Kolb and DiSC

Wading into the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory,  I was excited to find out where I landed. When reading about Transformative Learning experiences in our textbook the other day I thought about moments in my life that might have met that threshold of the books cited definition from Mezirow, "Transformative learning is essentially a learning process of making meaning of one's experience," or "an enhanced level of awareness of the context of one's beliefs and feeling, a critique of their assumptions and particularly premises, an assessment of alternative perspectives . . ."

With this in mind, one moment stood out. Years ago, during a contentious merger of two large, rival companies, our executive leadership staff was tasked with performing a DiSC personality review as a group.  There was no greater transformative learning moment for me in my business life then when I found out I was an S in the DiSC personality assessment and that my nemesis Bob, was a D. There it was in black in white that we were opposites in what we were looking for from life, how we wanted to work, how we wanted to interact, and what techniques worked best to communicate with one another. We continue to use DiSC personality assessments in our Leadership Training in my new company as well as Myers-Briggs. I understand and have read numerous articles like Ron Soak's A warning against using DiSC/Myers-Briggs profiling in the workplace from Medium magazine where he states "And it’s this absence of any scientific credibility that should really be the biggest red flag that gets you to seriously question the likes of DiSC, Myers-Briggs." Perhaps I'm the type of learner who needs to be pigeonholed or and categorized first before I can build more. Despite the warnings about it's ability to profile, Bob and I did communicate more effectively following that exercise.

For a while, I worked with a major upstream oil field development organization on the West Coast that had bought into the idea of these personality assessments that all field and office employees had to take them, then wear a badge that told others what their assessments were. The intent was that just by approaching and reading the badge the employees could better able to communicate with one another. My subjective interviews of whether or not the system provided for better communication found that the employees did not think it helped much.

Was it merely knowing my personality and Bob's that helped during our merger misunderstandings? Was that the transformative experience. No. It was the experience of working through the characteristics of the different personalities with the group and hearing from Bob what exactly makes him tick that made the experience memorable and transformative. It wasn't just the knowledge that made the learning meaningful but the experience that led to the use of the knowledge. Regretfully, mine and Bob's working relationship wouldn't be healed by the understanding of our DiSC personalities alone, but it certainly made things more bearable while we did work together. I now enjoy seeing and creating those same moments of learning and experiences whenever we use these personality tests in our leadership training and always provide the same caveats to the trainees about the ultimately imprecise nature of the exercise.

Because of this experience, I found myself eager to determine just what type of learning style fit me.   Turns out I am a Diverging learning style and have a personality that balances along two or more learning styles. Secondly, as I read the characteristics of this style, much like reading my horoscope, I found my self agreeing with the characteristics that define me. Although I know this is not definitive nor might it help me in a conclusive or decisive way, in nonetheless reminded me of Bob and my DiSC experience and how much easier my life became once I was able to put him and myself into the correct category.  Fun, certainly. Intriguing and possibly helpful, hardly. Definitive, not at all.