Which DISC Personalities Work Well Together?

Among all the personality types in the DISC assessment, Support individuals make up a majority of the global population with as many as 32% of people qualifying as S types. 

But while Support types are the most common, the most effective teams are made up of a diverse range of DISC personalities.

In fact, the ideal weighting of different DISC personalities depends a lot on the context. For example, high-pressure teams work best with a larger number of Drive personalities compared to Support personalities.

Read on to find out more about which DISC personalities work well together and how to get the most out of your DISC personality assessment results.

Understanding DISC personalities in teams

To understand DISC personalities in team settings, we first need to understand how the DISC assessment divides up different traits.

The DISC assessment is designed to measure people’s behavior based on two key spectrums: 

• Task-focus vs People-focus
• Outgoing vs Reserved

These distinctions help to sort individuals according to how focused they are on getting things done compared to how focused they are on relationships. 

The second spectrum categorizes people according to how decisive they are – characterized as being more outgoing —and how careful or quality-conscious they are, which is known as reserved.

Where you sit on each of these two spectrums shapes what your DISC personality will be and separates everyone into different degrees of the four key categories: Drive, Influence, Clarity and Support.

In team settings, any and all of the styles can work well together but they’ll have different strengths. A team made up of multiple high Drive personalities, for example, will work totally differently to one made up of high Support individuals

The truth is, there’s no one type of DISC personality team that’s better than the others – it all depends on the context. Here are 4 examples of which DISC personalities work well together based on the team and environment they’re in.

The best DISC personalities for every team

1. A Troubleshooting Team

If you have a team where problem-solving is the top priority, you could benefit from a combined team of high Drive and high Influence types, with some high Clarity types to ensure the team stays focused on delivering good results. A fast-moving project with a tight deadline will probably need a lot of Drives on the team as Drives push hard to get the job done. They may not work so well with patient, steady Support types when they need to get a lot of tasks done fast.  

In these contexts, it’s a good idea to keep high Support individuals working behind-the-scenes, rather than in main decision-making roles. Meanwhile, you can benefit from the communication skills of Influence types, combined with the precision of Clarity types and the focused, intensive leadership style of Drive types.

2. A Networking Team

When you’re putting together a team for networking, such as when you’re heading to a conference or an industry event, it’s a good idea to put together a team that is outgoing and able to win over potential clients and new connections. That means you’ll want to make sure you have high Influence types making up the majority of your networking team. Support types can also be really useful in these settings – but you might want to let the deeply analytical Clarity types sit out on these teams, as people-skills are low on their list of priorities. 

Clarity types can come on board later and take care of delivery after you have won the work. 

3. An Emergency Task Force

Highly specialized teams that are mandated to handle high risk and emergency situations require a unique set of individuals. To be effective, an emergency task force needs to be able to carefully analyze a situation and take decisive action to achieve a specific goal.

In this kind of team, the DISC personalities most likely to work well together will be high Drive types, combined with Clarity types. High Clarity individuals tend to be detail-oriented and cautious, taking an analytical approach to problem-solving. When coupled with high Drive types in teams, these personalities can complement one another, balancing out results-oriented traits with quality-conscious traits. 

On an emergency task force this crucial balance is needed: if you’re responding to a natural disaster or a pandemic for example, quick decisions have to be made, but it’s important they’re the right decisions to achieve the best possible outcomes for handling the situation.

4. A Negotiating Team

If there's a collaborative project in your organization that needs input from a lot of stakeholders, then high Drive and high Support types may be each other's best coworkers. In this type of team, you will ideally combine the persuasive, assertive personality of Drives with the patient, harmonious traits of Support types.

Drives are there to make sure you get what you want from the negotiations while Supports are there to make sure that all relevant stakeholders are involved in the negotiations, and that things stay convivial, courteous and reach a structured, organized conclusion. When the two personalities are combined in this context, they can make a winning team.

What DISC personalities do you need on your team?

While any and all of the DISC personality types can work well together, certain settings are best-suited to different types of teams. For example, high pressure environments like an emergency task force can benefit from Drive and Clarity types, while teams requiring good interpersonal skills are best with high Influence and Support types, too.

To help you find the best people for your team and find out how you prefer to work in team settings, take our free DISC assessment.