Earlier this week, I attended “D&D @ Work” hosted by Laura Khalil and Once Upon a Roll. It was a wonderful exchange of ideas and concepts in the world of bringing tabletop gaming into work as team building.
During the event, there was a brief discussion about engaging people who exhibited ‘crossed arms’ and if/how they could be brought in to the activity. Someone mentioned the DISC Assessment which is commonly used in workplaces.
#My Disregard for DISC
In my career I have worked for three companies that had us/me perform a DISC analysis. All three analyses were both nearly identical and completely different at the same time!
In a DISC assessment, two behavioral “styles” are provided. The first is your ”Natural Style” or who you are, well, naturally. The second is your ”Adapted Style” which looks at how you present at work.
Only in one of the three are my natural and adapted styles remotely similar. For both of the other two, it’s like I’m completely different people.
Like I’m masking. Like I’m just playing a character.
Looking back it’s easy to how wrong I was for those two organizations.
#Nature and Demeanor
The TTRPG, “Vampire: The Masquerade” came out while I was a teenager; and an angsty, dramatic one at that. I gravitated towards the hedonistic Torreador clan - with their passion for art and beauty - like a brick gravitates towards the ground.
But the main thing I remember about character creation were the two archtypes at the top of the sheet: Nature and Demeanor.
Nature was described as the most base and true aspect of your personality while Demeanor was the facade you showed to the world. The “mask” in “masquerade” if you will.
My first character had “Gallant” for both.
…A consummate actor who loves to make as big a show of things as possible, nothing attracts your attention more than an appreciative audience…
Yeah. That’s a stretch.
#What You See Is What You Get
As part of the Mindfulness Based Strengths Practice (MBSP) class through the VIA Institute On Character, I performed a “Strengths Interview” in which I asked people to pick the five character strengths they thought I most exhibited, and compared that to the list provided by the self-assessment I took earlier this year. The five that came up consistently from others were:
- Curiosity
- Humor
- Love of Learning
- Creativity
- Teamwork
Shifted slightly, those are also numbers 2-6 on my self-assessment. Looks like I’m still using the same nature as I am demeanor. Just less angsty.
#Un-Masking at Work
So what correlation, if any, exists between those that resist TTRPG-based team-building activities at work and employees whose “Natural Style” and “Adapated Style” are further apart on their DISC assessments?
Essentially, if you are already playing a character at work, what sort of mental and emotional gymnastics are necessary to get that character to play another character?
In a “Session Zero,” I like to highlight the concept of The Magic Circle as coined by Johan Huiznga. In Huiznga’s theory, play exists within a temporary world where the rules of the outside world are suspended.
If done well, by providing this ‘sacred space’ our clients, colleagues, and friends can comfortably remove their work mask, uncross their arms, and slip into a game character in a shared world towards a common goal. Even if that goal is just to have fun.