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HBDI Model & Whole Brain Thinking #1
In this HBDI model #1, find out more about the HBDI Whole Brain Thinking ®. Do you want to understand more about the way you prefer to think, communicate, and make decisions using the HBDI ® assessment? Using the HBDI ® assessment, understand how you can use your profile to help adapt your thinking, decision-making, and communication style to improve audience engagement. Identify how to improve team effectiveness, through better problem-solving and effective feedback.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Good afternoon, sticky learners. Hello. Sticky learners. Maybe that’s a thing. Maybe my, I think hi sticky learners. Hey, welcome to Tuesday. Uh, we are just gonna give it a few more minutes while we’re waiting for the last people to arrive. Just coming into the room. Hope everyone is well today. Hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine on this fine Tuesday. Let’s have a bit of a roll call. Angelique, good to see you. I, I believe this is the first time. Apologies if I’ve got that wrong. Really great to have you here, Cameron. Good to see you again. Colin, Darren, Fabian, Howard, Martin, Victoria. Thank you everyone for being here. It’s very appreciated.
Nathan Simmonds:
I know there’s a handful of people still yet to come in on their way. He says, let’s get everyone set up for success as we’re just starting this day. Let’s make sure mobile phones hold ’em high. Let’s make sure the little airplane is lit up. And let’s zero out the distraction. A hundred percent attention on what you are doing here today. Also, making sure that you’ve got a drink available. Let’s keep the brain hydrated and lubricated and make the learning stick.
Nathan Simmonds:
And then also making sure you’ve got a fresh sheet for fresh thinking. So making sure you’ve got a clean sheet there, ready to get down your notes. No, it’s not Sate Night fever. This is just a change of color scheme, Darren, um, The fresh sheet. Fresh thinking. As always, it’s about making sure that you are taking notes. We’re gonna be some, sharing some different ideas from different perspectives on how you can approach how you interact and interate with people. So it’s gonna be absolutely vital that you are getting down some of these ideas that you want to remember, that you want to reread so you can reignite that thinking when you come back to it later.
Nathan Simmonds:
Keep the ideas expanding. I think we are pretty much good to go. So welcome to Sticky Learning Lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM and with Andy Palmer, resident expert in HBD. I always get the initials wrong. H remind me Andy, HBDI. No, you’re right. HBD. Yeah, HB DI was right. I got confused at the last bit. Let’s going a smooth thought. I like it.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. HBDI From MBM, the Homo Stick learning. This is where it gets confusing is ’cause there’s too many, you know, too many initials and acronyms going on. So now the idea of these sessions is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do and preparing you for that return back to the office. And we wanna share these ideas which are gonna help you to expand what it is you do and how you interact. The reason we do that is because MBM is the home of leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industries. We understand how important it’s that we do interact and relate with you, with each other at the highest possible level. So, Andy, what are we covering today?
Andy Palmer:
HBDI, we’re gonna come profile. So, um, lots of psychometric tests out there. You will have come across some of them I’m sure in your, uh, careers. Me Briggs be being five B insights, discs. There is a whole host of them and they’re all particularly good in their own individual ways. Um, today, tomorrow and the next day, we’re gonna be talking about the HBDI, the Herman profile. Um, we’re selecting this one because one, it’s a personal favorite of mine ’cause I’m absolutely confident and can guarantee within about the next 20 minutes, you’re gonna go, you know what, I get that. I can see how I can use it.
Andy Palmer:
And then we’re gonna spend the next couple of days really getting into how you can practically use it, different parts of the application, how you can make this thing live and breathe if you so wish, uh, in your businesses or in your personal life. So yes, we’re talking about the Herman profile. I’m gonna refer to it as the Herman profile just ’cause it’s less of a mouthful. Um, but HBDI stands for Hermann Brain Dominance Instruments. So that’s the mouthful bit. Let’s refer to it as, uh, the Hermann profile. That’s what we’re covering next three days. Nathan,
Nathan Simmonds:
Want me on mute? So there, I’m on back in the room. So where are we going to, first of all, for day one then?
