Birkman is a multi-faceted, broad based behavioral assessment that offers very helpful, practical information providing recipients with powerful tools to help with decisions about important areas including relationships and career direction.
This really is a very comprehensive course on you. In my view it’s something every adult should have as it provides an objective behavioral baseline for virtually all of the significant decisions you’ll make in our life. In other words you’ll just have a much better idea of what will and won’t work for you.
The basic set of reports provided is approximately 40 pages long and includes the following core reports, however, there are several other applied reports that could be provided as well:
Areas of Interest
This is a very helpful page that describes your “Occupational Areas of Interest”. It’s critically important to understand this page. If you have very low scores you may not be very interested in doing work in that area. If you scores are around 50 you may be able to take it or leave it. If you scores are very high you need to pay attention to these areas as this may give you a real key to the area you’d like to work in.
Strengths and Needs Graph
This is where we start to really dig in. “Strengths and Needs” or “Component Scores” are central to the Birkman report. This Data and combination of these scores are used to create some of the other reports. This report will bring light to the following:
11 Core Areas of Behavior
Each of the 11 areas will be split three ways:
Your Usual behavior will be described by a bar graph at the top of the page with a written description below it. This is your most natural behavior. It’s the way you behave when things are going well and your needs are being met.
Your Needs must be a STRONG consideration when you are making any life choices.
If your behavioral needs are not satisfied you will go into a Stress behavior. Please remember that the Stress Behaviors are not you. They are simply behaviors that occur when your needs are not met and you get STRESSED. The solution is to be sure your needs are not being neglected.
What I love about this report – It helps you answer specific questions about why you find certain situations so easy or difficult and perhaps why you find some people so easy or difficult. You will really enjoy “thin slicing” your behaviors to understand all of the little parts.
Preferred Work Styles
The Preferred Work Styles Report helps to identify the ideal organizational environment for an individual, as well as identifying certain corporate, social and problem-solving styles the person will exhibit. Scores can be used to help determine the managerial and occupational context that would contribute most positively to your success. The very best Human Resources professionals are using Birkman to choose their top people. The Preferred Work Styles is a central focus as Birkman teaches them how their prospect is likely to perform in the future.
What I love about this report – The Preferred Work Styles Report describes how an individual prefers to contribute to the organization and what they value in a work setting. This report alone can be “worth the price of admission.”
Needs at a Glance
Let’s take all of your significant needs and put them on one page so that you don’t miss anything when designing the perfect career. This is also a big help in relationships.
What I love about this report – People often overlook what they need when evaluating an opportunity and this gives you a laser focus on ensuring that the next opportunity won’t leave you living in stress.
Coaching Page
Invaluable information to have so that you can coach yourself and know how to ask superiors to coach you. The page starts out providing a very brief behavioral description and then finishes with some suggestions for coaching you. These are crisp, clear, focused and very important coaching points that can totally change the effectiveness of a relationship. Supervisors need one of these for every person they hire.
What I love about this report – People can stop guessing about how you need to be coached. This powerful summary can transform working relationships… in just one page… Really!!
Job Families / Job Titles
This report will compare your answering patterns with those who have been successful at a wide variety of careers. This will give you a strong indication of where you’d be most satisfied in your career. There are also links to the US labor site where you can find fantastic information on careers that you may be interested in.
What I love about this report – You get great ideas in the closest areas of your occupational interest. You can actually design your own career from the information and web links in this report by combining this all with your core behavioral data in the previous reports. Very powerful and often life changing report!
