Everything You Need to Know About the Theory Behind the JTI Profile
Read about the theory behind the JTI profile and gain insight into how it should – and should not – be used.
By Mette Babitzkow Boje, Head of Assessment Tools at CfL. March 2026
Today, the organization uses the tool for team development, leadership onboarding, and to create a shared language around behavior and collaboration.
But that wasn’t how it started.
DIS is an educational institution with activities in Copenhagen, Stockholm, and the United States. The organization works with American students studying in Europe, and its staff spans a wide range of roles—from faculty to administrative functions.
In HR, the ambition was clear: if they were to work with a personality assessment tool, it had to be something practical. Not a heavy system or a model that required lengthy analysis of each individual employee.
Anna Sommer emphasizes that the initiative needed to be practice-oriented:
“It had to be application-focused. Something you can use in everyday work and in teams— not something where you have to spend hours on each individual.”
At the same time, it had to be something the organization could stand behind professionally. Therefore, a dialogue was also initiated with the organization’s psychology professionals.
The conclusion was that DiSC was a good fit for the purpose:
A tool that focuses on behavior—and can be used to create dialogue and understanding.
Read more about Everything DiSC here
The first step was not a large-scale organizational transformation. It started small.
An external consultant facilitated a workshop with the organization’s leadership team, where everyone received their DiSC profiles and worked with them together. It quickly proved to have an effect. The leaders became curious.
They began asking HR whether the tool could also be used in their own teams. And this was exactly where the idea emerged:
If DiSC was to be used more broadly, HR needed to be able to facilitate the process themselves.
As a result, three HR employees chose to become certified.
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DIS is a self-governing, non-profit educational institution where students from partner universities in North America come to Copenhagen to study for a semester, a year, or during the summer.
In HR, we work to support both leadership and our approximately 600 employees in well-being, collaboration, and development. An important part of our work is creating a shared understanding of differences in working styles and communication, and embedding the organization’s values into the culture.
Before the course, the HR team had a natural concern:
How extensive would it be to learn?
“We were curious about how big it would be, and how much you needed to know to be able to facilitate it.”
But the experience turned out to be different.
The course provided both an understanding of the model and concrete tools for using it in practice.
Perhaps most importantly, it gave them confidence in their role as facilitators.
Because in the end, it’s not the theory that creates value—but how you use the tool in dialogue with people.
When HR returned from the certification, they did something that would later prove to be an important decision:
They established clear guidelines for how DiSC should be used.
For example, they decided:
“We’ve set clear boundaries for how we use it—and how we don’t.”
This created a shared understanding across the organization.
CfL is an Everything DiSC® Authorized Partner. Learn more about how to get started with strengthening collaboration and communication among leaders and employees in your organization.
Today, DIS primarily uses DiSC in three situations:
When teams need to collaborate more effectively, a DiSC workshop can create a shared language for differences in working styles and communication.
This makes it easier to talk about things that can otherwise be difficult to address.
For example:
Suddenly, it’s no longer about who is being difficult.
It becomes about different ways of working.
Learn more about tools for employee and team development
DIS has also used DiSC in connection with reorganizations, where teams needed to be formed in new ways.
Here, the tool helps employees quickly get to know each other better.
This creates a sense of psychological safety, and helps prevent many misunderstandings.
When a new leader joins, HR also reviews their DiSC i profile with them. The purpose is to equip the leader with a tool to better understand their team—and for many, it becomes a real eye-opener.
They discover that employees are motivated by different things and communicate in different ways. And that effective leadership therefore also involves adapting one’s style.
Anna Sommer explains that some of the feedback HR most often receives after a DiSC workshop relates to small “aha” moments, for example, when employees suddenly understand why a colleague reacts the way they do.
One employee might say:
“I actually thought you just didn’t like my ideas.”
And the colleague replies:
“No, I just need a bit more time to think things through.”
These kinds of conversations often arise when people are given a language for differences in behaviour.
“People suddenly say: ‘Ah, that’s why. That makes sense now.’”
It may sound like small things. But in practice, it can make a significant difference to collaboration, Anna Sommer explains.
Because many of the conflicts they are brought into are not about intent—but about different ways of working and responding.
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At DIS, HR has also made an important observation: there’s no need to explain all the theory behind DiSC—quite the opposite.
If too much time is spent on models and explanations, people quickly lose interest.
That’s why HR keeps the introduction short and instead focuses on dialogue.
Employees work in small groups and discuss real situations from their everyday work:
It is often in these conversations that the real value emerges.
“We try to keep it as simple as possible and get people working with it right away.”
HR sees the value most clearly when the conversation shifts—when people move from talking about each other to talking about how they work together.
One example is a team that worked closely together but often experienced everyday frustrations. Some felt that decisions took too long, while others felt things were being pushed through too quickly.
During a DiSC workshop, the team began discussing their different profiles and working styles. Suddenly, things started to fall into place.
One employee said:
“Now it actually makes sense why you always want all the details.”
Another replied:
“And now I better understand why you want to move forward quickly.”
It didn’t change the personalities in the room—but it changed how they understood each other.
If HR at DIS were to give one piece of advice to organizations considering working with DiSC, it would be this:
Start with the leaders.
When the leadership team had worked with the tool first, it became much easier to roll it out across the rest of the organization.
The leaders were already familiar with the model and could actively use the language in their dialogue with their teams.
DiSC has not transformed DIS overnight. But the tool has given the organization something important:
A shared language for behaviour.
A language that makes it easier to understand one another. And ultimately, that is exactly what many organizations need—not more models, but better conversations.
Read about the theory behind the JTI profile and gain insight into how it should – and should not – be used.
P: +45 53 67 67 91
E: mba@cfl.dk