DISC PROFILES

Jason Dion:
Hi, and welcome to Your Cyber Path. I’m Jason Dion and I’m here with Kip Boyle. Hey Kip. How are you doing today?

Kip Boyle:
Hey everybody. It’s great to be here. We’re going to have a great episode today. Really looking forward to it. Jason, how are you doing?

Jason Dion:
I’m doing great. I’m just excited to be here and catch up with you. As we talk about DISC profiles and the way that people’s personality can really affect the job that they’re seeking and the job they’re going to enjoy the most. I think it’s really important that people understand how they’re wired and what they enjoy when they’re picking out a job. Otherwise, you’re going to be miserable and we spend so much of our life at our jobs that choosing the wrong one, it’s almost like choosing the wrong spouse. It’s just a miserable experience.

Kip Boyle:
Gosh. And I’ve seen so many people hate their job and they’re just going through the motions every single day, Monday through Friday, sometimes 12 hours a day. When you factor in, any type of a commute or whatnot. And I have met some really miserable people in my life and I vowed early on that I would not allow myself to get into a situation like that, if there was anything I could do, I just wouldn’t let it happen. And I’m going to tell you guys a story right now about a pretty extreme thing that I did, at least it wasn’t extreme from my perspective, because it was a good choice for me, but I think other people definitely thought it was extreme. Not everybody who knows me realizes that when I graduated from college, I went to undergraduate pilot training as a Lieutenant in the Air Force.

And I was assigned to Luke Air Force Base, which is in Mesa, Arizona. It’s actually not an Air Force base anymore. I was in the last class of undergraduate pilot training that trained there. And so right now if you go down there, it’s a municipal airport, but anyway, if you don’t know, undergraduate pilot training in the Air Force is a year long hands on school and they’re making Air Force pilots. I had to work really hard. It took me a long time. I had to do a lot of things in order to make it to UPT and I was really excited when I got there. And after about a month of ground school, they walked us out to a flight line and I got to go in a T-37 twin jet, a trainer, this big bubble canopy and sat next to my instructor. And it was fantastic.

I was there for about five months of a 12 month school. I think you can see where this is going. And I learned how to solo the jet. And I did. I flew the jet all by myself and it was really cool and it was shortly after that, I quit. I just put up my hand one day and I said, this is an awful thing I’m about to say, but this is not a good fit for me. Being a pilot is not a good idea for Kip. And it took a lot of courage for me to put my hand up because there’s a lot of pressure to stay and uncle Sam doesn’t like it when you quit. I had people tell me that if I just failed out of flight school, that it would be better for my career. So they wanted me to keep showing up every day and fail the check rides and get washed out. And I just couldn’t do that. So I quit it.

It was a bad fit for me. And so I just had to be courageous because I knew sooner or later if I didn’t stop, I would either probably damage an aircraft or maybe hurt myself or maybe hurt somebody else. It just wasn’t good. Now, I didn’t know myself is really what it kind of came down to and we don’t want you to make that kind of mistake. Jason, did you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re like, “This isn’t right for me.”

Jason Dion:
Yeah. It’s actually funny, as we were prepping for this episode and I saw your notes on the fact that you quit at a flight school, I did the same thing actually. And I don’t think you knew this, but in the Navy, when I was a young ensign, which is an 0-1 in the Navy, it’s the entry level position in the Navy. I went from being enlisted officer. And when I got picked up as an officer, I was picked up as a Naval flight officer. I did not know what that was at the time. So this is why it’s important to research the job you’re accepting.

Kip Boyle:
It sounds cool though.

Jason Dion:
It sounds really cool and I was enlisted and I put in an application to go officer. When I was enlisted, I was running nuclear reactors and I was a submarine guy. And when I put in for officer, I put in to be a new submarine officer and they were filled up and didn’t have any spots. And so they said, “Hey, last minute, you need to change that. What do you want to be?” And my career counselor said, “Hey, you should put in an NFL.” It’s a non-flying officer is what he told me. It’s the guy on the carrier who tells people when to take off and land the planes. I’m like, “Sounds great. I could do that.” So I change that and I get picked up. Off I go to OCS and off to flight school and I find out it’s actually a Naval flight officer, which means you’re the guy in the back seat, running the weapon systems in the radar and all that kind of fun stuff. Well, I’m kind of a control freak in case you can’t figure that out Kip. I like being in control.

