On February 4, 2020 I blogged about The Toastmasters Pathways Level 2 project on Understanding Your Communication Style. Then I was working in the Presentation Mastery path. Now I’m working on Visionary Communication, and doing the styles project once again. The project has a twelve-item quiz for determining how you rank on the four communication styles shown above – Direct, Analytical, Initiating, or Supportive. I’ve shown them with a character from the original Star Trek TV series who displays that style. You can remember them via the acronym DAIS (which also is the term for a raised platform larger than a podium). The division into styles is a useful tool for thinking about how you communicate, but it should not be taken too seriously.
Recently there have been two articles in Toastmaster magazine about this project. The first, by Bill Brown, is on page 9 of the May 2022 issue, and is titled Understanding Your Communication Style. The second, by Greg Glasgow, is on pages 20 to 23 of the June 2022 issue and is titled Direct, Initiating, Supportive, or Analytical? Mr. Glasgow’s article has a section titled A Short Style History which begins with a paragraph stating:
“The concept of communication styles has been around for a long time. In 1928 the American psychologist William Moulton Marston published Emotions of Normal People, a book in which he described four primary behavioral styles: dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance. From this book a world of different communication style families was born.”
But he omits stating the acronym DISC, which is how these styles currently are described, or telling us that there are doubts about them. My blog post discussed more history, and referred to a New York Times article 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. There is another article by David Burkus on April 6, 2020 titled Personality Tests are Useless (Most of them anyway). He also has a thirteen-minute YouTube video titled Personality Tests Are Useless | DISC, Myers-Briggs(MBTI), Enneagram and almost all the others.
The division into four styles used by the Pathways project is not the worst classification. That dubious honor goes to the one in the Wikipedia article on Behavioral communication. As shown above, it says the four styles are Assertive, Aggressive, Passive, and Passive-Aggressive. Assertive is the only desirable one. They must never have heard the Sesame Street song One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others). This classification also turned up in an article by Julia Martins at Asana on June 6, 2023 titled The 4 communication styles every manager should know.
Even worse there is another version with five styles in an article by Don Weber at Entrepreneur on February 2, 2023 titled How your communication style affects your sales performance. As shown above, it adds a Manipulative style and renames Passive as Submissive.
The three or four styles other than Assertive surely would be summarized by Daffy Duck with his famous catchphrase - that You’re Despicable. (The image of Daffy came from Wikimedia Commons).
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