Source File: StevenSislerInterview.

Title: StevenSislerInterview.

Ari: So now I’m speaking with Stephen Sisler who is the founder of Behavioral Research Group and a disc profile which you are going to find out a lot more about on this call. So Stephen thank you so much for taking this time to talk to me.

Steve: Absolutely, thank you.

Ari: So why don’t we start with talking about sort of what you do and what the disc profiling is?

Steve: Okay. I am a behavioral analyst and what I do is I look at the intensities of basically for basic emotions and seven different attitudes. The disc profiling system is one of the systems that can be used to gather the information which is what I use it for. And once I look at those numbers and look at the intensity of those numbers, I am able to help individuals understand their wiring, their emotions and then because of that wiring and emotional data bank, why they will do the things they will do and we can basically predict outcomes based upon those emotional frameworks.

Ari: So this obviously, this applies to people’s personal lives as well as routines and business of course right?

Steve: Absolutely. It’s a universal language so across all boards. So whether it’s the relationship, relationship with a child and their family, a peer at work, a subordinate or leader or if they are a leader themselves, it will tell us how they will lead, how they will mother, how they will father, how they will rebel against their parents if they are teenager and so once we understand that then we can strategize how to get around it.

Ari: Aha! Okay, so my first question then about that is, so I filled out a assessment and we’re going to talk about mine on this call but there are a lot of questions that were… You are basically just describing yourself of being like a certain trait and less like a certain trait and I found some of them were a little confusing and hard to pick. Not a way to beat this, but are people… How honest is the assessment essentially?

Steve: Well typically people are paying a decent amount of money for this so they do not try to be something they are not.

Ari: Right.

Steve: In the last decade I maybe have discovered three that may be tried to do that to such a degree that it was the opposite of who they were. But typically you don’t have that, I don’t deal with it, I don’t see very often.

1

Ari: Alright, okay so you’re not doing disc profiles on like inmates basically?

Steve: No.

Ari: These are people who want to improve in some way or another or discover something is about themselves. But even so like there were certain things where, are you more or less like this, and they were in my mind, they weren’t opposites necessarily so I felt like I guessed on a couple of them in some ways but is it set up that way?

Steve: Yeah. I could typically get what I call a red flag or a flatline which means I understand somebody who is trying to overthink the instrument or I can see numbers come in and I say, “Oh, I bet they are this” and then look and sure enough they are.

Ari: And that is what you do with me actually?

Steve: I did that with you. I knew you over thought the product because you are a high theoretical. So I assumed you were and 80, I looked at that you were and 83. And that was like 20 pages away, I just flipped over and looked at it and I was like yeah, that makes sense.

Ari: So let’s talk about for a second what those four letters mean and what they kind of the present.

Steve: Yeah, the “D” stands for dominance and it represents an anger emotion. So the higher the anger emotion then the more direct, the more decisive a person becomes. If it’s lower, which is anything below 50 on a scale of 1 to 100, then the dominance line becomes more passive so it becomes more amiable, friendly, peaceful, unobtrusive and kind of not making any waves kind of person.

The influence line “I”, is the optimistic emotion and is the most emotional health of all the letters. So the higher the influence line, the more magnetic, the more outgoing, the more positive, the more talkative verbal aggression and when it’s lower down below 50 then we get logic and so we go from the King of Queens to his wife. So the show, “Everybody loves Raymond? We go from Raymonde to his wife in this show because they are opposites and that’s why the show works.

The “S” line, the higher the “S” line goals they more [04:49 GAP] unsystematic, alert, kind of a high wired or person and very variety driven. And then at the compliant line, that’s the fear emotion. So the higher the compliant line the more they have a heightened awareness of errors and mistakes because they are afraid of screwing it up.

And then when the “C” line drops down, the more independent, self-willed and stubborn and fearless they become. So if you have a child that is high dominant and low compliant, they are always not doing what their parents ask but it just means they are leader so what we do is we punish the leadership and we try to reward something they

2

are not and once we understand what’s going on, there is a way around that and they can become a really great person but most of these people are misinterpreted, especially in school.

Ari: Okay. I guess the best way to do this is to sort of give mine as an example right?

Steve: Well, I’m going to go with your adapted style, it’s the strongest read which is you’re working style.

