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Understanding the Herrmann Whole Brain® model B Understanding the Herrmann Whole Brain® model B III — Making sense of your personal HBDI® profile: FAQs 1. Is there an ideal profile? Yes. Yours! One of the most appreciated aspects of the HBDI® is that it shows us you can be ‘great’ whatever your profile. People often think that being ‘Whole Brained’ would be ideal but, like any profile, this may be felt to have its disadvantages as well as its advantages. The HBDI® is a tool provided to encourage us to understand our strengths and blind spots, preferences and avoidances. We can then, if desired, find strategies to learn competencies in those areas of lesser preferences. By doing this we widen our scope for using different approaches without compromising our preferences. 4. ‘This person is highly ‘competent’ in Left brain activities.’ Profiles indicate preferences not competencies. The two must be kept distinct. A person may very well have skills in a given quadrant and yet still only be doing a type of work out of necessity rather than by choice. Some people would love to sing but are unable to carry a tune. To prefer something is to be drawn to it, to have a taste for it. Competency has to do with acquired knowledge and professional experience. Just because, for example, a person has Left brain preferences doesn’t automatically mean they are going to be a master accountant, especially if they have never studied or trained in the profession! motivation, preferences are unlikely to change quickly. However if you do indeed wish to develop new preferences, Herrmann’s advice is to start the process in your private life first rather than in the workplace, for example in free time activities or other hobbies. This private approach always entails fewer risks of consequences for mistakes made, and generally allows more freedom of choice. For example if you want to develop approaches that are more C quadrant oriented, you might decide to purchase season tickets to a concert series, or take yoga classes. Conversely, if you want to develop greater comfort with the A quadrant you might enroll in a course on how to invest in the stock market, or get more interested in computers. In the ‘Activities and Hobbies’ table located in the D chapter, you will find a wide range of activities you might consider when seeking to become more comfortable with a particular preference. Pick one, stick with it and you are bound to succeed. 2. ‘My profile is good, his profile is bad...’ Absolutely not. Profiles are never good or bad. Your profile is just a static representation of your thinking preferences at a specific point in time, which always have to be viewed within your current context in order to be properly understood. There is no such thing as a good or bad preference, there are only preferences that are more or less suited to your situation, profession and activities. If your preferences match well with the work you are doing and hope to do, then it is likely that you are feeling good and succeeding. On the other hand, if your preferences seem disconnected or unrelated to your current activities, you may not feel at ease and could have a hard time devoting 3. ‘I have Right brain tendencies, I am very Right brained, etc’. These expressions are not helpful because they tend to be misleading. Preferences are not something we possess like things. A preference is not something that determines every aspect of who we are and which is not subject to change. In fact it is more correct to say for example “I prefer to function using my Right brain preferences”, because preferences are about modes of mental functioning, ways of grasping or perceiving the world, of reacting to it through specific behaviours.may not feel at ease and could have a hard time devoting yourself and being as successful as you desire to be. It is up to you to work on aligning your preferences with your activities, studies, career and life (see paragraph 7). Necessity may be the mother of professional competency, but true mastery in a specific domain can only be achieved in those areas that converge with our preferences as well. Thus in practice, there arises a certain correlation between preferences and competencies, but only because people tend to succeed the most when doing what they love the most. Having a taste for something tends to make us more motivated to become skilled at it, which then reinforces our taste for it, and so on, in a positive feedback loop that is generated whenever a person truly acquires a new skill. 5. ‘This person has pronounced Right brain preference, therefore he must be creative’. Wrong! Never reduce a quadrant to just one of its component parts: each quadrant has several characteristics. Always double- check in the Data Summary sheet whether a specific attribute is truly preferred, rather than assuming it is, when only looking at the overall view. A person may be dominant in A quadrant and yet still be weak in maths, simply because they lacked the opportunity to pursue their studies in this domain. Indeed it is highly likely they would succeed in it if they decided to truly put the time in, precisely because these kinds of studies suit their thinking preferences. 