Australian Edition—June 2008
As we know from the HBDI®, some people get very excited about numbers. I am 155 in the yellow quadrant so I am not one of them – except when it came to these numbers:
Whoever said that obviously has not been through our half day workshop called ‘Colour your client’.
In ‘Colour your client’ participants learn how to estimate someone’s thinking preferences based on the clues they leave behind. Obviously it is not as accurate as an HBDI® profile but it can still be useful. Combined with ThinkAbout communicating it can really help people in sales and customer service roles.
And the end of the financial year is a great time to do some clue spotting.
Do you already have all your receipts documented and coded with your bank accounts reconciled and all deductions calculated and an estimated amount of your refund—or is it all in an old shoe box ready for your long suffering accountant?
Yes there is, according to the HTMS database. More females are triple dominant – probably due to the fact that the female brain has more connections. This could also explain why females find it easier to multi-task. Males tend to be double dominant and could explain why the male brain is good at focusing on one thing at a time.
The statistics below come from the HTMS Asian database.
Remember question 100 of the HBDI® Survey. It asks you to what degree you are introverted or extroverted. You put your mark on a 9 point scale, 1 being introverted, 9 being extroverted and everything somewhere in between.
It is not quite as simple as that, as within each quadrant you can have both. The slide below can be really useful in helping people understand this. A copy is on page 7 of the green interpretation booklet.
We have also started to include the Introvert / Extrovert score as additional data in the HBDI® Team Profile. It adds another dimension to people trying to understanding themselves and how they relate to others.
Remember from the last newsletter about 28 being a perfect number. Well it was for Irwin. He managed our booth at the AHRI exhibition. And he went home tired after dealing with over 345 enquiries about the HBDI® and Whole Brain® Thinking. It shows the interest people have in ‘thinking’ and how to improve it – at an individual, team and organisational level.
Please call Irwin, or any of us at Herrmann International if you want to know more about any aspect of the HBDI® and Whole Brain® Thinking.
“I finally have permission to be myself!” exclaimed my coaching client Christine as we debriefed her HBDI® profile. “I’ve spent my entire life apologising for being so different from my family. Now I see why. They’re left-brained accountants, and I’m a right-brained entrepreneur.”
When Christine asked me to coach her, she was already motivated to fully honour her thinking style preferences. But seeing her profile gave her the insight and—as she said—the permission to pursue starting her new business with unabashed enthusiasm and confidence.
Like many of my coaching clients, Christine had previously completed the DISC and Myers-Briggs assessments. But neither had penetrated to the essence of her strengths, talents and passions to the extent that the HBDI® was able to do.
From my experience of debriefing more than 350 profiles, Christine’s reaction is the rule, not the exception. I have never considered using other assessments in my coaching practice because the HBDI® goes right to the core of how my clients are wired to think, work, learn and communicate. Particularly for those who have attended one of my workshops explaining Whole Brain® Technology, an hour’s profile debrief gives them insights into personal next steps that would otherwise require multiple sessions of intense exploration into their motivations, aspirations and inclinations.
In coaching it is so important to help clients articulate what it is that they are trying to accomplish in their personal and professional lives. Using their profile as a road map has proven to be an irreplaceable guide for my natural intuition about what people are really looking for in life. They may not have identified an exact direction, but their preferences never fail to illumine where life is most satisfying for them.
What a gift for my clients—to validate and support their right to be uniquely themselves, and to give them a four-colour visual that literally points to their life direction!
During the debrief conversation we also discuss the people in their lives and how strong quadrant preferences of others can either pull them toward or push them away from their own preferences. With the HBDI® I can demonstrate where they add value, why they actually need the different perspectives of others who may have been difficult to deal with in the past, and how they can form more effective partnerships in the future.
As a coach I want to help my clients achieve results as quickly as possible. With the HBDI® a single session usually provides both direction and substance so that subsequent meetings can focus on specific strategies and tactics. Of course my clients must do their own personal development work. But armed with their thinking style profiles, they now understand both the challenges and the opportunities, and they approach both with renewed hope and confidence in their ability to accomplish their goals.
From my perspective, the HBDI® is the ultimate coaching tool.
Copyright 2008 TotalPros, Inc
Cheryl Eckl has been a certified HBDI® practitioner since 2001. She is a speaker, writer and facilitator, and has completed over 350 individual and team HBDI® profiles in her work as a personal coach and professional development trainer. Her passion is helping clients “work where they’re wired”. She is currently completing her book From Labor to Love: How to Do Great Work in Any Occupation (summer 2008).
http://www.herrmann.com.au/wshops/index.php
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