Welcome to your Discus Personal report

This report will give you some vital pointers to help you understand the way you currently behave, and to help you build an effective strategy to help you reach your goals.

We don't claim that this report can give you all the answers, but based on your responses to the Discus Personal questionnaire, we hope you'll find some important insights and useful life tips in this report.

What's in this report?

We've broken down the information in this report into a series of different sections, with each covering an important element of your personal behaviour.

• About You
  An introduction to your personal style
• Your Core Values
  The heart of your personality
• Abilities, Strengths, Limitations
  Understanding the advantages, and the limits, of your style
• Personal Development
  Directions for change in your personal style
• Relating to Other People
  Interacting with those around you
• Your Work Style
  How your personality affects the way you work
• Planning Your Career
  Finding a role that suits your personal style

Important information about this report

Your report has been compiled from your answers by an automatic process based purely on the answers you gave to the questionnaire. That means that it's completely objective, and it's also direct - in assessing your existing strengths, and also in making suggestions that might help you develop towards your goals.

While reading your report, it's important to be aware of a subtle effect that psychologists call confirmation bias. In the context of a report like this, that means that most people will tend to agree with the most positive comments about themselves, and reject less positive remarks. Often, though, it's exactly the suggestions that challenge preconceptions that are the most useful, so try to weigh the contents of the report accordingly.

That doesn't mean that we insist everything in this report must be true! The details given here are based on your answers to the questionnaire, and we hope you'll find them truly useful in helping to understand yourself, or at least give you some important topics to think about. However, the personalities of human beings are immensely variable - probably infinitely so - and a simple test like this can only cover a finite number of possibilities.

With all that in mind, we hope you find much in your report to engage your interest and suggest possibilities for the future.

What are the most basic elements of your personality?

We analyse the answers you gave to the questionnaire to work out the values for four fundamental factors in your personal style. From the combinations of these values, we can tell a great deal about your personality. These four most basic factors are shown in this graph:

So, what does that mean in practice?

Communicating with others lies at the heart of your personal style. Positive and rewarding relationships are the most important aspect of life for you, and you will often seek to develop strong connections with others. You're an outgoing and positive type of person, but you're also a sympathetic and receptive one, and ready to listen to others' points of view.

What are your most important traits?

Some of the most prominent personality traits in your style are listed here:

• Optimism
  Tending to expect events to work out for the best.
• Sociability
  Enjoying the company of other people.
• Light-heartedness
  Showing a humorous attitude, and a readiness to look on the bright side of life.
• Communication
  Interacting positively and effectively with other people.
• Cheerfulness
  Maintaining a positive and optimistic attitude to life.

What are your most important values?

Friendship and community are key values for you. You're motivated to develop open and trusting relationships with others, and consequently you find conflict or disagreement to be unpleasant. You're not a strongly assertive type of person, and you tend to depend more on your personable and persuasive style to convince others of your point of view.

Values are an important feature of any personality, and you can find out more about your particular set of values in the 'Core Values' section later in this report.

More about your general approach

Here's a selection of 'Style Keynotes' that highlight various important features of your personal style:

• Openness is the defining feature of your style: you're ready to accept others' thoughts and feelings, and open-minded regarding their viewpoints and ideas. You tend to be socially outgoing and gregarious, but you're also receptive to others, and ready to sympathise with their points of view.
• Other people's attitudes are important to you: you like to feel that others accept you, and take your ideas and feelings seriously. In part because of this, you're a sociable and gregarious type of person, but you're also receptive to those around you, and ready to show sympathy when it's needed.
• You tend to take an optimistic view of things, and even in difficult situations you'll look on the positive side. Your pleasant and generally trusting approach means that you're often able to help resolve conflicts between others.

How does your personal style compare with other people?

The chart below divides personalities up into twenty-five blocks, and is set up in such a way that people are divided more-or-less equally across the chart (that is, each block generally contains about 4% of the population as a whole). We've marked the block that contains your style so you can see how it compares with the other possibilities.

Your style is quite Assertive, and highly Open.

What are 'Core Values'?

For most people, the driving forces behind their approach to life can ultimately be summed up in terms of a few brief concepts. These concepts are referred to here as 'Core Values': they're the internal 'signpost' we use to judge situations, and work out how to react to them.

How do Core Values work?

For example, let's say you're a person who values 'Challenge'. If that's the case, you'll actively seek out situations that provide you with the challenging conditions you prefer, and avoid those that don't. You'll also tend to judge events and people depending on the extent to which they fulfil this particular need.

What are your Core Values?

In this section, we've selected a few Core Values that closely match your own personal style. These are the kinds of values that underlie the way you look at life, and the way you form judgements about the events and people in your life.

• Optimism

  You're a person who likes to see the positive side of things, and you'll wish to use your outgoing and informal style to spread an equally positive attitude to those around you. You tend to take a confident and broad view of events, rather than concerning yourself with questions of detail or technicalities.

