The Toastmasters Pathways Level 2 project on Understanding Your Communication Style says there are four communication styles. Where did they come from?

Last week I gave a speech for the Understanding Your Communication Style project in Level 2 of Pathways. The project can be downloaded here. That project contains a 12 item quiz for determining your communication style(s). My results are shown above in a bar chart, with references to characters from Star Trek. Taking the quiz was useful. At 50%, my most predominant style was Direct (for which the best adjective is decisive) – and is to be expected for someone who spent a couple decades doing engineering consulting on failure analysis, involving figuring out why stuff busted or rusted. At 42% my second style was Analytical (logical) – reasonable for one who spent his decade long first career as a metallurgist doing research at two large corporations. The other 8% was Initiating (enthusiastic). I got a zero for Supportive (approachable), although long ago I was a medic in the Air Force Reserve (from 1972 to 1978). The project was useful for getting me to stop and think about whether I should continue with the Direct and Analytical styles I had while working - now that I have been retired for a couple years.     

As shown above, the project mentions four styles, which can be described by boxes and with the acronym DAIS. When I see four boxes arranged to form a rectangle, then I also expect to see an explanation using perpendicular axes for two factors at low and high values. 

As shown above, I have added them for another four different types used in the Wikipedia article on Behavioral Communication. Their four styles are: Assertive, Passive, Passive-Aggressive, and Aggressive. But only the Assertive style can be considered positive. The other three can best be described via Daffy Duck’s catchphrase: “You’re despicable!”

I got curious, and searched to locate where the four styles in the Pathways project came from. I found an article by Sean Ellis at Life Coach Directory on November 29, 2018 titled Style is everything (for effective communication) which said those communication styles were aligned with four behavioral styles in the DISC model, as shown above. The behavioral styles came from William Moulton Marston (1893 – 1947), who also created the comic book character Wonder Woman. How did the DISC model wind up in Toastmasters? When I looked on the Toastmasters International web site I found DISC mentioned in the Accredited Speaker profile page for Dr. Dilip Abayasekara (who was President in 2005-2006) – he is a certified DiSC (R) trainer. DISC also is mentioned in an article by Mitch Mirkin titled Communication Guru Lisa B. Marshall on pages 12 and 13 in the August 2016 issue of Toastmaster magazine. I found two other articles by Dr. Abayasekara. One at Squarespace is titled The behavioral connection to effective communication. Another is a newsletter titled How does your preferred behavioral style affect your communication style?

Of course, there are many other ways to describe behavior. There is a 21-section article at BusinessBalls on Personality Theories and Types. Another article by Richard C. Emmanuel titled Do certain personality types have a particular communication style? in the International Journal of Social Science and Humanities (Vol. 2, No. 1, April 2013) has a table listing sixteen different sets of four types for a time span ranging from the Bible and the ancient Greeks up to the 21 st century.  

Three recent articles have cautioned about DISC and other models. At Medium on February 2, 2019 there is an article by Ron Soak titled A warning against using DiSC/Myers-Briggs profiling in the workplace. An article in The New York Times on September 17, 2019 by Emma Goldberg is titled Personality Tests Are the Astrology of the Office, and subtitled Psychometric tests like Color Code, Myers-Briggs and DiSC have become a goofy part of corporate life. But what happens when we take them seriously? A post by Steven Novella, MD, at his Neurologica blog on January 17, 2020 is titled Personality Test Pseudoscience – Swedish Edition.

Dr. Novella links to an article by psychologist Dan Katz at the Swedish Skeptics Society titled How Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time. It is about a popular book by Thomas Erikson titled Surrounded by Idiots: the four types of human behavior and how to effectively communicate with each in business (and in life). As shown above, Erikson had restated DISC into four colors. For 2018 the Swedish Skeptics Society named Erikson as Fraudster of the Year. So, DISC just is pop psychology drivel that should not be taken seriously.

There is nothing that limits us to four types though. Dan Katz’s article mentions the Big Five personality model (shown above), which is described both in a Wikipedia page and in section ten of the previously mentioned BusinessBalls article. The Big Five has a rational basis.     

How about six types? Dr. Taibi Kahler developed a Process Communication Model with six, as shown above. They are described briefly on a Wikipedia page and explained by him in a six-minute YouTube Video. He has described the history in a long article from 2013 titled Forty Five Years and Counting … on You.

If you would prefer a mystical discussion using even more styles (nine), then there is the Enneagram of Personality shown above (using this diagram). Nine items might be rationally explained by using perpendicular axes for two factors at low, medium, and high values (like a Tic Tac Toe game board). But that might imply the middle type somehow was more special, so the diagram is not drawn that way.

Whether you are rational or mystical you can find a classification of styles to like.