Rooted in nearly a century of work on human behavior

This snapshot draws on the DISC framework, a model of human behavior introduced by psychologist William Moulton Marston in his 1928 book Emotions of Normal People. Marston proposed that people express themselves along four dimensions — Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness — shaped by whether they lean more toward tasks or people, and whether they tend to be outgoing or reserved.

Marston never built an assessment himself, and the framework has remained in the public domain ever since. In the decades since, thousands of practitioners — coaches, leaders, psychologists, and organizations — have used DISC to help people understand how they show up and how they prefer to work.

Here’s the important part: we all have a little of each style in us. This isn’t a box you fit in. It’s a map of tendencies. Most of us lean toward one or two styles more often than the others, and recognizing those defaults — in ourselves and the people around us — lets us adapt, meet others where they are, and build stronger working relationships.

What follows is a short read of where your energy tends to concentrate.