Apples vs. Oranges – DISC, MBTI, Inner Genius GQ, Insight Discovery – which is right for you? | Catherine Mattiske
Catherine Mattiske
Helping Unlock Inner Genius | Large Corporate & Higher Ed | Author: 30 Books | AI
Are you curious to understand yourself and achieve success in the professional world? Deciphering who we are is an exciting journey - especially when it comes to understanding our unique strengths, communication styles, leadership capabilities, and compatibility with colleagues and teams. We invited you on this voyage of discovery so that you can gain clarity into which personality assessment tool will help you start making waves towards your goal: Apples vs Oranges – How DiSC, MBTI, Inner Genius GQ, Insight Discovery & more comparisons fit your pursuit for professional success.
Behavioral and personality assessments can offer us valuable insight into ourselves, from our preferred way of learning to our communication style. There are various types of assessments available, but not all provide the same level of detail and accuracy. Check out this list of different short assessments you can take to learn more about who you are, what you like, and what you need to succeed in life.
In this article, we do a side-by-side comparison of:
1. Inner Genius – The Genius Quotient
2. The DISC® Assessment
3. Extended DISC
4. Insight Discovery
5. Myers Briggs Type Indicator®
6. 16 Personalities
7. Enneagram Personality Test
8. The Big 5 Personality Traits
Section 1 - The Apple!
Inner Genius – The Genius Quotient
This profile is different from the traditional personality test. This is a new type of assessment or personality test. The Genius Quotient, by Catherine Mattiske in her book, Unlock Inner Genius, takes a much more modern approach to provide individuals with detailed personalized results. Its purpose is to define learning and communication preferences between different people to help them become better communicators.
Inner Genius Profile was created using the lens of Constructivist Theory and applied the psychological multidisciplinary Activity Theory as guiding principles. ID9 Intelligent Design and the 9Step Question Forming Theory were used to design the Profile question, drawing from the work of 42 learning Theorists, most notably Bloom, Dewey, Bruner, Gagne, Gardner, Ebbinghaus, Marton, and Saljo.
Genius Quotient is not a personality test like DISC or MBTI so the accuracy is much higher. As with all Profiles, they must be completed with honesty, accuracy, and how you are now, not how you would like to be in the future.
Upon completing the profile, individuals will gain more significant insights into their learning preferences and have an assigned Archetype with a learning Power-Up that they can use to their advantage in their daily lives. It takes roughly 10 minutes to complete the profile, and those who've completed the questionnaire will receive actionable tips on how to implement the results into their daily lives to achieve goals and succeed.
The cost of accessing the test is $99, and the results are free. Once completed, an entire ‘vault’ of materials and tools, including Mattiske’s entire book ‘Unlock Inner Genius’, as well as a customized Spotify playlist for each Archetype, Alexa skills, and more are included. In addition, a convenient accreditation program is available with follow-up courses that benefit people from all walks of life who want to become better communicators. Because it's a relatively new product, it's far more modern than some outdated, more traditional assessments available to the public, making it an excellent choice.
Section 2 - The Oranges!
The DISC® Assessment
First used as a personality test in the 1940s by Walter Clarke and based on the work of Dr. William Moulton Marston and Carl Jung, the DISC assessment refers to at least one of the four critical factors of an individual, including dominance, inducement, steadiness, and compliance. The self-assessment enables people to learn more about their personalities, including their strengths and weaknesses, which can help them become better at communicating and taking on leadership roles.
While the assessment is $64.50 and an accreditation program is available, this assessment doesn't provide its users with ways to implement their results into their everyday lives. With no follow-up courses or digital modules available, those who take this assessment may not know what to do with this new information learned about themselves.
Extended DISC
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The Extended DISC, founded in 1994 by Jukka Sappinen, offers the same outcome as the traditional DISC assessment. In addition, it provides details on behavioral preferences, and the specific tasks individuals would need to complete to reach favorable outcomes in the long run. However, while it offers an outline of behavioral changes one would need to make to reach goals, it still lacks the substance to help these individuals implement such changes into their daily routines.
Available for $75, those who take this test will only receive their outline via consult. It offers tools for participants to use to their advantage, but it is essentially a rehash of the traditional DISC assessment. The only difference is that it provides a second profile consisting of different questions to assess an individual's future outcomes based on what they'd like to achieve in their lives.
Insights Discovery
Likely introduced in 2001 and based on research from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and a student, Dr. Jolande Jacobi, Insights Discovery pulls from the DISC theory but uses four colors to represent different behavioral patterns. It provides the same outcome as the DISC assessment but offers four colors to provide more significant insights into the different personality traits a person displays to those around them.
The testing is available by quotation only, so there is no set price listed for Insights Discovery. While this program does offer digital modules and follow-up courses for gathering more information, it doesn't provide details on the implementation of results, thus making it harder for participants to understand how to make changes to their daily habits to achieve good results.
