Creating Virtues & Building Character in your kids using the DISC assessment with Sandra Davis from People Smart World

Welcome back to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Hey, do you think your kids feel entitled? Or do you wonder if you're raising selfish kids? We all understand that instilling virtues and building character in our kids helps them to become responsible and respectful people, and it improves their attitude and overall behavioral as they grow. But sometimes, even though we've tried, we unintentionally get off track and find ourselves living with kids who are demanding and disrespectful. You know, what if your kids are teenagers now and they're not responsible or they don't seem to care? Are you wondering if it's too late? Well, I'm happy to say the answer is no, it is not too late. And today my special guest is Sandra Davis from People Smart World. Sandra is going to share a free resource and describe to us how an understanding of each family member's personality style can help us develop healthy virtues and build character in our kids. Sandra is an expert facilitator, coach, an instructional design and curriculum developer, and a consultant. She's the co-founder and CEO of PeopleSmart Enterprises, the co-creator of the PeopleSmart Disk Interpretation Method, and the Discovering Me program for youth, and she's the co-founder of PeopleSmart Academy, which offers online courses for teaching people literacy.

Sandra has trained as a facilitator with the Virtues Project, and she's been facilitating leadership development to business cultures that thrive by consulting with companies in New Zealand, where she lives, as well as several countries throughout the world, including the United States. Stay tuned, parents, and be sure to get your free DISC assessment link in the show notes. Welcome, Sandra. Thank you so much for joining me today all the way from Auckland, New Zealand.

Did I say that right? Oh, you did. You did. And you didn't even have, you had a little New Zealand accent there, Jackie.

Well done. Nailed it. You nailed it. You did indeed.

All right, great. So I'm so happy to have you here today. Before we get started into all the discussion about discovering your personality style and learning about how to develop character in kids, why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey and how your journey led you to the disc. My gosh, I've been working with disc now for over 20 years. My colleague and best friend, Carol Dysart from San Diego first introduced it to me. And I've never looked back. As soon as I saw my personality style and how it showed up for other people, it changed my whole life. You know, I changed my relationship with my kiddos, with my I'll be with all my family.

Yeah. So gosh, 20 years I've been doing this and I love it. I love it. That's so wonderful.

And you were born and raised in New Zealand, right? I was and I married a beautiful man from Melbourne, Australia. I bought him over from a big city in Melbourne to a little tiny 60,000 community where I was born. Yeah, that's where we stayed for five years and now we're living in Auckland.

I love it. And so how did you and Carol connect? Because I know Carol Dessert is from California, right here in the United States. Yes.

Well, I was promoting way back there in those days a program called Money and You. It's a training program for entrepreneurs run by the Accelerator Business School. And Carol came over to help me implement the DISC assessments because each participant was given a DISC report. And so she went to stay for three weeks and she ended up living with myself and my family for like, I think three and a half years it was.

Oh, wow. I know, I know. That's amazing. I think I might try that.

Sandra, I need to come over. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm training on this disc assessment and then I might just camp out.

Absolutely. And so we ended up creating a business together, People's Smart Solutions and Training, and we've never looked back. That's so great. All right, well, let's get into it then.

What can you tell us about the DISC personality styles? I know there's four of them. They are indeed. And DISC is an acronym.

And the four styles are the D, dominance, I, influence, S, steadiness, and C, compliance. And Jackie, DISC has been around since the 1920s, by the way. Been around a long time. I didn't know that.

I thought it was the 70s. No, no, 1920s by a guy who created it was William Moulton Marsden. In those days, they liked to lock the insane away and then look and observe their crazy behavior. But what Master wanted to do, he wanted to see what drove normal people's behavior.

And so he basically, it led to him creating the DISC assessment, which has changed over the years. But it's pretty much fundamentally the same questions that identifies your DISC style. And by the way, we have all of the four styles within our personality, but there is a primary style that we lean towards using most often. Oh, and by the way, DISC is situational.

So it depends on the situations you're in, in regards to your DISC personality style. All right. Say those four again. All of us have all four styles.

Yes, yes. And so they're D for dominant. So that's big picture, focuses on the tasks, likes to solve those big problems, likes to be in control. And then there's the I, and they like to focus on people.