6. ‘Can my profile change?’ Yes. Longitudinal studies of thousands of HBDI® participants indicate that change can take place if there is a reason for it. Change seems to take place over a long period of time with an individual’s desire and willingness to change, or with a change in their life’s circumstances, or as a result of a significant emotional event. However, if nothing has happened to the individual and they continue to do the same things in the same way, then the profile will remain stable. 7. ‘How do we actually develop new preferences in practice?’ The object of the HBDI® profile is not to change preferences, but rather to be more effective, accept the consequences of our preferences and not become their ‘prisoner’. Our preferences can’t be changed just because it might seem like a nice idea. Situational change is preferable in order to achieve new personal or professional objectives, when we have begun to view our current preferences as incoherent with our activities or life-goals. Without this kind of 8. ‘Is the 1111 profile the most desirable profile to have?’ Definitely not for everyone. The most ‘desirable profile’ is the profile that truly matches your goals in life and the professional activities you are pursuing (see the answer to Question 1). 9. ‘Are there any 2222 or 3333 profiles?’ No, everyone has at least one primary (1) in their profile. 10. ‘I am very strong in one quadrant, but not all of the descriptors describe me. Why?’ Each quadrant is made up of ‘clusters’ of specialised thinking. You may prefer one set of clusters over another, and having a preference for a quadrant does not mean you will prefer all of the clusters in that quadrant. Page - 16 Page - 17
Understanding the Herrmann Whole Brain® model C Understanding the Herrmann Whole Brain® model C Important : Competence and preference are two different things. The HBDI® measures your preferences. Knowledge of your preferred thinking styles illuminates what degree of satisfaction or comfort you may have on the job when you encounter: a work challenge, a learning situation, a challenging interpersonal or communication situation. Superimpose your HBDI® profile overlay on this page and compare its orientation with different groups of professions. Technical Scientific Troubleshooting How does your HBDI® profile impact your work and compare to others? Consider your interests and successes in your professional and personal life. Where would you place your co–workers and family? How are their preferences similar or different from yours? Our statistics have shown a strong correlation between job satisfaction and how well a job matches one’s profile. We have a tendency to orient ourselves toward professions which attract us and bring us satisfaction. Artistic Developmental How does your profile compare to others? Principal profile groupings General profile information One of the best ways to understand the uniqueness of your profile is through understanding the general attributes of your profile group or ‘family’ and comparing it with others. This chapter contains descriptions of the 40 most frequently occurring profiles. Each profile consists of four numbers: a four-digit preference code, identified using the following order: A, B, C, D. For example 1 2 2 1. Remember within each quadrant: 1. Corresponds to a strong preference (a score of 67 or above). 2. Corresponds to an intermediate preference or thinking that is comfortable and available as needed (a score of 34–66). 3. Indicates a low preference or a lack of interest and for some even an avoidance (a score of 33 or below). Example: 2 3 1 1 indicates an intermediate preference (use) in the A quadrant, a low preference (use least) in the B quadrant and a strong preference (prefer) in the C and D quadrants. Frequency of typical profiles Two facts are clear from the studies of over one million profiles studied across the world in the Herrmann International database. 1. The aggregate total of all profiles results in a 1 1 1 1 profile. This will be true of most groups of at least 100 profiles. This means that the world is a composite ‘Whole Brain’. 2. When you compare averages of a given profession, to an individual in that profession, you see strong correlation. Although this is generally true, exceptions do occur. The chart below shows the percentage of profiles that have single, double, triple or quadruple dominance: Triple dominance: 34 % Quadruple dominance: 3 % Single dominance: 5% Financial Entrepreneurial Double dominance: 58 % Legal Accounting Supervisory Preferences at work Strategic Expressive Educational These numbers alone can answer the question: “Is my profile rare or common?” This section provides brief general descriptions of profile groups or families with typical problem solving, communication and decision making approaches for each. Administrative Implementing Social/Helping Supportive They are grouped as above: > single dominant profile: page 19 (one 1) > double dominant profile: page 23 (two 1’s) > triple dominant profile: page 31 (three 1’s) > quadruple dominant profile: page 34 (four 1’s) Customer service Page - 18 Page - 19
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