Understanding & Managing Stress
University life compresses a lot into a short window: deadlines, group projects, placements, part-time work and social change. Research on the transactional model of stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) tells us that stress is not simply caused by events, it arises from the gap between what a situation demands and what we believe we can cope with. Self-awareness shrinks that gap. When you understand how you typically respond under pressure, what you need to stay motivated, and the environment in which you do your best work, you can design your days with intention rather than react on autopilot.
Importantly...
Your DISC style doesn’t change from day to day. What changes is the situation and how you choose respond to it.
Revisit: Four Key Sections of Your Report
Open your DISC Profile Report and work through the sections below in order. Mark or highlight any sentence that feels especially accurate. You'll need to refer to these when completing the worksheet.
1. Behavior and Needs Under Stress (page 10)
This section describes what typically happens to your behavior when pressure builds. For example when workload spikes, feedback feels critical, or an important situation feels out of your control.
As you read, look for:
- The specific behaviors your report lists as likely to appear under stress.
- Any needs your report identifies. What you require from others, the task or the environment in order to de-escalate.
- Review the points related to your typical behaiviors and strategies for reducing conflict, and highlight any you recognize from a recent stressful moment in your student life (an assignment deadline, a group disagreement, an exam week).
2. Motivators and Needs
(pages 7–8)
Behavior tells us the how. Motivators tell us the why. This section describes the internal drivers that energize you, and the conditions you need to stay engaged over time.
As you read, look for:
- Two or three motivators that feel most true to you.
- Needs that, when unmet, leave you flat, frustrated or disengaged.
3. Ideal Working Environment (page 9)
Your report outlines the conditions in which you are most likely to perform well; pace, structure, level of social interaction, type of task, amount of autonomy, and so on.
As you read, look for:
- The three or four environmental factors that feel most important.
- Mismatches between your ideal environment and your current study or work set-up.
- Small, realistic adjustments you could make this semester (e.g., where you study, who you study with, when you tackle hard work).
4. Natural vs Adapted Style
(page 15)
This is one of the most practically useful pages in the report. It shows two graphs:
- Natural style: Your most preferred way of behaving. How you behave when you’re relaxed, unobserved and being yourself.
- Adapted style: How you believe you need to behave within the context of your current role or environment.
As you review your graphs, look for:
- Which score (D, I, S or C) shows the biggest gap between your natural and adapted styles.
Complete your Worksheet:
Using DISC to Understand & Manage Stress
Bonus Resource
Adaptations and Stress: Why Stretching Has a Cost
Every day you adjust how you behave to fit where you are. Adapting is not, in itself, a problem. It’s actually a sign of social and self-awareness (critical components of emotional intelligence). Reading the room and adjusting your pace, tone, or focus is healthy, and most of the time you do it without even thinking.
In your DISC Profile Report, your adapted style is not capturing all of the micro-adaptations we make throughout a day or interaction. Instead, it is capturing any sustained adaptations you feel you need to (or don’t need to) make within the context of the environment you completed the DISC Profile in (i.e., your role as a university student).
- Having some differences between your natural and adapted style is common, meaning you have recognized that your environment requires a slightly different approach than what your most preferred way would be.
- Having no differences or minimal means that you don’t feel your environment requires sustained adaptations from you in order to be successful (but you may make many micro-adaptions throughout the day).
Where adaptations can start to lead to stress, is when they become significant and sustained. Significant means a large gap, meaning you’re behaving very differently your Natural style.
Sustained means you’ve been doing it for a long stretch of time (e.g., a whole semester). This can quietly tax your energy. You usually don’t notice the cost in any single moment. You might notice it weeks in, when you feel flat, irritable, or strangely drained by tasks that didn’t used to wear you out.
The goal isn’t to stop adapting. That’s neither realistic nor desirable. The goal is to become aware of what is asking you to adapt. Is it an assignment that doesn’t suit how you normally like to work? A group where you feel you can’t be yourself? A part-time job that runs at a very different pace from yours? Once you can name the source of the stretch, you can work with it. Create strategies to prepare for and manage your adaptation, build in recovery time, choose where to invest the effort, and decide, with intention, which adaptations are worth the cost.
That’s why the Natural vs Adapted Style graphs in your Team8 DISC Profile is so important. It visually represents your sustained adaptations in front of you on paper. Reflect honestly at why you think each one is there, and ask whether it’s a healthy reach toward growth and helping you be more successful, or perhaps an adaptation that could be made as required, rather than sustained for long periods of time and requiring more energy.