Case Study Focus:

• DISC assessment

• Significant D Behavioral Adaptation

Dana was a serial entrepreneur with a network marketing background. Her cleaning business became moderately successful but kept her very busy. While her husband was the face of the company, she was the brains behind the whole operation. All the while, Dana’s husband was very degrading and emotionally abusive toward her. She eventually sold the business, left her husband, and remarried someone who provided a much healthier relationship. 

Dana asked me for some coaching because she felt stuck in her most recent business venture. She loves cooking and has a sixth sense of how to put food together. So Dana got into creating different flour blends but didn’t know how to monetize them. From our sessions, I could tell that Dana was having an issue with confidence. She was constantly second-guessing herself and holding back in several areas, personally and professionally.

Dana was also in denial due to toxic positivity. She had been in network marketing and had deeply internalized the message that if you stay relentlessly positive, things will be great. This toxic positivity caused her to discount any suggestion that she had issues with her confidence. As her coach, I needed a way to get through to her. Dana loved assessments and was very interested in personal development. She did journaling and meditation — all the things you’re “supposed” to do to get to know yourself better. So I recommended she take a DISC assessment, and that’s when I saw her confidence measure.

Dana’s natural style was very outgoing and people-y, with a high I (94) and a significant amount of S (64). Her C (8) was very low. In her adapted behavior DISC chart, the I, S, and C stayed stable, but the D dropped significantly (from 48 to 32). This significant drop in D confirmed what I already suspected. I explained to her the tale of the two behavior graphs—one shows your most comfortable behavior style, and the other shows ways you are changing your behavior because of external or internal pressures or beliefs. 

I asked Dana, “Are there ever times you want to say something but don’t? Can you think of situations where you want to be more assertive than you are? Times when you feel less confident than usual?” These questions helped her break through the toxic positivity and accept that she had an issue with her confidence. 

Seeing her behavior profile reflected back at her activated an interruption to Dana’s deeply ingrained patterns of denial and brought into focus patterns she wasn’t consciously aware of. Gaining this level of awareness allowed for the beginning of a powerful coaching experience. It helped Dana shift how she saw herself, and she began recording all of the times she didn’t say what she wanted to say. She also made the connection between her confidence issues today and a traumatic experience she had with a nun in first grade who told her she was stupid for not being able to recite the alphabet backward. Dana recognized that this confidence-damaging trauma was only made worse by her emotionally abusive ex-husband. 

This assessment was necessary to know what questions to ask. Without this insight from DISC, getting Dana to acknowledge such deeply ingrained patterns would have been much more difficult, taken much longer, and may not have ever happened. 

Two years later, Dana retook the DISC assessment. Her D was naturally higher (64) than the first time she took the assessment (48), and although the adaptation of lowering her D (42) was still there, her natural and adapted D were both higher — showing significant growth in her confidence. Overall, she was more assertive and felt like her voice was valuable. 

“I’m no longer feeling like I shouldn’t speak up,” said Dana. 

The DISC assessment and insights from her adapted behaviors allowed Dana to discover who she was and determine how much space she wanted to take when she showed up somewhere.