The history of DISC assessment can be divided into three parts, namely Marston’s era, Clarke’s era and Bonnsetter’s era. William Moulton Marston’s research on behavior assessment proved to be the foundation for DISC assessment. He identified primary attributes of an individual’s personality. This became the cornerstone of modern day DISC assessment.
Evolution of DISC Assessment
Here are some more interesting facts pertaining to the evolution of DISC assessment:
- Marston’s era: Dr. William Moulton Marston, a Harvard scholar, authored a book titled, The Emotions of Normal People in 1928. In this book, Marston identified the building blocks of behavioral responses as dominance, influence, submission (now steadiness) and caution (now compliance).
- Clarke’s era: In 1940, Walter Clarke created an instrument called the ‘Activity Vector Analysis.’ This tool quantifies an individual’s perception about oneself vis-à-vis how the person wants to be perceived by others. The dichotomy between the two perceptions revealed remarkable insights, following which Cleaver modified it further in 1950 and developed the ‘Forced Choice Instrument’ that consisted of 24 questions.
- Bonnstetter’s era: In the 1970′s Bill J. Bonnstetter, a pioneer in behavior assessment established Target Training International (TTI) and TTI Performance Systems, Ltd. In 1984. he created the first computerized version of DISC assessment. In addition, Bill J. Bonnstetter received two patents, one for developing personalized reports that integrated values and behaviors, and another for TTI’s job benchmarking process. Presently, more than 5 million people have benefitted from over 30 softwares, based on Bonnstetter’s assessments.
Effective DISC assessment and behavior assessment solutions embody the expertise of Your Ultimate Success (YUS). With such tremendous systematic implementation, it becomes possible to do away with even minor employee related glitches and optimize an organization’s productivity and excellence.
