Bolton Inventory and DISC Assessment

 

                There are so many differing options within the world of personality and behavioral assessments which look to measure knowledge, skills, dispositions, and other factors that help make up a person’s character or identity. In this post I will be looking at how Bolton’s Inventory differs and relates to the DISC assessment. Bolton’s Inventory measures by behavioral styles, these being, expressive, amiable, driver, and analytical. While the DISC assessment defines these for areas as dominance, influence, conscientiousness, and steadiness. Since both assessments are gauged on a quadrant system, I will mainly assess how each assessment defines the respective quadrants and how this can be applied to group work.

              When dissecting a DISC assessment I found that it focuses more on the individual and the traits which the person may have. For example, my own DISC results showed that I am a S/C, a steady conscientious. Each category then had traits that were most applicable to me based off my assessment results. The DISC assessment functions off the belief that you build an effective team by having a well-rounded mix of each style. However, Bolton’s inventory focuses more on the group interaction of each style after you have been defined as such. After taking Bolton’s test and determining that I am an analytical it shows traits that my style has, such as logical and thorough. However, Bolton’s inventory also provides us with strengths and weaknesses that each style provides to a group as well as how styles should be adapted to other for effectiveness. Click here to see a few charts explaining each styles traits, strengths, weaknesses, and style adaptions. Both styles which I received, analytical and S/C, tend to have very similar styles as we see both described as systematic and reserved. This shows that while each behavioral assessment uses different lines of question, verbiage, and group design, they still hold many similarities at the core. Giving both styles validity in results.

              Both assessments focus on group cohesion through a behavior-based lens but emphasize how to create the quality of cohesion in differing manners. This is the main distinction to be made. Bolton’s assessment focuses on style-to-style interaction while DISC looks to create a complete group of each style to reach effective work levels. It should be noted that the DISC assessment I was able to access was a free version and that more in depth paid versions do exist. I would have to imagine that the more in-depth assessments would as well provide further knowledgeable information to understanding what each style means or how it interacts with the others. As well the DISC assessment is extremely popular and has been taken by more than 50 million individuals with a perceived accuracy of 88.49% (Jones & Hartley, 2013), meaning colleagues see that the attributed styles given to those they know from the test are largely viewed to be accurate or describing the individual well. 

              To conclude, the styles main variation lies in how they use each personality style, and the four quadrants that styles fall under are all fairly similar. There are many other good behavioral based assessments that I would recommend like the HIGH5 which is a strengths-based test that focuses solely on development of promising attributes and is popular with in 95% of Fortune 500 companies.

DISC Personality Testing. (2021, July 28). Retrieved January 22, 2022, from https://discpersonalitytesting.com/

Harper, H. (2022, January 13). The best personality tests in ranking order (2022 update). WorkStyle. Retrieved January 22, 2022, from https://www.workstyle.io/best-personality-test

Jones, C. S., & Hartley, N. T. (2013). Comparing Correlations Between Four-Quadrant And Five-Factor Personality Assessments. American Journal Of Business Education.

Slowikowski, M. K. (2005). Using the disc behavioral instrument to guide leadership and Communication. AORN Journal, 82(5), 835–843. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0001-2092(06)60276-7