Andy Palmer:
Yeah, so today is just, um, no, it’s not just anything today is an introduction to what actually is this, uh, profile, what is this assessment? Um, and helping our audience today to go, oh, that’s interesting. I want to know more about that. And, and hopefully then the next couple of days really builds on that. So yeah, today is about an introduction to the Herman profile. Bring it to life. What are the colors, um, what does it mean, how can I use it? And uh, yeah, we’ll see where it takes us in terms of individual’s questions. So if you’ve got them, get them in that chat window. Nathan will feed them through to me. Uh, test me, challenge me, question it. Let’s, uh, let’s see if we can really bring this, uh, this to life.
Nathan Simmonds:
I’m smiling now because
Andy Palmer:
No.
Nathan Simmonds:
I’m just smiling because Mohammad’s comes training. Is it like six hats? What was I mentioning literally 30 seconds ago?
Andy Palmer:
Brilliant. Um, is it like six hats? Um, oh, . I’ve got four hats. Okay. Um, different topic, different way of approaching different situations. So, um, I’m, I’m gonna suspend, um, kind of thoughts on that and I’ll allow him happy to kind of make his own decision over the next 20 minutes. So, amazing. Brilliant. One thing. Go,
Nathan Simmonds:
One thing I was gonna say, Andy, was, you know, before we dive into that, this is gonna be a three part miniseries that we’re doing. So we’re gonna cover some of different elements over the next three days. I have put in the chat box already there, down the bottom, he says, bear with me the link there for tomorrow’s session. So if you have not already registered, now is the time to make sure you click through that and get yourself onto the future sessions, um, and get yourself a, a seat in the room. So, Andy Floor’s yours.
Andy Palmer:
Brilliant, thanks Nathan. Okay, background to this, uh, Herman profile called, so because it was developed by a gentleman called Ned Herman. Ned Herman worked for General Electric over in America in the fifties and sixties. Uh, he was part of their l and d function at the time. Uh, they knew there was a, a left hand and a right hand side of the brain. And he hypothesized that coupled with the upper and lower quadrants of the brain. And they were responsible for different thinking preferences.
Andy Palmer:
So he went to his boss as you could back in the day and said, Hey, got this idea what said fascinating. I want you to go off and explore it. So he did. So he tested it, developed it, and he’s come up with what we know is today as the Herman HBDI profile. What effectively it does is give you and the people around you a better understanding of how you prefer to think, communicate, and make decisions.
Andy Palmer:
This is based on preferences that you have and how you see the world. Okay? What it isn’t is something that limits you by going, oh, I’m only this, or I’m only this. I can’t possibly do the other things. It’s really about whole brain thinking and understanding where your true preferences actually sit to allow you then to adapt yourself to certain situations, be more tolerant and understanding of others, and then really get into the, the core of this, which is that about challenging yourself to, to kind of do things differently, do things better, and absolutely bring to life yourself and those around you.
Andy Palmer:
And I think it absolutely summed up perfectly, and I’ll quote there on that slide there, by understanding yourself, you can learn to value and understand others once you’ve got that rock and roll, the world your oyster. So how does this work? Um, I’m gonna refer to, um, our different quadrants in the colors. Um, but what effectively we’ve got is a left hand and the right hand side of our brain. Effectively, our brain’s about that big, um, no relation to the size of your hand. So don’t worry if you’ve got particularly small hands, but you’ve got a left hand and a right hand side of your brain. What you’ve also got is an upper and lower part of your brain. At the top half. You’ve got your cerebral mode, which is our, um, uh, the part of the brain we developed over the majority of species on the planet.
Andy Palmer:
Uh, it’s our cerebral mode that almost differentiates us apart from the majority of other, uh, species around there. Uh, some of the grapes have this as well, just not as developed as ourselves. So our cerebral mode at the top, we’ve then got our limbic mode, bottom half of our brain, bottom half, but more bottom half up here, our limbic mode. And that’s taking into account these two quadrants at the bottom below that, there is something called the reptilian brain. Sits right at the top of your spinal column. That’s the part of the brain that, uh, takes care of our basic functions. Respiratory, it tells us when we’re hungry, tells us when we’re thirsty. Um, some of the flight fights or freeze mechanisms also sits in there.