Ari: I am sorry, what is that mean “adaptive style”?

Steve: Adaptive style is how you respond to the work environment.

Ari: Okay.

Steve: Okay and so if I am obnoxious, load, talkative, always telling jokes and now I’m at the funeral, I am probably not going to do that. The reason being is because I am responding differently to that environment because I believe that new environment warrants the new way I am acting. And we all do that wherever we go, we put on the game face. If we go shopping, if we go to a relative’s house, if we go to the in-laws, there is an adaption to the behavior. When we go to work, there’s an adaption to the behavior. If I am careless but I go to work to build bombs, I am certainly not going to be careless there so I have to make an adaptation okay. So your adaptation is your work style and your work style is what looks like to be the project manager; get it done, get it done right, don’t bother me unless it’s an emergency.

Ari: Yeah, okay.

Steve: And so that’s a task oriented person. So you have a high anger emotion, you are a 73 which means you are driven, you’re all about results, it means you are pioneering and your mind, everything is on a timeline; it’s got to get it done now or yesterday. Your influence line is low, it’s a 38 so you’re going to be very logical. So if I say, “Hey, are you going to go to this meeting this afternoon” and you’re not going, you might just look at me and go, “No.” And that’s it, we’re done.

Ari: Right!

Steve: And if I am the high influencer I am waiting for, “Oh, are you going or something” but there is nothing there. You answered the question because you are high dominant, you are no influence. So the goal is the goal which was the answer the question which you answered it, you are done.

Ari: Oh my God, I’m going to make sure my wife doesn’t listen to this podcast.

Steve: Okay. Your steady line is low, it is a 41 which means you’re impatient, which means nothing other than your extremely flexible. The more flexible you are the more

3

impatient you become and the reason being is because when things, people or situations don’t move with you, you get frustrated. And so it displays as what we call impatience. But what they really means is you have the ability to turn on a dime if somebody else doesn’t, is going to show up.

And then you are compliant line is high and it’s a 70 which means you have a heightened awareness of errors and mistakes. In other words if you are going to have your name on it, it better be right. So therefore get it done on the dominant line, get it done right in the compliant line and the fear line and then you “I” and you “S” are low which means, kind of are the people pieces; emotional, how are you doing, “hey, that’s nice outfits you’ve got on today”. You really don’t care about that because you are just kind of looking at the bottom line. You’re looking at, “Are we getting this done today?” So you are more about the process of getting it done more than you are the product of getting it done but in the end it’s about is going to get done. So it can be confusing to people. And your graph is called the creative pattern. It’s very no-nonsense, kind of cut to the chase. So going to your office might feel like I am going to see the principal.

Ari: Okay, yeah, I could see that.

Steve: So it’s not about good or bad, it’s about how the wiring is. And so you do things far better than you do people. And because things don’t argue and that’s really why you are fast and decisive. You are about productivity, you are about control, you want to these things done. You are not as interested in participating with somebody because they are probably going to be in your way and so what ends up happening is you do things in spite of people, better than you do things with our through people. It has nothing to do with whether or whether or not you like people, it just means that when your machine gets going, it is a machine and then if we get in the way, we could lose an arm. And it’s a machine, it’s not thinking, “Oh, I need to slow down, this guy has got white clothes on, something might get on it.” You are the type style that is in the snow cloud going down the street and all of a sudden you realize you hit somebody. Your first thought is, “What are they doing in the road?”

Ari: Right.

Steve: Not, “Oh my God, I hit somebody!” Because you are because you are logical; logical you don’t stand in front of snow clouds.

Ari: Right.

Steve: So that’s where you go and in the end of course, you’re going to be said, of course that but the way you are thinking is, “Where are their parents?”

Ari: Right.

4

Steve: That’s how your brain works. So this is an efficient machine kind of a style. Is that making sense?

Ari: Absolutely! Oh my God, it’s… Yeah!

Steve: And you are always paying close attention to everything you do without thinking about it. In other words, harder for me to even explain you are not caring about loss of social recognition, that’s not what you are there, you are there to get something accomplished, you’re not there to get praised. So if somebody accomplishes in something they want praise and they work for you, you’re probably not going to give them any because you are thinking, “That’s what you’re supposed to do, great! What you want me to do sing-along and dance? That’s what I paid you to do.” Like that’s how your mind works. Whereas they don’t work that way, they are thinking, “I did a great job.” You are thinking, “That’s what you’re supposed to do” and so there is now a conundrum that’s created. So if you want to get more out of that person guess what? You’re going to have to step out of yourself and go, “Oh my God, that’s what I hired you, that’s beautiful!”