Myers Briggs Type Indicator®
MBTI, first introduced in 1943 by Isabel Briggs Myers and based on Carl Jung's innovative ideas on perception and judgment, is a 30-minute long assessment referring to an individual's personality traits that aren't openly on display for the rest of the world to see. There are 93 questions on the test with answers because every person has a personality type within four axes, such as extroversion vs. introversion, sensing vs. intuition, thinking vs. feeling, and judging vs. perceiving.
The pricing for this assessment starts at roughly $49.95, with no how-to guide or tools available for implementing these results. In addition, your hidden personality traits may be altered based on your mood and circumstances, meaning they're not as reliable because different circumstances can change. Additional learning modules and follow-up courses are available for those who take this test and want to learn more about their personality.
16 Personalities
The exact start of the 16 Personalities test is unknown. However, it uses a trait-based personality test to discover more about a person's personality based on their mind, energy, nature, tactics, and identity. It offers the same outcomes as the MBTI and is a 30-minute test with no additional information or outlines to implement the results. The NERIS Type Explorer version is free of charge and consists of 60 questions. It uses new terminology for the four preferences and adds a fifth letter to the type code, signifying an individual's response to stress. Those who take this test will have access to one year of online content. While some question the accuracy of this profile, the company states it's 90% accurate.
Enneagram Personality Test
A personality test first created in the 1950s, the Enneagram of Personality refers to the human psyche and the unique patterns in which different humans may interpret the world around them and experience various emotions. The 30-minute exam offers more insight into an individual's personality traits that they don't exhibit for the rest of the world, but these results may differ under various circumstances. While a test costs around $17 for businesses, the assessment is lengthy, with 144 questions for applicants to answer. Unfortunately, while this test is for everyone, no additional courses or learning modules are available. It's also one of the more widely criticized personality tests of the bunch.
The Big 5 Personality Traits
Developed in 1961 but failing to gain traction until the late 1980s, the Big 5 Personality Traits model offers insight into an individual's hidden personality traits. It consists of 120 questions. Different companies will charge different prices for this test, costing GBP 14.99 to receive the results. It's available solely for the personal market, with further personality tests available. While it's one of the most widely accepted personality systems, hidden personality traits can change under different circumstances, so it's not the most reliable personality assessment.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed our article on personality assessments. A lot of time and effort goes into these assessments, but the results can be beneficial for anyone's life.
The Inner Genius GQ provides a personalized, in-depth report that not only reveals your unique talents and strengths but also offers practical advice on how to use them. This allows you to tailor your approach depending on the person or situation at hand, ensuring success in any interaction.
We hope this article has given you an overview of what is available in terms of personality assessments and how the Inner Genius GQ offers something more. With its insights and practical advice, it provides an invaluable resource for anyone looking to improve their success rate in any situation. Try it out today and see what you can learn about yourself!
About Catherine Mattiske
Catherine Mattiske, best known for creating ID9 Intelligent Design and the Genius Quotient (GQ), is a leading light in the corporate learning and team-building industries. She regularly works with large and small organizations to help team members better understand one another while effectively collaborating and boosting individual and team morale and productivity in the workplace.
Experienced Quality & Training Management Genentech
1yThank you for the comparison. It is very helpful to see the differences, positives, negatives as well as cost comparison. It was eye opening (and a nice refresher)to see the theoretical basis for these tests and how long they’ve been around. Having personally taken many of them over the years, my experience, after the debrief, has been that not much follow-through occurs. It’s good to see that your Inner Genius GQ provides how-to tools included in the base price that would allow the individual to focus on their specific needs for improvement.
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful article with us. I believe, many people will find it as interesting as I do.
Training Specialist | Optimising People's Performance | CEO (Chief Education Officer) of Catalyst Learning
1yCatherine I am surprised by this article as some of what you write is not correct in my view. Many psychologists state that any survey that gives you a result that fits into boxes is flawed. Behaviors are measured on continua hence the Big 5 is the one diagnostic that is evidence-based and more reliable. It is based on sound psychological research. MBTI has been proven to be rubbish. DiSC (with a small i) is a Wiley product that is very reliable. The Catalyst platform that DiSC sits on now is amazing and provides people with massive amounts of information and strategies to be more flexible and adaptable. There is so many DISC (note the capital I) that do not have the same reliability or validity. Not sure if you are quoting USD prices - the prices in Australia are more than stated. Extended DISC is trained in Australia - there are hundreds of coaches who debrief the results. Enneagram has been around for years - a colleague using it at the moment is loving the results it produces. I think it's important to remember what diagnostics are measuring. Personality (which is different from behavior) or learning preferences or communication styles or leadership styles such as the very successful LSI that has been used for many years.