Andy Palmer:
But this particular model takes into account our limbic mode and our cerebral mode. And that coupled with the left hand and the right hand side of our brain gives us four quadrants. Now I wanna treat this as a metaphoric model. I think I would be doing our, uh, gray matter of disservice. Um, if we said that bit’s responsible for that and that bit’s responsible for, for those things over, it’s an incredibly complicated piece of kit. So if we treat it as a metaphor, um, it’s a good place to start. And yet it’s still absolutely underpinned in a very, very good understanding of what’s really going on up here. Okay, lemme pause for a second. That first introduction. Making sense, Nathan?
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. Yes. Um, ham’s nailed it here. Kind of an innovative in innovation side and the critical side, uh, more comes down to kind of what we see is that left and right is the left is for logic and the right hand side for creative elements. It tends to be the preference.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. And I think that’s a brilliant way of looking at it. Left hand, more logical, right hand, more kind of creative. Um, we can do them all. And I’m gonna keep banging on about this over the next few days. We can use all of our brain, we just have preferences based on certain situations or in certain places to lean towards one of these or two of these different quadrants. So let me bring them, uh, to life. I’m gonna refer to them as the colors, but they’re also labeled a.
Andy Palmer:
Do this in reverse B, C, and D. Um, but I’m gonna stick to the colors just because it’s a really good way of latching onto it. And we know that colors are super powerful, uh, in terms of learning and being able to, to, to, to hang things off. So to bring the left and right hand side to life.
Andy Palmer:
Um, gonna explain this a few different ways. Lemme start with my blue quadrants, my blue quadrant, my upper left. This is all about facts. So this part of the brain is about facts, it’s about logic, it’s about problem solving. It’s particularly mathematical, it’s particularly technical. People with a high preference here are all about the here and now. They’re about the facts and the detail. Again, we can do all of this. People up here super comfortable and maybe an Excel spreadsheet, super comfortable with looking at the detail, fantastic analyzers of situations. We then move down into our green quadrant.
Andy Palmer:
Now that’s, you move down into our green quadrant. This is about form. It’s about structure and organization. So we find people here, um, with a high preference of the green. Super organized. Again, it’s about the here and now. Um, particularly good with their administration, but managing their own world.
Andy Palmer:
Conservative in terms of their views, not their political views, but it’s this area that allows them to put things into chronological order and sequence. So we find people here fantastically well organized, super punctual, um, and just not control of their world. Making sense so far? Not making nods is good enough for me. Everyone else as well come into our red quadrants feelings. Third F feelings. People with a high preference here. Super communicators, fantastic interpersonal skills. They’ve got the finger on the pulse of them, their team, their families. And it’s these guys down here that just have that kind of vibe about them that they’re coming in on a Monday morning, how was your weekend?
Andy Palmer:
They’re happy to have, you know, a conversation about stuff. And they’ve got the feelings. And the who of that particular group of people whilst quadrant are yellows, it’s about future. My fourth left futures, people with a high preference here, fantastic. Holistic and conceptual thinkers don’t necessarily live in the here and now. Like these guys over here. It’s more about somewhere out there in the future. So these guys come up with fantastic ideas, constantly evolving and considering where they’re gonna get to.
Andy Palmer:
May not necessarily know how they’re gonna get there, but they know they’re going somewhere and they have vision and they have ideas that then supports that. Okay, let me pause for a second, Nathan, if it’s making sense to you, I’m gonna make an assumption it’s making sense to our audience. If not, chuck some stuff in the questions box. If I’ve done a bad job explaining, it’s because I’ve done a bad job explaining it. And not because you’re stu-pid.
