Reflections on DiSC and Church Planting Research

Recently I read over a research paper coming out of the States by Dr Paul S Williams titled, The DiSC Test as a Predictor of Church Planter Success.

I found it here. It was published last year (ish) and interacts with (among others) the NCD survey, Jim Collins of the business world, and previous studies like Ridley's.

It was definitely worth the read. I'm certainly not in a position to critique it from a methodological point of view, so my reflections are just at the level of interacting with the conclusions / comments along the way.

Here are some things that stood out:

• Research Measures (i.e. what was 'success')
• His two key measures were:
• (a) average attendance growth, and 
• (b) per capita giving ($$) growth. (I gather they're very commonly used measures). 
• Attendance and giving were measures at 12 months in, and at three years in to the plant.
• Particular DiSC Patterns and Performance
• The 'Inspirational' (one of the high Di patterns)--which seems to be the darling pattern of many in church planting literature--was vastly out-performed by the 'Persuader' (a high iD pattern) on (a) attendance growth, and came dead last on (b) giving growth. It's not that the 'Inspirational' pattern did poorly at (a), though, it was still top 4.
• 'Persuader' pattern leaders was head-and-shoulders above the pack for growth in attendance.
• 'Creative' pattern leaders were strong on growing giving, but only modest in generating attendance growth.
• Variation was significant:
• "It is important to note, however, that in all but one pattern represented in the study […] there was at least one church that experienced growth equal to or greater than the average growth of the top four patterns." 81. 
• Given his very-small sample-size for some of the 'DiSC patterns', this surely renders some of his 'averages' tentative, at best, I reckon.
• DiSC and Jim Collins. Williams sees the 'Inspirational' pattern leader as a nearest match for Collins' Level 4 leader. So what about Level 5?:
• "From this researcher's knowledge of the DiSC test, it would appear that Level Five leaders would likely score with one of the other strong church planting patterns. Persuader Pattern, Results-Oriented Pattern, and Creative Pattern leaders seem to have the strengths that appear in a  Level Five leader.", 96.
• Fwiw, from my reading of Collins, I reckon a Level 5 leader has to be pretty extraordinary--a real mould-breaker. I'd expect him/her to exhibit a breath-taking versatility of behaviours right around the DiSC. i.e. I'm suggesting that none of the DiSC Patterns provide a neat match.
• Stability of your DiSC over time. Over time, an individual's DiSC assessment of behaviours holds 'very good' over one year, and 'good' over three years (the study length). But the implication from the data is that your DiSC behaviours drift over time, and beyond three years it does drop beneath a level required for a 'good' correlation. I guess that makes sense--patterns of behaviour change over time. We still believe in that, right?!
• Systemic Preclusion? The researcher hints at his own concerns that systemic issues are precluding some DiSC pattern folks from even applying to be church planters (non-'Inspirational' types, particularly). While I'm intrigued and I've wondered the same thing--and I'm certainly wary of letting my own failure of imagination preclude people-unlike-me from taking on big ministry roles--I'd be keen to see some actual research on it. It's too easy to cry 'systemic failure!'.

For the record, I'm High-D, High C, with average (not low) i. That means none of the Classic DiSC profiles neatly matches my behaviour pattern, but I'm kinda two-thirds 'Creative', one third 'Results Oriented'. The researcher fits a 'Persuader' pattern.