And what does the I stand for? Influencing. Influencing. Yeah, yeah.

And these are the people people. They're very charismatic, very trusting, and they love socializing. You can see them as they walk in the room. They have a big smile on their face.

You know, they're open with their energy. Oh, that's you, Jackie. I believe it's you. I've been told that a few times, maybe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Life of the party. Love our eyes. And then S is the steadiness styles.

They are the very loyal, patient, they're slower paced. They also focus on people and they like systems. They like a steady pace to their environment. and so rapid change is not good so if you're a mama out there and you have a lot of change happening in your environment especially with covid it's going to really really not upset you but it will you have this internal conflict it's like now what what do i do i've got to steady the pace you know what am i going to do so that's the high s and then last but not least is our compliance C's, compliance. They also focus on the tasks like the D. However, they like the detail, Jackie. So they like analyzing facts and data and procedures, and they like to get things right. So they're perfectionists, and they're always searching for their own inner perfection.

And they have a slower pace. So you've got the D and the I, fast paced, you know, move fast, rapid and the S and the C slower paced. So once you know if you're looking at a fast paced and a slower paced person and are they focusing on the task or the people, you can pretty much pick which primary style you're talking to. So how do we communicate to the different styles?

That's a good question. So I talked about the D's and the I's being fast paced and they're very open with their energy. So we tend to call them extroverts and they don't mind you walking up and starting to chat with them straight away. The Ds like to be in control. So ask them lots of questions so that they're giving you all the answers and they feel as if they're in control because they kind of see the environment as a little bit unfavorable, a little bit antagonistic.

So the world is out to get them, so they've got to get the world first. Okay? You tend to give them the facts and ask open questions so that they can talk. And by the way, eyes love to talk too.

So ask them open questions about themselves, about their life. And when you first meet them, give them a compliment because they love social approval. They're always searching for social approval. So comment if you see that they're wearing these.

Oh, Jackie, I love those shoes you're wearing. They look fabulous on you. Oh, Jackie will just beam away. She will be just your friend forever.

Okay, so I'm also from the Midwest, and I might be happy that you like my shoes, but I'm also going to tell you that I got them on a discount. Oh, I love it. I love it. and the more conversation you can have with me, the better.

So you might tell me where you got them, how much you paid for them. I've got another color at home and on it goes. Exactly, exactly. Now, when you come to the S's and the C's, they tend to be a little bit more introverted.

You don't go full throttle ahead with the S's and the C's. Even though the S's are people focused, they tend to be, they process in their head. so you've got to give them time for example if you're asking them questions they might need a little bit of time to think about the answer so you need to give them time to process what is happening in their life and depending where their eye is in their style they might be if it's a lower eye in energy they might be a little bit suspicious of people so you've got to give them time to warm up. And the C's are the same. They, again, are perfectionists and they're very non-demonstrative.

If you look at a high C, you won't know what's happening or how they're feeling on their face. It will be very, oh, okay, have I said something wrong? The little eye will be thinking. And you haven't. It's just they're demure. It's just the way they look. S's and C's tend to be a little bit deeper in thought. So then that also makes me wonder, what can we do to adapt our own style when we're with others? That's a good question because it's all about, I believe personally, it's all about adapting. And it's a little bit like, I have a little saying that this reveals yourself to yourself. Don't you like that? I do. And it actually did. And I have to tell you, I'm not a big fan of assessments. I've taken many of them over my 30 years in working with children's mental health and counseling and coaching. And they can be fun, right? They all have given me some sort of insight. I was a bit hesitant to take this DISC assessment when we first met. And after I did, I was like, whoa, it really resonated with me. I was like, how did they know that? And I know a lot of people are very surprised how accurate their assessment is,

because it only takes 10 to 15 minutes. And what you do is you go with your first thought, you don't overthink. And so it can be very accurate. And what drives your personality is the mindset and your beliefs and your values that are in behind pushing this behavior out into the world. And so when you can understand what is driving your behavior, doesn't that give you a way to adapt? Of course, it gives you a way to adapt your style. Like the high S's, for example, tend to not be that they don't like conflict. They will avoid conflict like the plague. However, However, when they understand that, for example, as a parent today, there'll be times that, you know, you're going to have to face a bit of conflict with your teenager, for example.