• Generosity

  You're a positive type of person who's ready to think the best of those around you and give the benefit of the doubt where necessary. You'll look for a similarly generous and open-minded approach from others, too. Fair-mindedness and tolerance are important to you, and you'll rarely act in ways that might cause unhappiness or offence.

• Openness

  As a person who freely expresses yourself to others, you'll want to feel that those around you are receptive to your thoughts and ideas. Indeed, you'll generally prefer relaxed conditions where others are as free in communication as yourself, and avoid more formal situations.

What you'll find in this section

Every different type of personality has its own distinctive strengths, and its own distinctive abilities that stem from those strengths. Those same strengths and abilities are always - without exception - balanced by limitations and disadvantages. The key to making the most of your personal style is understanding where your strengths and limitations lie. Armed with that knowledge, you can take maximum advantage of your strengths, while avoiding potential problems arising from your personal limits.

In this section, you'll find a breakdown of your most important areas of strength, each shown with all its related advantages, abilities and limitations.

What is 'personal development'?

As well as building a picture of your personality as it stands at the moment, the Discus Personal questionnaire can also extrapolate from that picture to identify the kinds of changes or adaptations you'd likely want to see in your approach. These adaptations are typically due to your perceptions of how you ideally need to behave to fit into your current life situation.

Personal Development is the process of adapting your personal style to meet these perceived requirements. In this section, we look at the kinds of directions you seem to be wanting to develop your style (based on your answers to the Discus Personal question set, of course). Where possible, we also offer a range of helpful advice to guide you towards those goals.

Changes shown in your results

This chart shows the changes in terms of your four main personality factors: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. Longer arrows indicate greater potential for change in your approach, for that particular factor. Values increase to the right of the graph, so arrows pointing right indicate that you're seeking to increase the factor in question, while arrows pointing left suggest that you're looking to decrease the factor's importance.

What these changes mean in practice

You seem to be aiming to develop a rather more formal and structured approach to your life at the moment, which implies in turn that your current life or work is demanding a more serious attitude than you generally display. There's also a suggestion that you're looking to show a more immediate and responsive side in your current conditions.

Making a change

A useful way to approach change like this is to break it down into simple steps, and think about applying each of those steps in your work and home life. Based on this assessment of your personal development targets, these are some simple approaches to change that you might find effective:

• You tend to be rather accepting in approach at present, and you can be ready to accept inconvenience where others would quickly become frustrated. If you're concerned to work towards a more assertive attitude, be a little readier to express when you've lost patience with a situation, and be prepared to abandon a course that you don't agree with.
• You'll find a more open-minded and receptive attitude valuable in the kinds of changes you seem to be looking for. Try to consider others' positions from their own point of view, in the best light you can, and be ready to take their opinions and ideas into account.
• The key feature of the approach you seem to be aiming for is spontaneity. When you find yourself considering the best option to take, rather than pausing to consider matters in detail, instead try following your most natural reaction.

How do we relate to one another?

Relationships with others are probably the key component in any discussion of personality: in fact, how we perceive others, and how others perceive us, lie at the heart of what 'personality' means.

When it comes to relating to others, it's simply not possible to understand their motivations and intentions directly: instead, it's normal to consider others' behaviour through the filter of your own attitudes and presumptions. This 'filtering' effect can have an enormous effect on the way you understand others, and on the way that others see you.

Understanding others

In this section, we look at the most important aspects of your personality when it comes to understanding and judging those around you. These are the most important things you look for when you're interacting with others, and they also help to define the kinds of preconceptions you bring to bear in communication.

• Your sociable and outgoing style means that you communicate freely with others, and generally feel at ease in social situations, or those that call on social skills. You're a person who likes to take a broad view of events, and you tend to communicate more effectively at that level than with others who wish to explore matters in intricate detail.
• As a fair and accepting type of person, you're generally open to most other personalities, and your strong communicative abilities mean that you're usually able to find common ground with other people. The main exceptions to this will probably be those individuals who are highly demanding or antagonistic: you tend to react negatively to that type of approach, making it difficult for you to relate to individuals of that kind.
• You operate on a very sociable and gregarious level, enjoying the company of others and showing both outgoing and receptive elements within your personality. You like to express yourself freely, but you're also open to others' feelings and ideas. You tend to avoid conflict, and should a dispute break out between others, you'll often take on the role of peace-maker, and try to defuse the situation calmly.

How others relate to you

Your own presumptions will necessarily affect your understanding of others' personal styles, but this is equally true of everyone else. In the same way that you tend to interpret others' attitudes in your own terms, those around you will also be applying their own 'filters' to your behaviour. Those filters can be extremely varied, and there isn't space to go into all the possible combinations here, but it is possible to make a few general comments.

