Thinking Style Assessment

Whole Brain Thinking

Everybody thinks differently, but few organizations are able to leverage cognitive diversity as a strategic advantage.

The ways individuals think guide how they work.  The ways groups of individuals think guide how the teams they form work. The ways that groups of teams think (and work) make or break the companies they work for.

To put it plainly, the success of a business depends on the ability of its management teams to drive communication, innovation, and productivity within and across functions.  In 35+ years of working with Fortune 100 clients, we’ve found that understanding thinking is the key to business-level success.

The Whole Brain® Model is our time tested framework to decode and harness the cognitive diversity of individuals, teams, and organizations.

The Whole Brain® Thinking is a methodology designed to help thinkers, teams and organizations better benefit from all of the thinking available to them. It acknowledges that while different tasks require different mental processes, and different people prefer different kinds of thinking, organizations will get better results when they can strategically leverage the full spectrum of thinking available.

Each person (yes, you!) has thinking preferences, some strong, others intermediate. Those preferences develop into dominances, and without the awareness of those preferences, you may fall victim to blind spots when it comes to other people’s ways of thinking. But Whole Brain® Thinking reminds us that everyone has access to all four ways of thinking. Applying Whole Brain® Thinking means being able to fully leverage one’s own preferences, stretch to other quadrants when necessary, and adapt to and take advantage of the preferences of those around you to improve performance and results.

Assessment Types

Individuals

Thinkers are the first to onboard to the Whole Brain® model using our digital self assessment and learning apps. Internalization of Whole Brain® Thinking at the Individual level sets up the organization to realize the most business value from Herrmann. To emphasize the role that individual thought process plays in defining that business value, we refer to individuals as thinkers. All of our applications are for thinkers in various contexts.

Pairs

While individual Thinkers are essential to forming Pairs, it's not until the pair level that the need to collaborate, communicate, and align emerges as function for business value improvements. Thinker Pairs can be anything from a manager and a direct report to a salesperson and a prospect. Wherever two individuals need to deliver more than either can alone, our digital applications and guides are ready to empower self-diagnostic and optimization.

Teams

For most organizations, teams drive goal attainment. Management, being the goal owners, are therefore responsible for the output of their teams. We work directly with management, providing team and sub-team dashboards to measure effectiveness and identify obstacles. Beyond that, application suites apply at this level to align work processes towards increasing velocity and business value output.

Organizations

The organization can do only what its teams are capable of. Which is why we begin at the individual level and scale up. Building the internal capabilities to innovate, produce, engage employees, and realize business synergies in pairs and teams means that a Herrmann-powered organization will have those same capabilities - without the need for consultant support. More importantly, deploying the Whole Brain® Model at the organizational level means the you'll gain

Build

BUILD A FOREST OF STRONGER TREES

Create a more inclusive culture to generate greater value

  • Diagnose the cognitive diversity gaps that create productivity shortfalls
  • Build “diverse by design” teams for maximum results
  • Make cultural initiatives stickier and more inclusive to have a lasting impact
Seed

SEED THE FUTURE

More effective management, more effective teams

  • Improve communication and collaboration
  • Reduce conflict and groupthink
  • Harness latent productivity in diverse teams
  • Optimize internal workflows to reflect diverse thinking
Sustainable

SUSTAINABLE TRANSFORMATION

Accelerate change with better thinking

  • Optimize mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations, and other large-scale change initiatives
  • Integrate teams and organizations more effectively
  • Reduce talent uncertainty and turnover
  • Achieve those oft-heralded, rarely-realized “synergies”
Branch

BRANCH OUT

Increased agility for innovation

  • Build a more inclusive, innovative culture 
  • Empower managers to see hidden innovation talent pools
  • Repeatable capabilities to accelerate innovation processes

"There are no right/wrong or good/bad HBDI profiles, but learning the order in which you think and process information, especially under stress, is a game changer. "