You've completed your Catalyst assessment. Now what?
Catalyst is a rich platform with a lot of resources. While disc training hub offers facilitator-led classes to guide a group through using Catalyst, it is possible to use Catalyst without expert instruction. If you’ve purchased Catalyst for yourself or a group of people, this article provides guidance on what is available and how to use it.
To access Catalyst, go to catalyst.everythingdisc.com and log in using the email address you used to set up your account when you took the assessment.
The General Approach to DiSC
There is a basic, 3-step approach to DiSC that we use for nearly all of our training:
- Know yourself.
- Know that others are different and how they are different.
- Use this information to improve your relationships with others.
We'll use this same approach to walk you through getting the most from Everything DiSC on Catalyst.
Learning About Yourself
Access to the main section of your results is shown at the top of the home screen. Access it by clicking on the button labeled “Learn about your style”.
If you’re unfamiliar with DiSC, you might want to spend some time learning about the model, which you can do by clicking the link labeled “Learn more about the DiSC model”.
The two sections on the Your DiSC style page are labeled “Your map” and “Your X story” (where “X” is your specific style). Spend some time reviewing this information, getting to know how you operate and why you do the things you do. Note that you may not agree with every single thing on there, but it’s generally quite accurate.
At the bottom of the page you will find a podcast specific to your style. If you have the time (length varies by style, about 45 minutes to an hour), it is very interesting and goes very deep into the characteristics of someone with your style.
Learning about Yourself at Work
The “Your style story” section is about behavior in general, but there is another section that details how someone with your style approaches work. To find this section, scroll down to where it says “More to explore” and click “What drives you”. Or, from the home page, scroll down to the “Workplace” section and click “What drives you” from there.
On the “What drives you” page, you can explore your workplace priorities, which are those areas where you like to focus your energy. After that are discussions of your motivators and stressors. This information further helps you to understand yourself, specifically when at work.
The final section on this page is “Strategies”. These three notes, based on your lowest-scoring priorities, are suggestions for how you could be more effective in your workplace interactions.
Learning About Others
The next part of the Workplace section of Catalyst is “You and other styles”. Its link is at the bottom of the page we were just on or you can find it by clicking Workplace > You and other styles in the side menu.
This page has detailed descriptions of each of the four styles, written from the perspective of your style. Because it’s so important to understand how others operate, the information is extensive. For each style, there is an overview of what the style values, a discussion of what motivates them, and videos of people with each style answering various questions.
Learning to Improve Interactions
Once you have a decent understanding of yourself and the differences others might have, it’s time to learn how to improve your daily interactions. There are two ways to do this on Catalyst: When the others are on Catalyst (colleagues that have also taken the assessment) and when they are not (everyone else).
Part 1 - Improving Interactions with Your colleagues
When others in your organization have completed a Catalyst assessment, they show up in Catalyst under a section called “Your colleagues”. You can find this section in a square panel on the home page. If you click on the “Your colleagues” panel, you can see a grid of coworkers. You can also search for a colleague by name, or filter by department or groups your admin has set up.
Once you find the person with whom you want to improve your interactions, just click on their panel to be taken to a detail page. On the detail page you will find lots of information about the other person, including your and their DiSC maps, similarities and differences and detailed comparisons of traits. These data points allow you to better understand the other person.
Download Your Report!
You can download your own report by clicking on the "hamburger" menu (three horizontal lines on the upper-right) and choosing "Download report".
At the bottom of the comparison page is a section called “Working together”. Here you will find tabs that address how to connect with the other person if you don’t know them very well or aren’t “clicking”. Other sections cover how to work through tension between the two of you, how to collaborate more effectively, and how to approach the other person when needing their buy-in.
This is perhaps the most powerful feature of Catalyst.
There is also a newer section called "Get advice", also accessible from a panel on the home page, that provides additional one-on-one guidance. It operates much like "Your colleagues", but in reverse: you start with the nature of the interaction first, and then select a colleague. The information provided is similar, but richer than what you'll find in the colleagues section.
Part 2 - Improving Interactions with Non-colleagues
Let’s face it: Most people are not on Catalyst, coworker or not. But we can still use the tools and information on Catalyst to improve our interactions with others–even when we don’t have access to their detailed style information.
The section on Catalyst we use here is called “Build better relationships”, and it’s the last of the Workplace sections (Home > Workplace > Build better relationships). On this page you will find detailed information about how to connect with the four primary (single-letter) styles, including your own. For each style, there is guidance on connecting, solving problems and when things get tense.
But this assumes you know the other person’s style! If you don’t know it, then we need an easy way to estimate the style of the other person. Fortunately, we have one. There is a simple people-reading strategy that will give us a good guess at the other person’s style. You can find this by going to Home > DiSC·ology > The DiSC Model.
Once you have determined someone’s approximate DiSC style, use the appropriate section of the “Build better relationships” page to find strategies to improve your interactions with them.
There's more!
As new features are added to the Catalyst platform, it will become more and more valuable. Below are new features that aren't covered in this article:
"Your groups"
While the one-on-one comparison that Catalyst provides through the "Your colleagues" feature is great, what about groups? With the "Your groups" feature, anyone can create a group map of themselves and other coworkers on Catalyst! The map provides a visual plot of all group members on the circumplex and provides some insights into the group dynamics.
This feature has been expanded a few times. To learn more, see our article "Your groups" Feature on Catalyst. And note that this expanded functionality is free to all Catalyst users!
What’s Next?
We’ve addressed the general and coworker-specific use of Catalyst, but there is much more.
Other Applications
Catalyst also offers other, more specific applications. If you don’t see the applications described below on your Catalyst home page (they would appear below the Workplace section), that means those applications have not been enabled for your account.
Management
Designed to help managers improve their capabilities, the Management add-on provides insights into a manager’s default managing style and sections on how to direct and delegate direct reports, how to create a motivating environment and how to develop talent, all broken down by an employee’s DiSC style. There is also help for improving interactions with the manager’s boss.
Agile EQ
Agile EQ is designed to help you explore your areas of Emotional Intelligence strength and how to improve those areas where you might be less strong. While DiSC is designed to help a person interact with another person more effectively, Agile EQ targets recognizing how to react to situations that involve groups of people, for example in a meeting.
Worksmart for Managers
These five, 1-hour training modules were developed to target the primary Manager pain points: Giving constructive feedback, managing conflict, empowering their team, navigating change, and motivating their team.
Workshops
At disc training hub we also offer workshops on DiSC in the Workplace, Agile EQ, and Management. Each of these workshops relies on the Catalyst platform and will help a group learn more about DiSC and how to apply it, ultimately helping to bring DiSC alive in the organization.