Nathan Simmonds:
No, absolutely. I, I’m comfortable with that. I’m getting this and as long as it’s all clear, so far it’s coming through. Thanks very much, Ru appreciated. Yes, definitely making sense. Thank you very much Cameron. Appreciate it. As I said, any questions come up? You know, why clever people usually like green color? Is that, that they, the question coming is that, that they like the color green or is that that they’re coming from a green space?
Andy Palmer:
Possibly. Now here’s an interesting fact. Um, throughout history, um, many, many famous geniuses, uh, had green as their favorite color. So I think that maybe lends itself to, to what I think was just coming up. I’d probably take it away from this, uh, because I’m quite green and I’m certainly no genius.
Nathan Simmonds:
But on the other side of it, knowing it takes a genius. Um, you know, they’re gonna sit in different faces. They, there’s different ways of being a genius. There’s different types of smarts that are actually appropriate across all those elements. And again, it’s how you bring those teams and how you bring those people into that world so you can move forward with those ideas.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. And I can say this again, we can do all of this. We just have preferences. So this profile, um, you complete a questionnaire, it’s 120 questions. What it does is give you then your preferences to each of these four quadrants. I’m gonna show you a live profile in a moment. The important bit to note is this is about a measurement of your thinking, communicating and decision making preferences. What it’s not is measure of your competence or your intelligence or your personality.
Andy Palmer:
We use all of our brain, we just have preferences. Um, okay, I’ve used my four F’s there. I’m gonna bring it to life, um, in a couple of other different ways. Um, and people often say to me, Andy, is there an ideal job role for, for each of these quadrants? And the short answer is, of course, no. We can do all of it, in which case we can do any particular role.
Andy Palmer:
So only through ease of explanation, am I gonna use this? I’m gonna chuck it out and then bring it straight back in. If there was an ideal job role for each of these quadrants, we might find someone, uh, up here, maybe an accountant or an engineer because they’re all about the detail and they’ve got their eye on the facts. I do job role for someone with a really high preference to the green. Could be a project manager, somebody who’s gotta take a lot of stuff and make sure it happens in the right time, at the right place in the right order. Someone with a high degree of red would make a fantastic teacher or a nurse.
Andy Palmer:
It’s all about the people aspect. Being mindful of people and their feelings and translating, transferring information up until our yellow quadrant. People up here maybe would make a fantastic inventor or an entrepreneur because it’s those ideas, right? Do that only three ease of explanation for people to start to hang their hat, pardon the pun on each of these, uh, different quadrants. The important thing is you could do whatever you want to do and it would not be limited by your thinking preferences.
Nathan Simmonds:
Makes sense to me, and I’ll give you a real life example of that is because I sit in that futures feeling space very much up there. However, you know, in fact aren’t my thing. I don’t enjoy, um, spreadsheets. I don’t enjoy necessarily the form in that version. However, when I understand in order to create that future, I see and to create those emotions that I understand that I need to employ and demonstrate and use those facts and forms, when I change the lens of the way that I look at tho those two, those two elements that I don’t enjoy. ’cause I know it’s getting me where I want to be, actually. It changes the way that I viewed that stuff and I’m able to dial it up a lot higher because it’s aligned with actually who I’m
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely and it takes effort. So I’m gonna ask you to, um, if you could jump to slide seven for me,
Andy Palmer:
Gild. Brilliant. So the then effectively the kind of the the four quadrants with what effectively the four axes running across that. And when we complete that questionnaire, it’s given us, um, it’s given us a mark on each of those four axes. I’m very keen not to say score because that would de no better or worse, but it would give us a mark on each of those four axes that then affects, we create a shape that would sit in there to visually understand who we are. If you can come down one more slide, Nathan, for me.
Andy Palmer:
I’m gonna show you a, a live profile there. There’s a live profile. Now that’s actually me. Um, I am very, very blue. So there’s two shapes there. I’m just gonna talk through the, the thicker of the two lines on there. I am very, very blue. So those words, there’s descriptive words we can see up in the top corner around analytical problem solving, factual, logical.