Kip Boyle:
Well, that’s why we fight all the time.

Jason Dion:
Yeah. I mean, when you came to visit me in Puerto Rico, did I let you drive once? No, I like driving. I like being the guy behind the wheel. And so when I went to flight school in the Navy we call it API, just like UPT, I went and I started flying. And as a Naval flight officer, they have you start out flying the plane and then you do your six to 12 flights, you learn how to fly the plane. And then they say, “Okay, get in the back. And that’s where you stay for the next 20 years.” And I was doing great in the front. I was top of my class. I was really enjoying it. And they put me in the back seat and I was like, “This sucks. This is not for me. I do not want this. “

And at the time there was an oversupply of pilots and NFLs, and so they said, “Hey, if you quit, you’re going to be just kicked out of the Navy.” And they would just send people home. We don’t care if we paid for your college or anything, you’re going to go home. Well, I have a wife and two small kids at home. I’m like, I can’t be out of a job. So I just kept grinding it away. And then one day the Commander for this squadron comes in. He goes, “I’m so tired of everyone quitting and getting sent home and not getting re designated into something else in the Navy. Right now we’ve talked to BUPERS and which is the Navy personnel command. And they are going to make sure everyone is redesignated to something. If you quit, you’re going to go be a surface war officer, you’re going to drive ships, or you’re going to be an intel officer or an intelligence officer or me talk officer or something like that. You’re going to get a new job. And so that afternoon [inaudible].

Kip Boyle:
I was music to your ears.

Jason Dion:
I quit. And he goes that, wasn’t the point of my discussion Jason, why are you quitting? I’m like, “I’ve been wanting to for weeks. You finally said the thing I needed to hear.” Redesignate me. I’m good.” And so I got redesignated, but it was a matter of, I hated that job. And I just couldn’t walk out and leave. Because I had six, seven years in the Navy at this point. I was trying to make it a career and I didn’t want to just walk away with nothing. And so it is important to know what you want. I think you had a little more courage than I did because you’re like, “I’m out, I’m leaving.” For me, I’m like, “Okay, I hate this. And as soon as I have an opportunity, I’m going to leave.” And when the opportunity present itself, I did the same thing. I raised my hand said I quit and I’m out of here. But I think it’s funny that, I didn’t know that about you and you didn’t know that about me, but we both quit flight school.

Kip Boyle:
And probably a lot of people listening to this think that we’re both a couple of dummies because everybody and their brother seems to want to go to flight school and wants to fly for the military. Because they’ve seen top gun and they think it’s just the coolest thing ever. And you know what, I did too, but there’s a difference between thinking it’s the coolest thing in the world and then actually getting a chance to try it and I will never regret trying it. But the point that we’re trying to make by telling you these somewhat embarrassing stories where we’re sure we’re going to get judged by some people for doing this but, is that knowing yourself will help you set yourself up for success in your first cybersecurity job. So what you want to do is you want to match up how you like to work with the different available jobs, which is why we try to tell people when we’re first working with them, “Hey, there’s more to the career than just pen testing or whatever.”

There’s so many different jobs, take the time to learn what they are. And we have back episodes in your Cyber Podcast where we actually tour you around a typical large company, cybersecurity department and help you understand the different jobs that are available. So if you don’t understand what’s available, go back, watch those episodes, listen to those episodes and that’s that’s going to really help you. But do you like to have interactions with people throughout the day? Like a lot of interactions. Is that how you get your battery charged? Well, then you need to figure out a job that’s not going to have you staring at a computer screen all day. That is going to be awful. Or maybe that sounds like heaven to you. Like, “Oh my gosh, yes, please park me in a cubicle or let me work from home where I don’t have to talk anybody all day long and is wonderful.

Great, know that about yourself. Be okay with it and then go and find yourself a cybersecurity job where that is going to be your experience. But the issue is how do what your work preferences are? Jason, what’s your work preference? Would you rather have a lot of interaction with people or would you rather just be left alone? Do you have a preference like that?

Jason Dion:
Yeah. So this is the weird thing about me. I think some people are like this. They have the cognitive dissonance of what they think they want and what they actually want. For me, I always think I don’t like people, I want to be left alone. Leave me in my quiet little corner and I’ll just do my work and I work fine that way. I’m up here in my studio. I lock the door, I could sit here for eight hours, knock out a bunch of work and be perfectly fine. And I would always think that I hated being in environments where there’s other people and I’m running around all day. But when I worked at the national security agency, I had a choice between two different positions. One was sit in front of a computer all day, going through logs and doing log analysis as a cyber security analyst.

