Hey Reader,
Two years ago I was brought in to help deliver a pilot leadership programme workshop for a large organisation.
They used DISC as the personality framework – the organisation was already familiar with it, so it made sense on paper.
To bring the profiles to life across the day, they’d hired actors to role play each colour.
The blue was rigid. Robotic. No warmth, no flexibility, no ability to read the room. Every trait that gets weaponised against people who think carefully and speak precisely, performed as deficit.
The green was hunched. Timid. So lacking in presence the character seemed to be apologising for existing.
Yellow and red were capable. Confident. The ones you’d want leading your team.
I raised it. I was ignored.
That programme went out into organisations. Teaching managers – many of them introverts themselves – that their colour was the problem.
I’ve spent over twenty years in L&D and I’ve watched versions of this play out more times than I can count:
The well-intentioned assessment. The debrief that tells you what you are. The moment of recognition – oh, so there’s a name for it – followed by walking straight back into the environment that was grinding you down before you ever sat the questionnaire.
Knowing your colour doesn’t change the Tuesday afternoon meeting.
It doesn’t tell you why your nervous system is already running at capacity before anyone has said a word. And it doesn’t give you the language for what’s happening when you go quiet, need time before you can respond, or leave the room feeling like you gave everything and nobody saw it.
The assessments aren’t wrong; they’re just incomplete.
They hand you a label where you needed a framework – one built around how your brain actually works, not how the organisation wishes it did.
The question the assessment never asked is what any of this costs you.
My Introvert OS™ User Manual starts there.
Read it tonight
In your corner always,
Sam 💛
| | Sam SheppardIntrovert StrategistNeuroscience-backed insights for introverts who are tired of adapting to a world that wasn’t built for them. |