Andy Palmer:
That stuff does come very naturally to me. To your point Nathan, I don’t have a lot of red, I don’t have a lot of this stuff down here. But yet people say to me, hang on a minute Andy, how’s that possible? You’re a a trainer, you’re a coach, you’re out there being enthusiastic people bringing this and other topics to life. Um, but you’ve got a lot of this stuff going on. What’s that about? It doesn’t come as naturally to me as the stuff over here, but I can do this stuff.
Andy Palmer:
It just takes me a bit more effort. Just takes me a bit more kind of oomph to really dial that stuff up. What that means, my trade off is I can do the red at the end of a full training day five o’clock, everyone’s finished. Great day Andy, thanks very much. In the car I’m driving home. I’m absolutely wiped out. I’m wiped out ’cause I’ve had to really dig into this stuff. Sure. And I’m making eye contact with people. Sure, I’m checking in with people. Sure. I’m demonstrating all the things that a good trainer should. It just makes me tired and I’m okay with that ’cause I’m get home I a very good day and go.
Andy Palmer:
I feel exhausted and I know why. And likewise, Nathan, for you, you’re saying this stuff doesn’t come as naturally to you. Push you into an Excel spreadsheet for a few hours. You can do it, but you’re gonna feel more tired than something that maybe comes a little bit more naturally to you. Okay, we continue with my profile Super blue as we can see out there. I’m very comfortable in Excel spreadsheet. I used to be a an analyst for a few years. So that stuff does come very natural to me.
Andy Palmer:
And likewise, I tend to overanalyze stuff, but I can problem solve things quite quickly. I’ve then got a reasonable dominant dominance into my green quadrant, keeping me organized, keeping me in control of my world. And then I’m not as dominant overall on my right hand side. And for me, I just need to be aware of that depending on certain situations and try and dial stuff up depending on the effort I need to be able to, uh, dig into on that situation. So the profile as an example here takes care of that.
Andy Palmer:
The other part you get if you are interested in the Herman profile is where you go under pressure, under stress and under duress. So that’s that second shape you can just see on there. It’s the uh, dotted line or the slightly thinner line on there. And you can see as an example, I have an extension in my green. So when I’ve got it all going on and I’m under pressure, I get really organized. I write lists until they’re coming out of my notepad. Um, I’m just getting super organized. I’m writing stuff down.
Andy Palmer:
I’ve gotta get stuff outta my head to, for me to fill in more control. Um, if I’m lucky enough to be flying somewhere, maybe able to Ireland or somewhere in Europe to deliver some training, I do some strange what I think could be some strange behaviour. I’ll print off my boarding card twice. I’ve got it on my phone anyway, I will double check my suitcase and get it ready the night before, but I’ll double check it again in the morning. And I have to just do all this stuff ’cause I know when I’m under pressure I get far more controlled and far more organized and that works for me.
Andy Palmer:
But it just allows me to explain who I am and what I’ve got going on and why I’m demonstrating certain, uh, attributes of myself. Again, the trade off on the flip side is the yellow that I have got that isn’t a huge amount. You can only just see it, but it literally goes down to zero. So again, when I’m under pressure and I’ve got a big problem, I’m saying to one of my colleagues, oh God, this massive problem with a client, I just can’t do, I can’t get to the bottom of it. What they say, oh, have you considered doing X, Y, and Z?
Andy Palmer:
And come up with one of those creative solutions. Okay, you know what? That’s so obvious. I just didn’t see it. So I know when I’m under pressure, things like creative solutions or coming up with an idea to, to solve something isn’t gonna come as natural to me. I need to calm myself down, get back in control of what I would see as my kind of norm, uh, and then be able to, to hit it head on in an appropriate way. Nathan, what questions or thoughts?
Nathan Simmonds:
Uh, it makes sense. A couple of questions came in. One of them was, is there a test? Um, so that’s the prime question kind of segues me into putting that post up there. There is a test, it’s called the HBDI profile. There is an assessment. You have the link there if you wish to take part in that immediately. Um, the next question is, can I be a mixture of all of them? And my response, Matt, was that this slide is gonna answer that because we are always a mixture of all of them. Um, next question that came in there is can I train myself to shift from one style to the other Ando?