And the other one was working as a director of information assurance operations, which was basically the head of a team inside the sock. And I ended up taking that job. And when I did that job, I was running around from meeting to meeting. We were doing problem solving. It was new challenges. And I found that those 12 hour shifts felt like it went by in two hours because there was just so much going on. And at the end of the shift, I was exhausted. But during the shift, it was a lot of fun because I was getting to do all these new and interesting challenges as opposed to just going through the same logs every single day. And I wouldn’t have thought that would’ve been a job I would’ve enjoyed, but I really did enjoy it, even though it was kind of exhausting.

So sometimes it’s kind of counter. Whereas when I sit there and do log analysis for eight hours, I just feel exhausted the whole time, look at my watch, is my eight hour shift over, but I don’t feel drained at the end of it. I don’t know sometimes you got to push yourself as well, but it’s kind of unique because my wife thinks I don’t tend to be a people person being at large parties and stuff kind of drains me, but I can do it. And then when I’m done, I’m like, “Okay, let me just stay at home for the next day or so and recuperate.” And I have fun while I’m there, but it is kind of a draining thing. And so if I had to do that every day, five days in a row, it probably wipe me out. How about you Kip? Are you more introverted or extroverted. What fuels you?

Kip Boyle:
I want to take a moment and define those terms. And I think it’s really important because the popular interpretation of an introvert is that they’re socially shy and that’s not really true. An introvert, really, all that means is that you get energized by being alone. You get refreshed by being alone, an extrovert gets energized and refreshed by being with other people. So when you put me with a lot of people, it drains my batteries. I can’t recharge fast enough. And so my energy levels go down. If you put an extrovert alone their energy levels are going to go down because they get energy by being with other people. That’s all that means.

And I’m definitely an introvert and that’s what I heard you say too, because we can be with and around other people, but we just can’t keep our energy levels at a high level or we certainly can’t make them higher over time by being with other people. So I absolutely, when you said, I’ll be around a lot of people, but then leave me alone for a day because I got to recover. I’m like, yep.

Jason Dion:
When you came and visited me down here in Puerto Rico, we spent a week together and I noticed that the first day you and I, we kind of had high energy by day five both of us were just kind of like, “All right man. I’m so glad Kip is getting on the plane today. I’m getting rid of him.” I had a great time. It was wonderful, but it’s five days in a row. I’m ready for you to leave. I want to go back and hide in my little hole for another day or two-

Kip Boyle:
You’ve got to go, man.

Jason Dion:
… and then am ready then.

Kip Boyle:
One thing that I did and I want to pick up on a comment that you made a moment ago, because I think this is a really good one, which is, even if you’re the kind of person who likes to be alone, it may not be good for you to be too alone. And so I want to tell you a quick story about what I did. I decided early on in my career that I wanted to be a chief information security officer. I thought that was a good goal for me. And I did end up becoming a CSO. But what I learned along the way was that the job was much more people intensive job than I realized that it would be. Well, so I had to make a decision. I either needed to figure out how to be around people more or I needed to not be a CSO anymore.

And so that was a really useful self discovery. Well, what I decided to do is I said, “You know what? I really do like this job.” So I want to see if I can increase my stamina. I want to see if I can figure out how to be around people longer. In other words, can I strengthen my muscles around being with people and make my energy levels last longer. And so I did a little bit of research and I said, I’m going to give this a try. And it worked. And so these days, even though I am an introvert and even though I do need to recover from after being around people a lot longer, but I have so much more stamina for being around people than I ever did before. So I just want to say, and that was a great choice. I’m really glad I decided to do that. And so if you’re thinking about that, I just want to put it out there. It’s possible, you might want to do it.

Let’s talk about how do you get to know yourself? How can you figure out what your work preferences are? And what I always recommended people is a DISC personality profile. You’ve heard one of those before, right Jason?

Jason Dion:
Yeah, the DISC and I’ve done a lot of them over the years, I’ve noticed that in general, they do shift a little bit, but they kind of stay pretty consistent because most of us, our personality stays pretty consistent.

