Tony Mowbray: How Blackburn Rovers use personality profiling

BLACKBURN ROVERS boss Tony Mowbray has explained how he uses personality profiling to know “the ones who I can shout at and the ones I need to put my arm around" in his squad.

Mowbray explained that all of his players and staff - including himself - had undergone DISC personality profiling.

“We’ve all had them done,” he told BBC Radio Lancashire. “It’s called the DISC chart. The D is how dominant you are, I is how influential you are, S is how steady you are and C is how conscientious you are.

“Within that circle, split into four segments, your dot shows where you are. Some are bang in the middle of the D; dominant, want to be loud, want to be heard, the main voice you hear all the time.

“We’ve got a lot of S - steady but they need guidance, they need leadership. We’ve got some influential, we’ve got some conscientious. I don’t live with them (the players) but I spend four or five hours every day here with them and feel their personalities.

“It’s good to know the little triggers can set them off sometimes, because we’re all quite complicated human beings in what drives us and what upsets us and what motivates us and demotivates us.

“We’re all pretty complex things, human beings. We’ve all had them done, every member of staff, every player. It helps me understand the personalities - the ones who I can shout at and the ones I need to put my arm around.

“Sometimes, in the emotion of a football match, all that goes out the window really and they still get shouted at even if I’m not supposed to.”

Mowbray said the profiles “tend to get it right” and used the example of defender Scott Wharton to illustrate how.

“Scott’s (profile) is as I would expect - he’s a very steady eddy kid. If you’re not throwing surprises and shocks at him he’s ok.

“Yesterday I got his personality profile trait back of what he is. Scott is very calm, very steady, likes to know what his job is, likes to know what’s expected of him and is exactly what it says on the profile.

“As long as he knows what’s expected, what the job is, what his role in the team is, he can activate that and do it very very well.

“We give him clear instruction and he gets on with it and does it and comes off and doesn’t get too high or low with it. He’s a very low-maintenance footballer but can do the job and helps the team immensely.”

Read more on:

Blackburn RoversCoaching

More stories

Sign up to our newsletter to get all the latest news from The Guru

//