You're going to have to stand tall, stand straight and go, OK, Sandra, I got this. Now it's time to become a little bit more assertive. You call on your assertiveness, which we all have inside us, by the way, little seeds that they grow, all these human qualities. and if you understand how to be assertive and the language to use and the energy to give out and then you move into being assertive, now you've just adapted your style.

And even though you're going, don't feel good, after a while, after practicing adapting and shifting your style depending on the situation and the need, it starts to, it's a little bit like flexing a muscle, isn't it? after a while, you become strong in that assertiveness. I love that. And I'm going to take a little side note here.

How does this relate with mental health diagnoses then? My training with the Virtues, because I'm a trained facilitator with the Virtues Project, always believe that, you know, sometimes it might have been because a parent has been labeling and shaming and naming the child. And now the child has stepped into this persona that they're not really. And so what they do is they have a little bit of inner conflict about that inside their head.

And as they're developing as an adult, being able to manage your feelings and not being able to, like, how do you effectively show someone that you're angry? How do you express your anger in a, I call it a positive way? I mean, do you go punch a pillow or no? Do you just feel the anger and then bring it out in a virtue quality?

Some people think, oh, assertiveness can be shown as domineering, for example. However, a lot of kids don't understand the language to use when they're being assertive. They don't understand the energy. They don't understand the behavior of being assertive.

And so it comes out as domineering, angry, bombastuous or whatever it is. That's why I'm really passionate about teaching virtues to children. We have another Facebook public group, Parents with Teens, Twins and Anything in Between. I posted a little picture of my four-year-old niece, grandniece, and I was teaching her excellence, the virtue of excellence.

and she had this little ball toy and I was teaching her to balance it on her head. And first I did it. It was so funny, Jackie. I had this little ball on my head and first I just pretended that it would keep falling off and I'd get a little bit frustrated and okay, let's practice again.

I'm practicing my excellence, aren't I, Isla? And then I put it on my head and then all of a sudden it worked. She was astounded. and then I left it on there for like a minute or so and then I just dropped it off and I went that's excellent and I said do you want to practice it and then I put it on her head and she fell off a few times and then it stayed there I kind of wedged it in between a few years you know so yeah right it would stay there and and then it stayed there and she was astounded by what happened and then it fell off and I went high five and I said that's excellent now if you for example the high d the high i still practicing excellence the high i especially can be a little bit now this is the primary style and this is not for everyone this is I'm just generalizing here the high i tends to be a little bit disorganized high influencer and they tend to be a little bit disorganized because they want to be around people. They don't want to have a checklist.

They don't want to be checking off all the tasks that they need to do today. For sure. Totally get that. No. So, I mean, and excellence, if I was to read you about excellence, it's like giving our best to any task we do and any relationship we have. That's a very short definition of excellence.

And that's what I was showing her to do. And as a parent, it's really important for us to demonstrate these human qualities or virtues in our children and teach them the five strategies so that they can be developing these as they turn into young adults or grow into young adults. What styles are not compatible? Okay, so when I remember I talked about introvert and extrovert.

For example, you will never often see two primary D styles in a relationship. And the reason I'm saying that is because, one, they both want to be in control. And two, they like to focus on the big picture problem solving and they see the world as unfavorable. And so two styles similar to that, they don't last very long, Jackie, I'm afraid to say.

Each are trying to control the relationship. The Ds and the Cs are not that compatible. They do focus on the task, but the Cs are very analytical, very slow-paced, very quality conscious, where the Ds are not. They're fast-paced.

Give me the facts, Jack. If I get it wrong, never mind. Tomorrow's another day. And the Cs going, no, no, no, no.

Slow down, slow down, slow down. Oh, no, no. Not enough facts here. We cannot implement that project right now, et cetera.

You know, like if you're going taking your family on a holiday, the D's will go, oh, don't worry about it. You know, we'll get there. We'll set it all up and we'll do this. We'll do that.