• Because of your gregarious and friendly style, others will tend to respond to you in a positive way. Your combination of outgoing confidence with accepting patience means that you're able to adapt to most other different types of individuals. The sympathetic element of your style means that others are often ready to find you naturally trustworthy.
• You're a relatively trusting person, and you're open with your ideas and feelings, as well as being equally ready to listen to others. In a suitably relaxed and gregarious situation, then, others will often be ready to discuss matters openly with you.
• It's likely that your open and communicative style is generally well-received by those around you, especially if they have similarly friendly and trusting styles themselves. This may be less true of those with a more formal attitude to life, who can sometimes see people of your kind as unduly frivolous and light-hearted.

Learning to communicate more effectively

Your communication style is most effective in accepting and open circumstances, where you feel a sense of mutual trust and openness. You can communicate especially effectively in circumstances like this, and in particular you are capable of showing sympathy to those around you.

At times, you tend to react to others on a relatively instinctive level. In terms of communication, this means that you can reach intuitive conclusions about a person, based rather on a natural response rather than their actual opinions or ideas. You'll often be able to communicate more effectively with others if you take time to assimilate and consider their positions, and respond in kind, rather than reaching a conclusion based on your personal instincts.

What is your 'work style'?

Success in the work arena is as dependent on your personal style as any other aspect of life. In this section of your personal report, we look at the ways your particular defining characteristics will tend to affect the way you operate in a working environment. We also look at how you're likely to behave in some common working situations.

Your most important work skills

Every different personality type has its own associated set of work skills, and of course there are very many of these, depending on the detailed circumstances and the requirements of a particular job.

Here, we select some of the most important work skills suggested by your profile style.

• Openness
  You're a person who not only communicates openly with those around you, but who's also open to the thoughts and feelings of other people. This combination of abilities makes you an effective communicator, and in a workplace that depends on positive interaction between members of a team, your natural approach will potentially make a significant contribution.
• Building Communities
  Your capacity to work positively with those around you, and to build effective personal communication in many cases, helps to develop a sense of community and involvement for all the members of a group or team. Your willingness to co-operate with others and work in partnership with them sets a strong example to encourage a cohesive working environment.
• Building Relationships
  The strengths of your communicative style mean that you're generally effective in developing relationships, not only in your life in general, but also in a working environment. Your enthusiastic and expressive nature means that you're able to interact effectively with people of most other types.

Performance in a leadership role

The focus of your style is very much on social matters. You're interested about your relationships with others and also about their perceptions of you. As such, in the role of a leader, your decisions and actions will often be affected by your concern for others' reactions. In practice, your attitude to leadership will generally be a rather democratic and open one, as you seek input from others and take their views into account to help you make decisions.

Performance as part of a team

You have a personal style that's well adapted to teamwork, especially in a positive and open working environment. Your communicative approach will help to develop personal ties within the team and establish effective relationships, while the more persuasive element of your approach can be motivating to those around you.

What types of roles suit you best?

The key to successful career planning is to identify roles that match your natural abilities, so that they can provide a working environment where you not only feel engaged and motivated, but also make the most effective use of your natural talents. In this section, we look at some of the types of roles that will suit your style particularly well.

Remember that this analysis is based specifically on your personality style, and no other factors. Many of the roles or careers that we discuss here will also involve specialist interests, abilities or skills that lie outside the realm of this assessment. Those factors aside, these are the types of roles that match your particular personal approach.

• Retail Sales
  Retail Sales is a branch of retail work that demands an especially dynamic and self-reliant approach, combined with sufficient patience and persistence to deliver a message and convert a sale. Retail sales differs from more conventional sales approaches in that a receptive approach and a focus on building a relationship are more important than the urgency and dynamism typical of direct sales work.
• Broadcaster
  Your extremely confident style may be suited to work in a broadcasting environment (as a radio or television presenter, for example). This kind of work needs a strong sense of commitment and self-belief, as well as a capacity to perform in a polished way without feelings of nervousness or uncertainty.
• Retail Work
  A patient but responsive attitude is important in the retail sector, but so is an outgoing and positive approach, and a willingness to help others. Your personal style displays all these characteristics, and it's likely that you'd do well in retail work of some kind.

Using this report in your CV

When preparing a CV (or résumé) many people include a short summary of their personal style as part of their self-description, and the contents of this report should be helpful in defining the type of information you could include in your own CV. If you want to create a self-summary like this, the following template is tailored to your personality style, and should provide a helpful starting point.

You might also find it useful to list your most important personality traits. These are listed in the 'About You' section of this report but they are reproduced below for your convenience:

Confirmation bias
A common tendency to focus on comments that reinforce preconceptions, and disregard or reject those that challenge existing ideas.

Core value
One of the most fundamental underlying values of a personality, from which actions and behaviours tend to ultimately originate.

Filter
A series of expectations and presumptions applied by one person to another's behaviour, based on their own personal style.

Role
A set of expected or required behaviours related (for example) to a particular job.

Trait
A general term for any identifiable factor or element of the personality.