Psychometrics |
Using Psychometrics to understand ourself and others
It is an accepted belief that before you can truly understand others and better communicate with, influence or lead them, you need to firstly understand yourself.
Psychometric tools are designed to help people understand themselves to a deeper level, bringing them greater insight, understanding and ultimately more conscious control of themselves than they might have previously thought possible.
Within the Greenbank Team we have a number of consultants who are chartered psychologists or who are accredited and experience in a vast range of psychometrics.
We hold the view that no one psychometric can meet all needs and we always work carefully with our clients to understand the information they want to gather, how it will be used within either a training, assessment or coaching context. We then propose what we believe will be the best fit psychometric which will support the overall programme design.
The range of psychometrics which we can draw upon are considerable – they include:
Myers Briggs Type Indicator ®
MBTI, based on Jungian theory of personality, is the most widely used psychometric in the business world today. It is therefore often used to provide a common framework or language to understand ourselves and others. The tool does not measure ability or character, rather it seeks to categorise people in terms of their preferences within each of the four dimensions: Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I); Sensing (S) or Intuition (I); Thinking (T) or Feeling (F); Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).
We often use MBTI as a platform within our programmes to understand how best to communicate, motivate, influence and work most effectively with others. We are licensed to use both the Step 1 and Step 2 instruments available in a range of languages.
INSIGHTS
Insights also draws upon the work of Carl Jung and adapts this to a modern business context. It uses a simple, highly innovative, colour-based model that is both personally memorable and has great ‘sticking power’ in an organisation. At its simplest, it is based on the following principles;
- Understand me
- Understand you
- Adapt to you to improve our relationship and my effectiveness
We work with the model to make impact at a number of levels, in a variety of situations - from helping sales professional to achieve more effective sales meetings to advising Directors about strategy decisions and leadership. It is a key component of our Sales Curriculum. Both the questionnaire and the very detailed individual reports are available in an extensive range of languages.
FIRO-B
Developed by Will Schutz, the FIRO-B® instrument is a powerful aid to team, leadership and individual development. It can help people understand where they may be compatible in their working approaches with others-and where there may be potential conflict. It is a useful tool to use in Team Development as it can help the team to understand the type of working environment in which individuals are likely to thrive. It is also a valuable tool to aid self-awareness as FIRO-B measures both how a person typically behaves towards others and how they would like others to behave towards them.
In addition to a standard report we are able to offer individuals a more detailed, narrative report to support their understanding.
Belbin ®
Possibly the most well known of the profiling tools aimed at developing better team working within an organisation, through a better understanding of the roles and relationships that exist within a team. Developed by Dr Meredith Belbin over a period of years at Henley Management College, 9 clusters of behaviours were identified as underlying the success of teams, which were named ‘Team Roles’.
We use the Belbin Interplace Questionnaire, which can be used as both self perception and 360o survey, as part of our Team Development work.
Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)
The TKI identifies five distinct conflict handling modes and helps people understand their own preferred style when faced with conflict and then to explore other styles which may sometimes be more appropriate and effective in the positive handling of conflict. It can be used to help analyse a range of conflict situations and decide which style is most appropriate and effective for different people and different situations. We often use this tool in our Negotiation Skills Workshops , Positive Management of Conflict and Team Development courses.
Strength Deployment Inventory ®
This tool, developed by Personal Strengths Publishing is aimed at helping people enrich their interpersonal relationships and manage conflict more productively. It can help individuals to understand the motivation which lies behind our own and others’ behaviour, revealing the reasons why people act the way they do. It is also useful in helping to understand how our behaviour may change under pressure or in conflict situations. It can be a useful additional to programmes with a focus on influence, team leadership and conflict management.
In addition, we sometimes call upon other psychometrics for specific requirements, for instance when the purpose is for assessment or recruitment. These include: 16PF, CPI, NEO-PR and Hogan.