Andy Palmer:
Alright, lemme pick up each of those questions. Uh, in order if I can remember them. First question, is there a, uh, an assessment? Yes, there is 120 questions typically done online. Um, you can purchase this on our website. Um, I’ll be very open with you. Cost of the profile is nine five pound each. You get, there’s one I said earlier. And you get a pack with all your profile information written, an explanation, your profile, a booklet, fantastic folder to keep it all in. You get a digital debrief on it. So you’ll get a really good explanation to this because over the next few days we are only skimming the surface.
Andy Palmer:
And at the same time, I’d wanna have that conversation with you to do that one-to-one or maybe even a group debrief to ensure that you absolutely understand this. Now I’ve been an accredited practitioner for this for the last 10 years. Uh, this stuff gets me out of bed in the morning to see individuals and teams go, that’s me. I can now understand myself. More importantly, I can understand other people’s just super, super powerful. Um, so that was the first question. Second question, Nathan, remind me.
Nathan Simmonds:
Can I be a mixture of all of those?
Andy Palmer:
Can I be a mixture of all those? Yeah, absolutely. We often see people that are, uh, a square, let’s, let’s call it a square for want of a better word. What it isn’t is a square that touches a whole outside of our profile or a tiny little square in the middle because you do only have a finite amount of space. Um, but yeah, you can be a square, you can be equally balanced across those areas. Sometimes people look at their profile and go, oh, that’s square. That’s a little bit. I say, actually, why not? You’re balanced. You can do all of this stuff.
Andy Palmer:
And I sometimes refer to it as kind of, um, gears in a car in the middle, kind of first gear. We still do it. Like for me in my bloom, maybe I’m doing this at fourth or fifth gear. So we often find those people that are square can maybe do it or maybe in third gear. It gives fantastic balance, um, uh, and no particular, let’s say limiting factors within their, uh, their world. There was another question as well, Nathan.
Andy Palmer:
Yeah, brilliant question. So the short answer is this profile is super deep rooted. If you answer it honestly, um, it doesn’t tend to change over time. Um, there’s an exception to that and it’s the things that change the fabric of us as as as as people, as individuals. Um, fortunately, unfortunately, they’re both at each end of the spectrum of births and deaths. They’re the things that fundamentally affect us. Um, when we experience those, we can sometimes see, uh, a change in our profile.
Andy Palmer:
So for example, bringing it back to me a little bit, uh, when my daughter was born, uh, eight years ago and suddenly you kind of get given this little bundle of joy and you go, wow, I’m a father. That, that’s a game changer. When I retook my profile afterwards, I had seen an expansion in the red. I think it just changed the fabric of who I was and, and, and certainly became a little bit more red.
Andy Palmer:
And my wife tells the story of, um, she saw me as a kind of emotionally closed off robot that wouldn’t even ask her how her day was and had no feelings. And of course I’m not those things, um, through to sitting there on a Saturday night watching, um, some Britain’s got talent or the equivalent. I’m going, uh, have you got tear rolling down your cheek there Andy and this beautiful kai singing? I’m going, yeah, I have no idea what’s going on here. But I certainly changed and got more in touch with my emotions. Commonly I just made that public. Um, it doesn’t tend to change.
Andy Palmer:
Can the real question, can you train yourself to be more Yeah, you can absolutely do various exercises to not necessarily change who you are, but to allow you to access these other different quadrants more naturally. Yeah, maybe we’ll get into that in the next couple of days because, um, that, that’s a, a really fascinating subject. There, there are things you can do to help unlock maybe quadrants you don’t have a high preference to.