And the C's are going, oh, no, no, no. Look, I've got to go and, you know, I've got to go and line everything up. The S's will go, oh, no, my goodness. We've got to go to the supermarket first.

You know, we've got to get the sunscreen. We've got to do this. We've got to do that. Oh, my goodness.

I forgot the towels. And what am I going to do? And the D's are going, relax. One towel between five is fine.

Let's go to the beach and have a swim. So, yeah, so a little bit of friction between the slower paced S's and C's and the faster paced D's and I's. And also, if the life focus is different, whereas the S's like to focus on people and the D's like to focus on task, that can be a little bit of friction too. Makes perfect sense.

Got it. So what about each style having certain qualities about them that others relate to in a positive way? I won't talk about this today, but let's talk about in a positive way, because sometimes these positive qualities, if they're overused, can be seen as a little bit of a weakness. We won't go there today.

So let's stay on track and talk about the D's can be very naturally assertive. Remember I talked about the assertiveness quality or virtue. It comes naturally to them. And the I's are very friendly.

It just comes naturally to them. You know, they'll talk to strangers and they'll bring groups of people together. They're just naturally very friendly. And the S's, they're naturally patient.

You know, they are very loyal and they're very patient when it comes to having to deal with other people. And also the I's tend to be very trusting. They trust very easily. And sometimes that can get them into a little bit of trouble.

However, most often it serves them really well. Now, the C's come with very high integrity. They're very conscientious, wonderful quality to have. And as long as they're not working to a deadline and they don't need to, you know, sometimes deadlines can go over with the C's.

Because remember, they're lining everything up and they need all the detail. and they're perfectionists. If you have a, say you have a primary style, this is the one that you live in life from the most, that is a D. And then you have your I, remember you've got all four within your style.

If you're, let's go with a C. If your C is quite close to your primary D, you can have a little bit of a me, me conflict inside because the D is fast paced, the C is slower paced. The C is going, slow down, Jackie. And the D is going, no, no, no, we've got to get this done, Jackie.

Go, go, go now. So there's a little bit of a me-me conflict inside. The positive qualities, if that is happening, others can tend to go, gosh, there's something going on there. But those are some of the virtues, or I call them, we call them in People Smart, the character virtue strengths for each of the primary styles.

All right. So let's shift to developing character in your children. We're all born with these human qualities inside us that shape who we are as adults. And they're little seeds and they're waiting to be nurtured so the seeds can grow. We all want, Daki, don't we, what's best for our children. I've made a fabulous note here. It's like all children are born with the virtues I call human qualities. And these are little gifts that are waiting to grow. I think as part of our role as a parent is to nurture these human qualities that shape our character in our children as they're growing up. I tend to think of it as, You know, a child is a spiritual being who was brought into the world to grow in body,

mind, and spirit. And they're all learners. They love to learn, don't they, Jackie? All kids love to learn.

Of course, they're little sponges. Oh, they are. And as parents, we are their first and most important teachers, aren't we? And we all want what is best for our children.

And so what I've said before is what's best for our children has everything to do with what is best in them. So that is their character. All right. And so then you talk about five strategies that you can use, that parents can use to develop virtues in our kiddos.

What are those five strategies? Gosh, okay. Well, the five strategies, the first one is speaking the language of the virtue. And I've mentioned this quite a bit in the podcast today about speaking the language.

And language has the power to discourage or to inspire. So using virtues to acknowledge, to guide, correct and thank awakens the best within them and within us, by the way, too, because, you know, we're always developing our virtues. So strategy one is you speak the language of the virtues. Strategy two, you recognize teachable moments.

They're everywhere. And it doesn't need to be a big conversation with your kiddos. It could be, you know, you've seen one of your kiddos being patient with their sister and you walk up and go. Now that's patience.

And they understand the language and they understand the behavior and they'll go, oh, yeah, I'm being patient, you know. And so you recognize the virtues every day in our children. And once you do that and you feed them back, it helps for the children and ourselves to become lifelong learners. And it always opens up to the lessons of character, as I call it.

Now, number three is you set clear boundaries. Now, boundaries based on respect and restorative justice. We probably need to talk, that would probably be another podcast just in there alone. It creates a climate of peace and cooperation and safety in our homes and schools and communities, for example, when we set clear boundaries.