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: You have to work harder. You see what I mean?

Ari: Oh yeah!

Steve: We have to play to everyone else’s strength, not our own if we want to get more out of people.

Ari: Yeah, this could be why I don’t have any actual personal employees, everything is virtual.

Steve: Right, so that’s going to work really well for you. The less people you have to emotionally navigate, the better and so your style fits really well with that kind of a model which will make sky the limit for you.

Ari: And I just want to pause for a second and point out to people that Steve doesn’t really know me, we haven’t been friends for years, this is all based on a questionnaire that I filled out and it’s unbelievably accurate. It’s shocking what you are getting out of this.

Steve: Yeah, I debriefed somebody for six hours one time on 11 numbers. So you’re also, I can keep going here.

Ari: Oh please!

Steve: You are also a perfectionist. So you are going to be a really hard on yourself, in other words you don’t give yourself any room. Therefore you will see the world this way, you will be less apt to give anybody else room because you don’t give yourself any. The

5

other thing with your style is we talk about it earlier, very highly theoretically driven which means you are a thinker. So you’ve got a lot going on in the cranium of yours. You know more by accident that some people are trying to learn on purpose.

Ari: Oh yeah.

Steve: So I am not blowing smoke, this is in your numbers.

Ari: That is a cool way of putting it.

Steve: You have what is called a large catchment area; in other words, when we are going throughout the day, we are taking in information through all our sense gates and you are bringing in a lot more information than the average bear because you are catching things on the peripheral and learning from it which is why you can look at the situation and just know what to do and you are not sure we’re getting the information from because you caught it somewhere. And you are catching such a vast amount of it, you just pull out at random when you need it, it’s sort of like MacGyver.

Ari: That’s awesome!

Steve: That’s kind of your style. Now what happens is you can be very impatient when other people can’t pull it out as well as you can. You can’t understand why you are looking at something maybe they are doing and you are like, “Why didn’t you just do this?” And then look at that as if you just handed them a gift, they didn’t know it was there.

Ari: Right.

Steve: And so what people need to understand is a lot of times people like you, people who are equal to or greater than we are you are at are your competition, they are not working for you.

Ari: Okay.

Steve: On the average. And so it’s hard having a company when you are anomolic in your style; in other words the average in the states is about 44 for theoretically driven minds, you are an 83.

Ari: Wow, okay.

Steve: Okay so what does that mean? It means out of 100 people you are going to really enjoy the conversation with less than 20 of them.

Ari: Okay.

Steve: Because it’s not stimulating. So basically to put it in a blunt fashion, you don’t do stupid.

Ari: Okay.

6

Steve: That’s just the way you are so you are going to tune out really quick if you are with the situation or a person or something and it’s not at that level like you are already done, you are just buying your time at that point. Now body language 53% of everything we say and so words are 7% so guess what, everybody already knows you’ve checked out.

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: But because you’re not emotionally astute you are a student when it comes to theoretically, you’re going to probably miss the cue so you don’t really know what you look like in a situation so that person could leave with hurt feelings and you are thinking, “I don’t know what he is upset about!”

Ari: Again, I’m really glad my wife is not listening to the podcast.

Steve: The other thing here is emotionally speaking, you don’t get into the car unless you are the driver.

Ari: Okay.

Steve: Okay so what that means is you don’t do the backseat. You don’t do with the passenger seat, you would do the driver seat and I have a lot of people that think this way as well but they can’t tell the person in the driver seat to get out of the seat but you can.

Ari: So that’s like if I am not angry then you should be angry is that what you mean?

Steve: Well, what I mean is let’s say a situation arises and we will just look at the model of getting in a vehicle as that situation, the situation could be anything. If you go to get in that car and there is somebody sitting in the driver seat, you’re going to say, “Okay, listen is my time to drive. You need to sit in the back.” You will do that whereas some people they get in the back and they complain to a safe person that they should be driving but they don’t allow them to.

