DISC Profiles of Famous Individuals
Adam Stamm
Learn the DISC Style of Anyone Without an Assessment
Have you ever wondered about the DISC Style of a celebrity or person you see in the news?
During a DISC Training workshop, we teach a skill called People Reading that you can use to identify anyone’s DISC Style.
People Reading only requires you to learn the DISC Model’s foundational concepts and you have an opportunity to interact with the person who you are predicting about.
Obviously, People Reading is limited because you actually need to be able to talk with the person. If you are like me, this doesn’t allow you to really know any celebrity’s DISC Style.
Fortunately, now there is technology available that leverages the DISC Model and LinkedIn to allow you to learn more about anyone with a profile. The tool is called DISC Ai.
To give you an idea of how it works, here are the DISC Profiles of a few celebrities: Barrack Obama, Oprah, and Bill Gates.
Barack Obama's DISC Profile: CD-Style
In Barack Obama’s recent autobiography, A Promised Land, he details how he sought to fill his cabinet with individuals with different opinions.
He enjoyed the challenge of finding the best answer through constant questioning. This behavior is a classic example of a person who has the CD/DC Personality Style.
Bill Gate's DISC Profile: C-Style
Bill Gates has a C Personality Type. He seeks accuracy in his work. Therefore, he is deliberate and relies on reason to make the best decision.
Bill Gates completed a DISC Profile and you can see his actual profile instead of a prediction of his style.
Oprah Winfrey's DISC Profile: Id-Style
To capture the attention of millions of people through a television show takes a highly influential person.
Oprah’s predicted personality style is an ID/DI-style. She is charismatic, social, and takes risks. Perfect for someone looking to start a media empire!
While it’s fun to determine the personality types of famous people, we have found that DISC is a great tool for helping teams build a better culture, for managers who want to be better managers, and for salespeople who want to approach their clients with communication that matches their customer’s preferences.
How Predicting DISC Styles Works
Balancing Accuracy and Convenience
The world of prediction has grown immensely since the emergence of better language models and algorithms.
Tools like ChatGPT have allowed AI to develop deep roots in our organizations and how we work. Unfortunately, there is often a wide gap between the convenience of these tools and the accuracy of what they produce.
Fortunately, the founders of Cyrstal recognized that if you are going to build a tool that aims to establish quicker and deeper relationships, you can’t sacrifice accuracy. Otherwise, it would just be a good tool for predicting the DISC Style of famous people whom you have few opportunities to interact with.
Cyrstal uses the DISC Model’s framework for identifying a person’s personality and combines it with:
Below is a quick overview of the model and how it is used within a normal DISC Assessment:
First Ask:
Does this person challenge what they hear, or are they more open to new ideas and possibilities?
Then Ask:
Is this person more open to taking risks? Or would they prefer a solution with a more calculated and methodical approach?
The DISC Basic Assessment asks a person 28 questions that seek to place a person within these two dimensions.
With text-sample analysis and attribute analysis, we can determine similar answers by ascribing a point value and weighting what someone writes or comments on LinkedIn.
Here is an example of how it would work with Text Sample Analysis:
- LinkedIn Profile includes phrases like “Return on investment.” This type of phrase is strongly correlated with the D-Personality Type.
- LinkedIn Profile includes phrases like “Plain awesome.” This type of phrase is strongly correlated to the I-Personality Type.
- LinkedIn Profile includes phrases like “Weekly meetings.” This phrase is strongly correlated with the S-personality type.
- LinkedIn Profile includes phrases like “Continuously evaluated.” These types of phrases are strongly correlated with the C-Personality Type.
Similarly, Attribute Analysis can assign a weight to how someone describes themselves on their LinkedIn Profile.
Here is the probability of each DISC Style calling themself a “Founder” on their LinkedIn Profile:
- D Style = 40% more likely
- I Style = 80% more likely
- S Style = 6% less likely
- C Style = 75% less likely
Obviously, this is a very limited set of data, what the tool collects is much, much larger and it gets smarter as more people use the tool so the algorithm can check predictions against someone actually taking the DISC assessment.
How to Start Using DISC
The best way to leverage DISC isn’t just finding out someone’s profile like Bill Gates, Barack Obama, or Oprah Winfrey.
It’s using the concepts when working with these individuals (or anyone!) to form deeper and quicker connections with them.
When DISC becomes installed as a common reference language in an organization or group, information about motivations and behavior is transmitted more easily, and misunderstandings become less and less frequent.
If you want to take the first step in using DISC, consider taking our free DISC profile or fill out the form below to talk to us about how you think DISC could be useful for you or your organization.