Kip Boyle:
Exactly. So a DISC personality profile is what you should do if you haven’t done one already, if you’ve done one, but it’s been a long time since you did one, I’m going to give you a URL today that you can use to do a free test. So either way, whether you haven’t done one before or it’s been a long time, I think it would be a good idea for you to go out and do one again. But let’s unpack what a DISC personality profile is. And by the way, a lot of people will say, you need to do a Meyers Briggs personality Type Indicator, an MBTI. Don’t do that because that used to be a very popular way for people to do some self discovery. Unfortunately the whole approach has really been scientifically debunked.

And so it’s kind of a toy now rather than a useful instrument. So I would say stay away from that, an NBTI, but a DISC I think is a great way to go. Now, DISC as Jason said, it’s D-I-S-C, it’s an acronym. Let’s go over what that acronym means. The D stands for dominance. And by the way, I have found that the terminology in DISC is not what you think it is. So if I say dominance, you probably think of somebody like the Terminator walking around, telling people, give me your clothes, give me your sunglasses and give me your bike. That’s dominance. Not in this context. Dominance here just means, how do you deal with problems? How much you assert yourself and how much control, do you want over situations?

So it’s not as extreme as it might seem in the movies, but there’s a continuum here. So whether you’re very passive or whether you’re very assertive. That’s what the D part is going to measure for you. The I stands for influence and that’s the way you deal with people, the way you communicate and how you relate with other people. The I is really around, how much you like to be around other people is what I’ve noticed. So that’s D, that’s I. S is steadiness, and that describes the way you behave with emotions and how emotional you are and how emotional you let other people see that you’re being, you could feel like a train wreck on the inside, but just really project the sense of calmness and patience, or you could wear your heart on your sleeve.

If you’ve ever heard that, where you know exactly how a person feels, because they just let all that emotion come out all the time. And then C is compliance. And that describes how you approach and organize your activities and responsibilities. Basically, are you a rule follower or in one extreme, and then the other extreme is, are you more of a rule breaker or, do you follow rules when it works for you and then break them when they don’t. Are you an entrepreneur? Is what I’m trying to say. So DISC, Jason, does that sound right in your experience? What would you say about DISC? Is there anything that I missed or you want to add?

Jason Dion:
No. I think you did a really good coverage of the DIS and C. So again, that’s the dominance influence, steadiness and compliance. And once you take one of these tests, you’ll kind of see where you are. The other thing is that often you’re not a single thing. There are some people who are very much, for instance, myself, I am a very high D and I’m also a pretty high I. I’m fairly low on S and fairly low on C. And so, I am more D than I am I, but I’m pretty high on both of those areas. Some people I’ve seen they’re just 50, 50. My wife, she had one where she was, basically it was 45, 45. And then it was 5% and 5% for the other two.

She didn’t have a clear winner, but it’s important to understand yourself and where you are. So for me, I’m a pretty dominant person. And I think that comes from a lot of years working in and around the military. We kind of value that dominant straight to the point, get things done, kind of attitude, but I’m also naturally more of an I, where I want to talk things out and get to the solution. The other thing is when you start looking at these different things, and it’s almost it’s almost different leadership styles you’re going to have, if you’re a very high D you just want to get to the point, it’s like, “Hey, Kip, I got five minutes. Tell me what you need. Let me make a decision. Let’s move on.” Whereas sometimes you get some people who they want to talk about this thing for three hours before you make a decision.

And knowing where you are on this spectrum will help you understand it. I know somebody who in their organization, outside everybody’s door, they have a DIS or C, and everybody on their office says I am a this or that or the other. And so if you came to my office and you saw that I’m a D, you would know when you come to Jason for a decision, you need to come in and say, here’s the situation. Here’s the decision I need you to make. What’s your decision. If I was more of an I, say, I was really high I, and low on the other ones, you might come in and say, “Hey, how are you doing Jason? How’s life? How are the kids? How’s your wife doing, blah, blah, blah.” Hey, now that we’ve talked about that for five minutes, I have a question for you about work, and this is what it is.

And so you have to build that relationship before you get to the ask. And so each one has a different thing. And what he found was that by having people understand what the person’s profile was, it made easier for others to communicate, because you could say, even though I’m an I, and I want relationship, you’re a D so I’m just going to go in and give you what you need. And if you can ever figure out what your boss is, this can really help you exceed. I’ve had bosses who are very high Ds. And so they love it when I come in and just give them a, “Here’s what you need to know. I need a decision go,” and then you can move on. And I’ve had other people who are highly relationship based. And if I did that, they would just shut down and they would hate what I’m asking them. So what are you Kip when it comes to this DISC?

