, there is nothing out there that’s like it. And again, it gives you a lot for your money.

I just really, really appreciate it, as do our clients.

Why would you want someone to read this article?

Okay. So, in summary, the new article that is out there by Wiley does this comparison for me, and it was great for me because I am in the market seeing a lot of these play out. I was really impressed with the balance, even though it is being put out by Wiley, which of course is the author and publisher of Everything DiSC.

I appreciated the balance that it showed and the accuracy it showed as it related to comparing these assessments that are out there. So, anybody that is in the land of HR, or making these kinds of decisions for their organizations, you want to get these decisions right. And there is, there’s so much different information out there that makes one sound so much better than the other.

And they are all very useful. And if you read this article, you will see that it also will make the case, which we believe and we have seen it play out over the past 30 years, that Everything DiSC is unmatched. If you want something that is very strategic in terms of a common language that your organization can speak to strengthen sales, strengthen management relationships, grow leaders, to lessen conflict, you just cannot beat Everything DiSC and I think this lays that case out nicely without too much bias.

I think anybody that reads that will see it. But I think in and of itself as a starting point, if I am shopping around for the right tool for my organization, to me this is an excellent starting point that will not compare with many other things that you will find out there, but it can give you some direction.

And I think it succinctly gives you the information you need to make a quality decision.

Mike Todd

Mike Todd

Learning Unlimited Corporation (LUC) ambassador; a battle-tested 29-year enterprise. LUC has experience in every industry worldwide with leaders at all levels. LUC exists to help people and organizations LEARN. Developing leaders, building cohesive teams, and advancing healthy cultures through consulting, training, and strengths coaching is our joy, our privilege, and our craft.

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