Journey to the West - A success story of TEAM WORK from the perspective of DISC

'Journey to the West' is a famous legendary story among Chinese. With the advancement of internet and technology, I am sure the story has also propagated and penetrated to every part of the world. It started with a novel called “Xi You Ji”, written by Wu Cheng En with first edition published in the 1590s. The story is based on the real life monk Xuan Zang's (a.k.a. Tang San Zang or Tripitaka) pilgrimage to India, to bring back Buddhism sacred texts or suttas. He was accompanied on this trip by the three of his disciples, namely Sun Wukong (Monkey king), Zhu Bajie (Piggy) and Sha Wujing (Sandy).

This hub is not to tell the story of Journey to the West, but rather to analyze the respective team players’ personality and characteristics that have contributed to the success of the mission, and the linkage of those characteristics to the modern behavioral model of DISC.

Sun Wukong - He a risk taker, fearless hero, rebellious, bold and mischievous character. Always in the front line, capable of transforming himself into anything such as becoming a bee, a tree, or a pretty girl. Able to go to heaven, hell, cross volcanic mountains, demon-filled caves rivers and seas.

Zhu Bajie ­- He is a lazy, greedy and emotional type of person and easy to express his lust towards beautiful women. He too has supernatural powers, allow him to do 36 transformations; his combat skills underwater are better than Wukong. He is good in taking advantage of any situation to serve his lustful needs most of the time.

Sha Wujing – He is a quiet, a bit pale and tasteless personality as compared to Wukong and Bajie. He is a nice guy with patient character. He loves his brothers and master so much, always worry about their safety. On many occasions when conflicts happened among Wukong, Bajie and his master Tang San Zang, he seems to play a very important role to resolve the conflicts and bridge all of them together. He has much less supernatural powers as compared to Wukong and Bajie.

Tang San Zang - He is a kind hearted and very compassionate monk. Always very careful, cautious and systematic person. All the decision made by him must adhere strictly to the rules and prohibitions of Buddhism. This personality often leads him to conflict with Wu Kong, who would basically kill anybody who may harm his master.

According to Wikipedia, DISC is a quadrant behavioral model based on the work of Dr. William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) to examine the behavior of individuals in their environment or within a specific situation (otherwise known as environment). It therefore focuses on the styles and preferences of such behavior. DISC is an acronym for Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C). Each of these types has its own unique value to the team.

DISC is widely used in many companies, by HR professionals, managers, consultants, coaches and trainers etc. It’s basically a modern way of assessing individuals’ characteristics, so as to be able to get the right people in to perform.

I think it’s obvious to see the similarity of the four characters as described in the ‘Journey to the West' and the DISC behavioral model.

If we were to do the matching, it would be something as shown in the picture given.

The key to the success of a team work is diversity, in terms of personality and skill set. High performance team is only possible when members of the team, with complementary personality and skill set, able to work interactively and cohesively towards achieving team goal or mission.

In the case of the 'Journey to the West', the mission for Tang San Zang and his team is : “Go to India and bring back Buddhism sacred texts or suttas”. Along the journey, Tang San Zang’s and his disciples have to face so much difficulties - fighting with demons to rescue Tang San Zang, solving internal conflicts particularly between Sun Wukung and Zhu BaJie, and dealing with natural disaster. It's so coincident that the four characters as described in the story are perfectly matched with the DISC behavioral model, thus making the mission to be successful.

Just imagine what would be the consequences if one of the following scenario were to happen:

1) More than two Sun Wukung or all Sun Wukung in the team ?
2) More than two Zhu Bhajie or all Zhu Bhajie in the team ?
3) No Sha Wujing in the team ?
4) Tang San Zang not going, he only sent his disciples ?

Personally i like the story of 'Journey to the West', though it was published long time ago, the author has made the story very exciting, full of adventures and overflowing with demons, gods, magic, and immortals. The four key players as described in the story are having diverse and complementary personality and skill set, which, in my opinion, is the key success factor and also in line with the modern behavioral model of DISC, whereby each the D, I, S and C type has its own unique value to the team.

Therefore, for a team to success, DIVERSITY is the key.

Too many Sun Wukung (D) will bring more headache as there are too many leaders.

Too many Zhu Bajie (I) will bring the team out of focus easily, too much emotions involved.

Too many Sha Wujing (S) will slow down the project, too quiet and lack of opinions.

Too many Tang San Zang (C) will bring the project to nowhere, too cautious and lack of agility.

So it's you really your choice to pick the right people to be in the right team !