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: You will never be in that situation. You’re going to be like, “Dude, your time is up, my turn.” And then you’re going to get into the front seat and so in a conversation I might say… Let’s say in a conversation your wife let’s say, you don’t listen… We either listen for one off three reasons; we either listen so we can direct and control once we figure out what’s going on or we listen so that we can agree with it or disagree with it or we listen so that we can understand it. Typically, your style listens to direct and control in other words if your wife had a bad day at something happens and she says, “Well here’s what happened”, while she is talking, you are thinking, “Why didn’t you just do this?”

Ari: Yep.

7

Steve: The first thing that comes in your mind now why are you thinking that? You’re thinking you are going to help the situation, “Well, I would tell her to do this and this will never happen again, it shall be great.” But if she wants you to listen to understand, then you don’t understand that model because of that doesn’t accomplish anything. So you feel like you are leaving her in a lurch if you don’t tell her what to do.

Ari: I will just tell you this is really funny because last night my wife wanted to talk about something and I said something that I wasn’t trying to get her to stop talking but I was just telling her that I was tired and she took that very badly and we had to have a small argument about it and even in the argument I was being an idiot and I am saying, “Okay, I get it now let’s stop arguing and get back to what you wanted to talk about.”

Steve: And that’s because… I’m going to say something that’s going to freak you out a little but you’ve got to let me finish what I’m going to say.

Ari: Okay.

Steve: You have psychopathic tendencies.

Ari: Oh, I have talked about this on this podcast before. There was a book called The wisdom of psychopaths and I found it was written for me.

Steve: Okay! And you have psychopathic tendencies which means if the family dog is 12 years old, it’s dragging its legs around, it’s sick and the vet wants 600 bucks to figure out what’s wrong and then another 180 to put it down, you are going to shoot it in the backyard. Not that you will, you could, you could shoot the dog in the backyard, throw a toy in the hole with it and burry it and go have a Starbucks.

Ari: Our family dog is 12 so you just broke my heart a little bit but okay go on.

Steve: But you could do that.

Ari: Yes, yeah.

Steve: And it wouldn’t ruin your day, it would be like it’s sad, yeah but you know what oh, I’ve got an appointment. You can compartmentalize it whereas you probably, your wife is probably a stabilizer and the more verbal person in the relationship I am imagining.

Ari: Yeah, my wife is French if that says anything.

Steve: Yeah, and she probably was attracted to you because she knows that one of the things, she knows if anybody broke in the house, it would be the last house they broke into.

Ari: Yeah, wow! You’ve got a lot of good soundbites Steve! Wow, okay.

Steve: So she feels safe with you because she knows you are fearless, you have respect. So that’s part of what that dynamic. The other thing is, you are efficient, your fast and you

8

cut to the chase which she may not… She could be, “Oh my God, where did the time go?” Therefore there is an attraction to the difference in the behavioral dynamics and then longevity in a relationship comes from the similarities and the attitudes which creates endurance.

And so in your value base, basically you are very protective of your own turf which means you would be protective of your family and things like that as well. With you it’s almost like a Catch-22 when it comes to people; you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them so what do we do? Well, we just find the good ones and we work with them. That’s kind of how your brain works of these things out. You are also a very black-and-white thinker; once you know what to do you can drop the hammer pretty quick. You don’t belabor it, you just act which is another plus but it can also, your strength can become your weakness if you’re not aware how strong they are. And you are very strong, you are very decisive and you are very cut and dry and so an emotional person feels like you don’t care when in reality, you probably care equal to or greater than they do, you just show it differently.

So rather than saying, “Oh, you are so beautiful, I love you so much” and touchy-feely more like that, you’re more like, “You know what, I’m going to give you the studio you wanted” then you will just do it. And then it’s done and then you feel like 1 million bucks because you created something that wasn’t there, you did it for them and she might have been happy if you looked at that painting and go, “This is so beautiful.” Like that might have been equal to what you did you know what I mean? It’s just how you think.

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: And once you understand how another person is wired then the magic starts happening and so rather than saying, “What did I tell you about that?” You might want to say, “Have we talk about this?” When you know for sure you have talked about it! You’ve talk about it actually three times! But if you used commas and question marks it creates a invitation into the situation rather than periods and exclamation points which slams the door and so depending upon who the person is. Now, you could get away with an exclamation point with me because my “D” is 100 okay but maybe with your wife you want. And you might be thinking, “What are you talking about? I am just telling you the facts.”