Kip Boyle:
It’s really interesting. I’m a very high C so if you plotted from zero to a 100, and you said, Kip, what’s your C score. Mine’s like 99.

Jason Dion:
A very strong C?

Kip Boyle:
Yeah. Very strong C. And so a couple of words that would describe me is cautious, systematic, maybe even perfectionist. Absolutely. I think that’s me. Now on the other end of the C-

Jason Dion:
No way Kip. I can’t see that at all.

Kip Boyle:
So if you go on the other end of the spectrum, words like rebellious, careless, defiant. Just to sort of illustrate and I’m definitely a high C. And then when it comes to DNS, I’m right in the middle, I’m like 53 and 56 are my scores. So I’m pretty balanced, but my I is really low. I’m 28 out of 100. And so some of the words that would describe a low I would be something like, matter of fact, maybe withdrawn and in a really extreme example, aloof, because I just don’t say a lot. I talk when I feel like I have something to say, and if I don’t have something to say, I kind of just don’t say anything. And so some people, think if you’re a high I and you’re really gregarious, you’re out there and you’re talking all the time, you would think I was aloof because I just don’t talk as much.

But I love what you said about not only is DISC a tool for you to understand yourself, it’s also could be a tool for you to understand other people, which I think is fantastic. And it’s just another great way for you to do well on the job. In our last episode, we talked about, what do hiring managers look for in day one? And one of the things we mentioned in there is, we want you to bond with the team. We want you to get in here and figure out your place. If you understand yourself and you understand the differences between DIS and C, without other people even telling you what their DISC profile is, you can probably figure it out. If you’re just observant and you understand this particular framework. Thank you, Jason. I think that’s a fantastic use case for this. But you said you’re a high D, is that right?

Jason Dion:
Yeah. So I’m a pretty high D. I’m in the 80% D and then I was something like 40, 50, 60% I. So my Ds and Is were kind of up here and then everything else was way down to the bottom. And I think that’s interesting because you’ll often see this where a lot of partners, either husbands and wives or business partners, you and I work on our business together. We are opposite. I’m very DI, you’re very C. C and S you said we’re kind of your primary and secondary. And so that makes a lot of sense. And you see this kind of happen naturally. It’s not like I went out there and said, “Hey, who is this hiring manager person who can help me with this part of my business, that happens to be a C and S, because I’m a D and I.”

But sometimes these opposites almost attract because they have the things in your business or your life, if you’re talking about your spouse, that are opposite of you. My wife is much more reserved than I am. And so, by us having our different personality types, we get to have a lot more different experiences than we would if we were both Ds. And if you’re both Ds, you’ll probably be clashing heads all the time anyway, because you both want to make decisions. Whereas my wife is very indecisive. I get the, “Hey honey, where do you want to go for dinner?” And I ask her, and she can’t come up with a decision to save her life. And if she asks me and I’m just like, “We’re going here.” And she’s like, “Okay. I guess that’s where we’re going.” And so it’s just this different personality, but you’ll see that a lot inside of teams.

And so, just because your boss is a D and you’re a C doesn’t mean that’s not going to work. You just need to know that. What is your boss expecting from you? Because a C, you mentioned earlier, very risk averse. You want to have everything planned out, ready to go. I probably drive you crazy sometimes with our business, because I’m like, “Okay, we got the 90% solution. Let’s go, let’s launch.” And you’re like, “Whoa! Hold on. We got to get the rest of the back end set.” I’m like, “No. We’ll figure out along the way, man. Let’s just go.” Because that’s my D. D is driven, it’s a direct driven. That’s why I always think about Ds, is a very directive, very driven, very decision oriented. Let’s just move on and if it doesn’t work, we’ll just make another decision and we’ll keep going. And so it’s just those kind of differences.

Kip Boyle:
It’s really great. One other comment that I want to make about what you said, where opposites attract. It takes a lot of emotional maturity to be in a relationship where you are hanging out with somebody who is opposite, if you can respect and realize why it’s good for you, who’s a high C to hang out with somebody who’s a high D, if you’re okay with that, then my God, that is so powerful and that’s what we talk about with… This is diversity, when we talk about diversity in teams, this is what I mean about diversity, not what color your skin is, but rather, how do you think, how do you process information? How do you deal with other people? I’ve got somebody out of my team that is super high I. She’s probably like a 102 on a 100 scale.

