Notes from the Field: How to Use the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) to Improve Your Collaboration and Leadership Skills
I recently had the pleasure of graphic recording an event for Dr. Katie Engel, executive coach and facilitator. She was presenting to a sales team about the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), which is a system to measure and describe thinking preferences in people. The HBDI assessment tool, similar to the Myers-Briggs Type or DISC assessments, is used to observe and describe a person’s preferred way of thinking through a problem or formulating an idea. The information gathered with this assessment is then used along with the Whole Brain® Model to plot their thinking preferences on four scales: analytical, practical, rational, and experimental.
Based on that person’s individual ratings on these scales, the model identifies their preferred mode of thinking:
- Blue = Analytical thinking preference (likes collecting and analyzing data, understanding how things work, judging ideas and solutions based on criteria and facts)
- Green = Sequential thinking preference (likes clear, step-by-step directions and problem solving, detail-oriented work, and organized plans)
- Red = Interpersonal thinking preference (likes listening to and expressing ideas, looking for personal meaning, and interacting with a group)
- Yellow = Imaginative thinking preference (likes looking at the big picture, challenging the status quo, creative problem solving)
Dr. Engel emphasized that the HBDI assessment tool and your preferred thinking style should be used to increase your self awareness, not as a way to box yourself into a singular way of thinking — hence using the term ‘preference’.
Awareness of the different thinking styles and the one you personally prefer can be very useful when collaborating with others. If you notice that the discussion during a meeting has spent a lot of time in one thinking style, you can help guide it into a different thinking style –one that your collaborator(s) may prefer, or a style that could benefit the problem at hand.
Wouldn’t you know, the very next day…
The very next day after learning about thinking styles, I was in a graphic recording planning meeting for another event with a group of clients – a meeting planner and an executive team – and I could see how they were like “poster children” for each of these thinking styles!
There was the Marketing leader who wanted to know exactly what we were going to do and was focused on getting results — a blue preference.
The HR leader wanted to make sure we remembered the “Big Why?” for the event– he felt the attendees needed to be inspired, to be “hooked”, and to understand the big picture and the vision — a yellow and red preference.
And I knew, from a previous conversation with the meeting planner that she had a green thinking preference. While gracious and patient with everyone, I knew she was secretly wishing these execs would just stop changing things and so she could finalize the agenda, the plan and the list— a green preference.
Self Awareness is Power: Three Approaches
- Expand Your Thinking Style: A key tenet of the HBDI approach is that you are not limited in what you can do or how you can think. The fact that you have preferences doesn’t mean that you can’t expand your thinking style preferences with, for example, pursuing hobbies or experimenting with other ways of doing things.
2. Be Transparent and Ask for What You Want: If you know your own thinking style preference, you can simply name the thing you’d like to do and see if that works for your collaborators at any given moment, i.e. “I would like to share some (context/story/data/linear details), etc. Do we have time for that?”
3. Recruit Other Thinking Styles: Another approach is to get really clear on your thinking preferences and bring in others who complement it. For example, “Hmm, the client prefers a green thinking style. Who can I ask to help me stretch in that direction? Who on my team has a more green thinking style preference? Who on my team does that naturally and can help me say, prepare my presentation, or be there to follow up?”
Dr Engel’s HBDI Whole Brain Thinking presentation opened my eyes to a useful approach to identify how people work and think differently. It was very intuitive, immediately applicable and seemed less complicated and limiting than the approaches of some other personality or strength assessments I have been exposed to in the past.
Check Out the HBDI Assessment for Yourself
You can take a simplified version of the HBDI assessment on the Herrmann International website. Let us know your thinking preference (or anything else cool that you find out) in the comments below!