Nathan Simmonds:
Mm-Hmm. And, um, I think for me, yes, you can train yourself to do that. Yes, you can become more observant of what another person needs so that you can adjust your communication style to help them hear you in a better way. But as you were saying earlier, um, it’s, it’s an adapted adopted style. It’s more tiring. And actually when you are looking in job environments, it might be that it just doesn’t feel right. And over a course of time you’re gonna get kind of a, a drip feed of stress because it just, it isn’t suitable to you. You know, you’re trying to be almost a square peg in the round hole when actually there’s a better way for you or better place for you to be to actually express yourself more fully.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. We’re gonna get into, um, over the next couple of days, we’re gonna get into topics around how you can, uh, more better understand communication. Why sometimes it’s just quite free flying and why other times it feels more challenging. And we touched on some topics around, um, uh, preparing information for audiences or giving feedback. And that just starts to bring it to life. ’cause you’ve always got to remain yourself, but it doesn’t stop you from, in my words, dialing stuff up and dialing stuff down and being adaptable to different situations.
Andy Palmer:
But at the same time absolutely being true to yourself and not, I guess using this stuff as an excuse of, oh sorry, I I can’t do that Excel spreadsheet. I’m just not blue or sorry, I, I can’t get there on time. I just can’t do that green stuff. This can never be used as a, a reason for not doing things or a reason for not being able to, to achieve things. It just takes a little bit more effort and we can use all of our grown hence whole green thinking.
Nathan Simmonds:
Amazing. I’m conscious of time. Let’s have a look coming up. It’s 1 27 already had a flurry of questions. If there are any more questions, please get ’em in the question box. Now, um, once come straight through there. How can we make our teams work best together? If we have one extreme to another? IE someone who with no red or loads of red?
Andy Palmer:
Yeah, brilliant. And some of the best teams have a good mixture across all of these different quadrants. ’cause they’re balanced. Once they’ve got an understanding of who they are, they then become so much more tolerant. So those people that we saw up here that were very rigid and uncaring versus those people here that maybe see as being lazy and daydreamers, once we start to understand that they just see the world through very different eyes, they start to then develop a common language. And some of the best experiences I’ve had are with teams that have um, whether it’s just a team of two people or a team of 20 people, um, have a good understanding of each other to then become far more tolerant.
Andy Palmer:
Um, and what it gives them is context. They become more aware of context. They know that actually if they go to Bob or they go to Brenda, they can maybe get to something quicker because they’re tapping into something that maybe becomes more natural to them and they just start as a team becoming so much more cohesive one through tolerance two because they just start to bond as a team.
Andy Palmer:
Um, we can do some cool stuff with um, I’ve seen this done really well and some of the clients we’ve worked with, they get this stuff up on the wall as a poster and they put people’s initials and names in each of the different quadrants. It starts to live and breathe and they start to then understand what kind of order do they make decisions as as a team if they were a collective. And it just gets ’em to that place of going, wow, we as a team are just so much more effective by knowing this stuff now.
Nathan Simmonds:
Mm-hmm, agreed. And Cameron’s come back with a nice idea. With that said, that’s a nice idea. The other thing for me, we’re probably gonna get into this in the next couple of days, is if you are speaking to someone that is an extreme red or is an extreme blue or whatever it is, is thinking about the language that those sorts of people use. So if they are a future based person, okay, I want to see the world that you see. I want to get, you know, a snapshot of what you are imagining. If there are feelings people, they’re in the red.
Nathan Simmonds:
Okay, I wanna understand what it’s you’re feeling. And by asking automatically asking those questions, you’re starting to put yourselves in the shoes of the other person and taking uh, kind of a breath to understand their world rather than trying to, you know, inflict your thinking upon them.
Andy Palmer:
Absolutely. And, and that where it doesn’t work. Whereas I would push facts and details on someone and if that person’s yellow, it’s not gonna work for them. But if I’m starting to win to weave maybe some metaphors or some stories or what actually mean further down the line, then they’re gonna get it and we can improve our communication. Um, we’re definitely gonna get it into tomorrow, get into it more tomorrow because there these quadrants, especially the diametrically opposing ones, um, communication sometimes can get really challenging. Let’s have options to then, uh, try and to to try and smooth that out and iron that out.