She’s such an I. And it’s great because I’m a low I and guess what? We need somebody who can go out there and talk to prospective customers and just listen to them talk all day long and just be there and be available and answer questions and blah, blah, blah and all that stuff. That is not my strength people. So I’ve got somebody on my team who is amazing at that. But if I was judging her all the time and saying, you never get any real work done. All you do is sit around to talk all day long. If I was showing that kind of contempt for the fact that she’s a high I, it would never work. She’d never stick around and put up with me trashing her natural talents and abilities. And could you imagine that if I took somebody with a high I like that, and I said, “Hey, I want you to spend all day doing log review.”

Oh my God, what a disaster that would be, but logs would never get reviewed properly. And she’d be miserable all the time. And I’d be wondering what the hell’s wrong with this person.

Jason Dion:
So the other thing I want to mention on that is, for those in the audience who are managers, leaders or hiring managers, you sometimes have to fight your own tendency to look for people who look like you. And again, I’m not talking about, look like you, as far as I’m looking for white men who are bald, because that’s what I look like. But no, I’m talking more about, look like you and your personality type. I’ve seen this happen in a lot of organizations I was in. There was one organization I was in, I was working with another person. We were both in the exact same job. I’m a very D, very direct, decision making. Here’s what you need to know, sir. In two, three sentences make a decision. He was a very high C.

And so he wanted to glow into every single fact and plan out the entire thing much like Kip. And what was happening was our boss was a D, because this was a military organization. And that person wanted, “Hey, I’ve got 30 seconds. Tell me what I need to know. So I can make a decision and move on.” And the guy who was a C could not do that because he’s like, well, it depends because of this and this. And he’s giving him every single scenario in case that could possibly be. And the boss viewed him as a horrible employee. And when it came time for promotions, I was ranked higher than him. Even though I will tell you, his work was much better than my work. He had a much more thought out plan. His plans were much better and everything he did was much better, but he couldn’t convey it to that D in language that the D could understand.

And so the D thought he was talking in circles when he was presenting him these different options, because he wanted him to have the full complete picture before making decision. Because that’s how his style was. Whereas the D was like, “Dude, just tell me, what do I need to know. A or B that’s all I need.” And so I don’t think that’s important.

Kip Boyle:
And these two people were just flying by each other constantly. The C couldn’t understand why the boss wasn’t acting like a C and the boss wasn’t understanding why he wouldn’t act like a D. And that’s what I mean by low emotional intelligence or low emotional maturity. Where you assume the other person is just a crazy person rather than realizing. Nope, they’re just bringing something different to the table. And I can tell you as a high C. People in the audience are probably like, “Oh, how does Kip put up with Jason anyway?” Because God, that would be awful. I’m a C too. And if I had somebody that was telling me all the time, shut up and let’s just do stuff, it’d drive me crazy. Well, what I’ve had to learn how to do is not everything needs to be analyzed to death.

There are some things that do justify more caution, but most things don’t. And so what I’ve had to do is get really good at knowing when should we slow down and when is that just a waste of time. And I actually love it because when Jason’s like, “No, let’s just do it.” Sometimes I’m just like, “Oh thank God.” Because so much energy would be required for me to analyze something I don’t really know anything about. So I’m just going to trust Jason and we’re just going to do this. And I’ve had to do that with my wife too, because my wife’s a bit of a D and you know what, over the years I’ve come to realize she has excellent judgment about when we should do things and just deal with it. And so I’ve learned to pick my battles and there’s only sometimes now where I’ll be like, “Slow down. We’ve got to analyze this just a little bit more.” And she’s become able to trust my judgment on those. But it’s because I don’t play my C card all the time.

Jason Dion:
And in the case I was talking about at work, what we ended up doing was I worked with the person. I said, “Hey, that guy likes his answers the way I give him because he’s a D.” So we’ve worked with him so that the C could then, you can go do all the analysis you want in the background. But when it comes time to go to the boss, you need to present him a very clear cut, under 60 seconds, here’s the situation. Here’s why I need you to make a decision on, go. And he will think you’re the best guy ever. All that work you’re doing is great and it’s necessary. And it’s a lot better than what I was doing, but you’re not presenting it in a way he can understand. And as soon as he started doing that, all of a sudden he started rising in the ranks and people started liking him more. He started getting better evaluations and all that kind of stuff.