And when children know and trust those boundaries, it's really important. Number four is you honor the spirit of the child. We all sustain our vision and purpose by integrating virtues into our activities and our surroundings and our celebrations and our art. And so honor the spirit for the child.

You know, it might be having a peacefulness circle on the weekend where we all sit in a circle and we practice peacefulness or we have a sharing circle. So it's really honoring the spirit. and number five is is offering companioning now this is a process that i teach um and and it has different stages in the process if a parent can offer companioning to their child when they're going through grief or they're angry or you know something's happening for them it could all just be you know one step is you say what are those tears about instead of going oh what's wrong with you today. Can you see the difference? And so it's being deeply present and listening with compassionate curiosity. And it guides your children to find clarity and to create their own solutions, which is really important in the 21st century. And it supports healing and growth.

So those are the five strategies. My gosh, they're so good. I think we could do a podcast episode on each one of those, right? Absolutely. So before we wrap up, then I want to ask you, what could we do something that for the listeners to take away today? What do you think is one virtue that we can all practice? I think, and this is my personal opinion, empathy is really important for everyone to practice each of the DISC styles. If we all could practice empathy, which is the ability to put ourselves in another's place with compassion and understanding so that you can intimately hear what they're thinking and feel what they're feeling, then the world would be a very different place than it is today. Love it. I teach that in my No Problem Parenting course as well,

the difference between empathy and sympathy and being able to feel what they're feeling without taking all of their emotion and their burden on yourself. So this is just, I'm so excited to be collaborating with you and Carol and People Smart World. We're going to just continue to work together and share our knowledge and our resources. And I'll be putting a link in the show notes for people to get a hold of you. But why don't you tell our listeners in case they've got their pen and paper handy, what's the best way for them to reach you? Okay. So if they go to peoplesmartworld.com. That is our main website where they can access our other websites. We've got a PeopleSmart education, where we've got our Discovering Me program for youth. We've got our PeopleSmart Academy, which is all of our online self-paced training. But if they visit PeopleSmart World, they can go there to find everything. And we also have a free disc assessment that people can take that will identify their natural disc style. And by the way, we do have an adapted style,

but if they want to learn about that, they would have to take the upgrade assessment in the free assessment report, but it's a start. So take the free assessment. Well, thank you so much for that. That's so great that you do that because after I first learned about you too, I was like, well, Hey, I want to, I want to try that, but I don't know if I'm all in yet, you know? So just even getting that initial assessment was wonderful. And I'll put a little plug in for you because doing the full assessment was amazing. It was eye-opening and just, and it was wonderful. So thank you so much, Sandra, for joining me today. You're very, very welcome. I've had, you are really cool to talk to. I could come and hang out with you more often. Well, we could sit by a fire. That's my thing in Minnesota. That's our, oftentimes our circle, winter, spring,

summer, fall, a good campfire is where we connect in our family. So yeah, you're welcome anytime. But I do think I want to come do some training with you in New Zealand for a few days. Wink, wink.

Why not? Stay for a few years. I don't know. All right.

Thanks again. All right. That's it for today, parents. I know that this was a little bit longer episode and we could have made it even longer.

I'll be sure to have Sandra back on because there's so much to cover. But for now, go grab your free disc assessment for you and each member of your family at peoplesmartworld.com. There's a link in the show notes for that.

And then I'm also going to include another link for a program that they call the People Smart Inner Circle. Now, this is for parents who want their children to grow into kind, empathetic and responsible adults. Teachers, this is for you, teachers that want to motivate and inspire their students. If you're a coach, a trainer, a consultant, a CEO, you know, who want to better connect with your employees and your clients on a deeper level and get them better results.

If you're a salesperson who wants to build rapport quickly and close more deals, business owners, HR staff, you know, or just an individual who's looking to become more self-aware and want to take their personal relationships to a deeper level, you'll want to join the People Smart Inner Circle. And you can do that for just a dollar and try it out. So I'm going to include the link to that, too. All right.

For now, everybody, hugs and high fives. You got this. Jackie. Thank you.