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: So she is thinking, “You are raining on the parade.” But you are thinking, “It might need to be rained on.” It is because if you are familiar with the Star Trek series, it’s Mr. Spock.

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: It’s just like, “Spock, you’re alive!” And he just looks at him and goes, “Logical captain.”

9

Ari: Yes.

Steve: Right. You stated the truth, we are done let’s move on. And that’s how your brain works.

Ari: Wow! Well Steve, I want to be respectful of your time here. This is very odd because it’s… Nothing you said is completely surprising but it’s also really eye-opening at the same time if that makes any sense.

Steve: Sure, yeah. It’s great when we understand it and that’s what emotional intelligence is, it’s understanding how you are wired and managing it depending upon who you are with, that’s it, it’s that simple.

Ari: Okay so I want to just again reiterate for people. So this is… We’ve talked about relationships and stuff but this goes into how you hire people, who you choose is a cofounder, as a partner, this is the kind of work you do right?

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. I work with partnerships, I just did a multi, multibillion-dollar group that has an online business is selling health products and I looked at the four of them and it was for me it was hysterical. I know exactly what is going on with these people and so when we had our conference am like, “Okay, you are the driver, you are the resistor” and I said to the other guy, “You are neutral.” So when you’re with this person you’re like, “Yeah, I know what you mean.” And when you’re with that person you’re like, “Yeah, you know what you mean.” You’re not going to reveal to everybody what is exactly going on. They were laughing but at the same time taking notes. They were like, “Okay, this is making complete sense.”

Ari: Yeah.

Steve: And now going forward, they’ve changed their strategy completely with how they deal with each other and it’s because of our styles and once we understand it to then everything works. And so when trying to bring in a high-profile position and I can look at that person that is their candidate and I will say, “Okay, what is this person going to be doing? Where he needs to be doing… Well, that in going to work.” “Why?” “He can’t say “no”.” You cannot say “no.” What are the odds of that happening? 82.4% which is pretty darn high. Now, do you want to risk all that? I did that with a company. I told them that they shouldn’t do it and they did it and then a year later they let them go for the reason I said they shouldn’t do it and it cost them 700 grand.

Ari: Yeah, wow.

Steve: They had me speaking of their sales conference the year after and introduce me as the guy they failed to listen to. So everybody that works in this company goes through this now.

10

Ari: That’s great!

Steve: It helps identify what you are looking for in an individual for that particular culture. So some cultures are ask task oriented, some are very touchy-feely. You don’t want to be on the tail end of that one.

Ari: Yeah, and this is funny too because one of the things that I do with clients is I like I have several clients who will buy companies and they want to optimize them, automate them, outsource all that stuff and maybe flip them or whatever and I have never have had an issue about downsizing companies and firing people because in my mind, and I have explained this and I understand how cold this may sound but in my mind, they are not, as a resource, that person is not being allocated efficiently if they are in a job in this company that is not being served properly and I think they would be better off in another job too and certainly the company would be better off. So I guess you sort of reiterated what I feel that way.

Steve: Sure, yeah! Again, you are very black-and-white thinker. You think there is only one way to skin a cat, the right way. Some people think like, “I don’t care how you skin the cat, just don’t get blood on the carpet” and theywalk out of the room.

Ari: Right. Well, okay so we are pretty much out of time here. This as being like amazing and I really… Can people take the assessment on your website? How can people find out more?

Steve: The assessment they pay for and the way I do it because I am in 18 countries, there is a lot of people that are becoming more and more aware of this, they go on my website, then they have to contact me through the contact form which kinds of pops up in your face. So if they want to contact to do something, that’s how we do it and I let them in on what it’s going to look like and then they decide yes or no.

Ari: Great. Well so and we are going to put links in the show notes. So what is your URL?

Steve: It’s www.behavioralresourcegroup.com

Ari: So great, we’re going to put that in there in the links and Steve thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to hear my sort of debrief, I really appreciate you taking the time, it’s been awesome talking to you.

Steve: The pleasure is mine.

***End***

11

12