Kip Boyle:
That’s great.

Jason Dion:
It’s important to understand who you’re talking to and who your audience is.

Kip Boyle:
Man, you are a good team member to pull him aside and tell him that-

Jason Dion:
Well, the difference is he had a long career in front of him and I was on my way out. So I’m like, it’s not like I care about getting the promotions. I kept telling my boss don’t give me good promotions because I’m not taking your promotion. I’m leaving. I have my own company, I’m leaving and going to do my own thing now. So I’d rather you give him the promotion. He’s like, “Well, no, you’re doing better work.” I’m like, “No, I’m not, he’s doing better work. You just think I’m doing better work because you’re a D and am a D.” And so he had to kind of get that through his head. So it was a unique situation for sure. And in most organizations, somebody’s probably not going to try to help you get a better promotion than them, especially when you’re both doing the same job, but in our case, it worked out.

Kip Boyle:
That’s really cool. So I want to kind of wrap up the episode here. I think we’ve really done a good job of explaining what DISC is. The D, the I, the S, the C and the fact that there’s continuums on each one. What the end points on those continuums look like? Again, if you haven’t gotten yourself a DISC profile, or if it’s been a long time, I want you to go get one. In the show notes, you’re going to see a link to a free DISC personality profile test. I’ll tell you right now, it’s www.one123test.com/disc-personality-test. But just look for that in the show notes. Now, this is a bare bones test. It costs nothing. And you’re going to kind of get what it costs, but it is good.

Go and get that. Now, look, there are other places out there where you can pay a little bit money, like maybe 20 bucks or 40 bucks, and do it again. And they’ll give you a huge report with tons of great information to help you really unpack what DISC is for you. But go do the free one first and just see if it makes sense, see if it’d be helpful. And then if you want to go deeper, there’s plenty of opportunities to do that. So anyway, there’s DISC, and that’s why it’s going to help you know yourself better and possibly even help you understand who these crazy people are that you’ve been working with.

Jason Dion:
I think the other part of this Kip is once you find out what you are, whether you’re a DIS or C or a combination of two of those, you want to start looking at the jobs that you’re interested in and see, do they match up with that type of thing. If you are a high C, you tend to be very compliance, oriented, very checklist oriented, you love the details. You love the minutia. That sounds like an IT auditor to me. I hate IT auditing. I really do, because I do not want to sit there and do the checklist all day long. I want to be able to go out and do different things. I like a challenge. I like decision making. I like interacting with other people with that’s my eye in there. And sitting alone doing assessments of somebody’s architecture is just not my idea of fun. I can do it. I’ll force my way through it. But if I do that for 20 years, I’d go crazy.

And so understanding where you are, and then what jobs kind of align to that is really the whole point of this idea with DISC is. So you can interact with your job and with your coworkers in a way that makes a lot more sense.

Kip Boyle:
That’s right. Way more sustainable. Thanks, Jason. For helping me unpack DISC today, let’s wrap up the episode. So thanks everybody for being here. If you want to go deeper on any of the topics that we cover by the way, in the Your Cyber Path Podcast, I want to give you a suggestion. I write and send out every other week, something called a mentor note, and you can subscribe to this. And I write about 500 characters. So it’s a very quick read, and it’s an email that you’re going to get in your inbox every other Friday. So if you want to sign up for this and I encourage you to do it, what you do is you go to yourcyberpath.com and scroll down a little bit on the page, and you’re going to see a sign up box right there, where you can sign up for it. And you’ll get my mentor note and just give it a try.

And if it’s not helpful to you, there’s a very easy unsubscribed button there at the bottom of everyone. And you can opt out of it. And that would be fine too. If it’s useful, take it. If it’s not, don’t, but I wanted you to know it’s a free resource, it’s available to you. Give it a try. I’ve been writing mentor notes for a couple of years now, and I get good feedback from folks. And so you should give it a try. And if you do try it, and you have a suggestion for topics that I should be writing on, that I’m not writing on, I would love to hear from you. Listen, I just want to support you in your journey and help you get where you want to go. So if you want some mentor notes, again, yourcyberpath.com and you’ll find the signup box there. So thanks so much for being with us today everybody. We’ll see you next time.

Jason Dion:
See you then. Bye.