Do you feel as if you’re losing yourself? Unable to focus and move forward because of everything that’s going on? One way to find yourself again is through DiSC personality discovery. It doesn’t treat mental illness but DiSC can promote mental health.

COVID-19 and the psychological pandemic

You know how if enough bugs splat your windshield, you can’t see clearly? Each bug is small, but together they can wreak havoc. The pandemic has made our emotional and psychological windshields seem impenetrable. And sometimes windshield wipers just aren’t enough. 

Millions of people are not only suffering the physical effects and side effects of COVID 19, they’re also suffering emotionally and mentally.

Frank Snowden, a historian of pandemics at Yale said: “All pandemics ‘afflict societies through the specific vulnerabilities people have created by their relationships with the environment, other species, and each other….’ Each pandemic has its own properties, and this one—a bit like the bubonic plague—affects mental health… [and he sees] a second pandemic coming ‘in the train of the COVID-19 first pandemic … [a] psychological pandemic’.”

So what do you do when you can’t see your way forward? For some of us, the only recourse is to seek professional health—swiftly and unapologetically. Such an act of self-care is a step toward sanity and peace.

DiSC to the rescue

For others, a lens adjustment may bring things into sharper focus. DiSC personality discovery can promote mental health by clearing away the mental clutter and the gunk on your emotional windshield.

DiSC is shorthand for Dominant, Influential, Steadfast or Supportive, Conscientious. They’re four personality types that we all share in some measure. A deeper understanding of your own personality and those of your colleagues may make it easier to navigate through these uncertain times.

For example, as a leader, you have to wear many hats: commander-in-chief, vision caster, and sometimes even career coach. Now it’s one thing to gauge the temperature in the boardroom, but it’s quite another to do it virtually.  And with so many emotions and psyches to deal with, now you have many more layers of economic chaos, fiscal threats, and business matters to juggle! Surely something’s got to give, right? Well that’s where DiSC comes in.

DiSC can promote mental health at your company by helping your team members understand each other. And they’ll learn what they can and cannot expect from themselves and others regarding specific crises. 

For instance, a Steadfast employee may not provide the booming voice of encouragement that a cheerleading Dominant staffer can when the team really needs it. However that same Steadfast employee will no doubt prove to be an anchor and a voice of reason possible during the crisis—just more quietly.

DiSC promotes healthy team building

The pandemic is enforcing new rules of employee engagement. So the old elitist food chain must transform into a diverse and inclusive buffet if businesses are to survive. DiSC can help managers figure out who has what to offer for this new menu. And that’s the key: everyone has something to offer; you just have to learn how to recognize it.

The ability to see everyone’s value and turn it into an asset will: 

1. Ease relational tensions—generational, racial, and otherwise
2. Facilitate conflict management
3. Transform team building into team bonding
4. Boost the overall morale of the company
5. Create a sense of emotional stability and professional security 
6. Increase the level of confidence in the company and its leadership

DiSC personality discovery is just that—an adventurous discovery of your best attributes and a chance to learn how to become an even better you. And as you grow more tolerant and accepting of yourself, you’ll “discover” how to cope with and value the personalities around you.

Aoife O’Donovan, an associate professor of psychiatry at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences in California said this: “… these times as creating the conditions for new opportunities. The challenges will be many; the fallout painful. But there is an opening for previously unthinkable change, not only to the structures of societies, but also in countless small ways — privately, personally. We have lived for months at close quarters with ourselves. We will deepen our appreciation of some of the simple things we have missed, and some of the pleasures that have helped us through, even if it is only the taste of a new season apple. And in some measure, we will know ourselves better.”

DiSC will help with that process—getting to know ourselves and each other with acceptance, inclusion, and support.