Nathan Simmonds:
Amazing. I’m conscious we’ve hit one, uh, one 30. What has been of most value from today’s conversation? Uh, what has resonated? What have you picked up on that’s useful for you right now out of this introduction to the home brain instrument? What’s been useful? Um, I’m just thinking what else has come up in my mind? Questions for you. So some actions to take away for everyone that’s listening and paying attention to this one is, where do you think you fit on this profile As a rough rule of thumb, where do you actually fit on this profile? And the other one is just for entertainment factors.
Nathan Simmonds:
You know, where are the most important people in your life on this profile? So your significant other halves, the people you work with, your family members, where do they fit on this profile? So you can start to better understand where you are in relation to them and vice versa. And you can start already building some real decent foundation even by just doing this. Your foundations of that communication become a whole lot more, a whole lot stronger.
Andy Palmer:
They do. Just, just while that stuff’s coming through, Nathan, um, I’m over here, my wife’s over here. We compliment each other perfectly. All those analogies of chalk and cheese and opposites of attracts absolutely kick, kick in and yet at times we will wind each other up chronically. Joe will, um, she’ll get the hoover out, start hoovering our Porsche, start washing the dish, emptying the dishwasher, doing the dishes. But for me, each job gets started but never finished. The Hoover’s always left out, the dishes are still on the sides. The, uh, tumble dry hass been emptied and there’s piles of laundry on the side.
Andy Palmer:
And I say to her, well, why can’t you do one job and finish it? ’cause that’s how I do it. I get the hoover out, do the hoovering, put the hoover away. I don’t do the dishwasher, put everything away. And she says, well it’s just not important to me. I, you know, as I’m doing this stuff, I’ll move on to the next thing. I will come back round and finish those jobs off. But that’s my approach and she’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely natural and normal to her as is my approach. We would just view them as being very different and strange. So we develop tolerances for each other and 1,000,001 stories just like that of where we just have to be more mindful ’cause there is no right or wrong way of doing stuff. It’s how we do things that’s right for us.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. Uh, so, um, Cameron says you’re a brave man. Uh, having said yes, similar sort of conversation on a daily basis, um, cannot impose my thinking on others. Absolutely. You have no right to impose your thinking on anybody else. Um, Gar has come through with the ideas on better comms, with different groups. Colors will definitely help. Looking forward to tomorrow. Good. Gareth, looking forward to it tomorrow. I think that’s it. Great. Sorry, last bit from Andy.
Andy Palmer:
One last thing because I was remiss and didn’t mention earlier. People are kind of going, oh you know what? Quite like the idea this profile, um, for the next few days, you know what we’re offering these profiles, you can buy ’em on our website. I’m gonna get Nathan to, to drop the uh, link in there. We’re also gonna put a code in there if you guys wanna buy one or buy 100 and I’m okay with either um, 10% discount off any purchase
Nathan Simmonds:
Profile. Um, assessment is in there. You’ve got the link. And then to go straight to that, you’ve got the 10% off there as well, um, to go through and get a discount on that immediately. That is phenomenal value. And there is one more thing that I wanna drop in there just to share with everyone, just the coaching cards. ’cause once you have this profile, once you have this understanding of yourself and how you want to interact with that, you can then just bolster that up and make it really strong with a decent set of questions for yourself. ’cause you’re now knowing yourself better and then how you interact with other people to get an even stronger result in that relationship. Huge value. A great first session. Say that again Ali.
Andy Palmer:
I think we’re probably well over time.
Nathan Simmonds:
We are well over time, but I think it’s, it’s four minutes over time. I think it’s four minutes of huge value. Um, Colin’s received the latest calls this morning. Thanks Sarah. Very appreciated. I know Mohamed asked about that they are on their way so they are hitting doormats. We are making sure they’re going out. But keep us informed as to when they do arrive. Okay, Andy, I think that’s a great close for today. Thanks very much to today and we look forward to sharing with you tomorrow. Speak soon.
