Thinking Styles Lead to Styles of Leading

Thinking Styles Lead to Styles of Leading

I have posted this message on various posts since 2013 and based most of my speeches, workshops, training programs and university masters degrees courses on this premise since 1980.


THINKING STYLES - Theories, Models, Businesses


In 1976 while in a gifted education class and then a counseling class I became aware of personality and thinking style tests.  The previous 10 years I had worked and was still working as an architect and a graphic designer.


Over the next 7 years I completed a Masters in Education in Guidance of Counseling focused on Gifted, Talented and Creative people and a PhD in Educational Psychology with the focus on the teaching of creative thinking tools and techniques.

From 1976 to now I have read about, studied, explored, used, researched over 400 style instruments: thinking, learning, teaching, counseling, communication, team creative thinking, conflict/negotiation, etc.

After completing my PhD in 1983 I did a post doctoral correlation study of 300 instruments.  The numerical results were the same as my practical use of them.

They mostly measure or focus on the same basic model

rational
intuitive
personable
system

From David Kolb to Anthony Gregorc to Dunn; Dunn to MBTI, Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument to the Neethling Brain Instrument(s) to the system and materials of INSIGHTS, Inc. the depth and breadth of the materials for each model has been wide from simply a basic instrument with explanations of what the results mean to extensive visuals, books, props, exercises, posters of MBTI, HBDI, NBI, KAI, FourSight and INSIGHTS among many others from around the globe.

My M.I.N.D. Design fits in the middle of the depth and breath of the instruments available.



With a little visual movement of the visuals all the 300 models, whether 2 dimensions, 4 dimensions, 8 dimensions, 12 dimensions or 24 dimensions they basically are ALL the same.

Ned Herrmann and I coincidentally began using 4 colors to reinforce the basic style extremes in 1981.  Since then almost all the newer models have used basically the same colors.  At the time he was my sensei, master and I was the "grasshopper" the naive learner.

HBDI - blue green red yellow

MIND Design - red orange blue green

other instruments have used either one of the combinations but like HBDI and MD not the same colors to represent the same thinking style extreme.

All of them help people better understand their preferences or styles.  That understanding can help them in dealing with people with other preferences or styles

Over the past 41 years I have used a mixture of these instruments, while generally using my simpler one to help people walk away with a usable, easily understood model that would help them understand sources of potential problems based upon even a simple understanding of DIFFERENCES in Thinking Styles.

My primary premise is that

how we think impacts how we learn
how we learn impacts how we communicate
how we communicate impacts how we solve problems

how we think...impacts how we do ALL Human Activities.


another use of a two dimensional model to represent vastly complex fields of work.

Today a creativity colleague from Tampa, Florida, graduate of the Buff State Masters in Creative Studies program shared this simple diagram.


Here is how I responded to it on Facebook...


These 4 fields have been placed stereotypically based upon the thinking or beliefs of people not in the fields.

If these are placed upon any of the thinking style models this drawing implies that All

Scientists are logical, analytical, independent thinkers who only work alone.

Artists are intuitive, exploratory, continually trying new things with no rational data to support what they are doing

Designers are group/team, harmonious people who are sensitive and bring

Engineers are highly structured, step-by-step, go by the rules or traditions

All 4 professions/fields are filled with vast arrays of thinking styles.

There have been hundreds of thinking style models/instruments/questionnaires/theories that have been developed from Hippocrates and his "4 Temperaments" representing the 4 types of citizens of Athens, Greece to the Tao Yin-Yang's diagram the infinite varying combinations.

My dissertation research study and related preliminary studies dealt with the matching of TEACHING and LEARNING Styles based upon the principles of what was very popular in the late 70s and into the 80s and still is very prevalent in HR or Training Fields

RIGHT - BRAIN/LEFT - BRAIN based upon studies by Roger Sperry and Joseph Bogen, et al.

Around 1983 I began using the principles of RB/LB as a metaphor rather as EXACT PROVABLE SCIENCE across all cultures, genders, age groups.

It is a simple way to help people accept that people 
THINK DIFFERENTLY and it is the non-acceptance of other ways of thinking that produces most human problems.  It is the INTEGRATION in POSITIVE WAYS of a MULTITUDE of THINKING STYLES that produces SUCCESS.

Here are diagrams from many of the Thinking Style Models 
I studied, experimented with, and the ones I created and have used for 40+ years around the globe, one class, group or audience at a time.

Though there are HUNDREDS of these models from the very basic, simple ones to the highly elaborate ones there are still millions to hundreds of millions of people alive or being born now that have NEVER BEEN EXPOSED TO ANY OF THEM.  
While there are thousands, tens of thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who have taken MANY OF THESE DIFFERENT TESTS.

Here are a collection of the diagrams from many of them available today.

In 1976 I first became exposed to a few of them in a guidance and counseling class on TESTING.


From then on I became aware of more and more and more of them.

During my doctoral research and the writing of my dissertation (1979 to 1983) I had to do a study of the literature which exposed me to dozens of them.

From 1983 to 1985 I became aware of many more and did a correlation study of 300 of them using 300 students from 13 separate college departments at the University of Georgia having each of randonly them take at least of the 300 instruments.

The results of reviewing the correlations of all the results was that the 300 instruments produced correlations in the .9 and above range....meaning...they were basically the same.

My personal experience with dozens of the instruments had already demonstrated that this was true.

NOT all the instruments are a direct match, primarily there are. They ask different questions to obtain the same answer.

What or How do people PREFER to 
THINK? Behave?  Believe?

Here are a mix of the ICONs, Diagrams, Graphics used to portray results to people.

First is a photograph of a variety of props I began using in 1982 to explain thinking styles and how to use them in teamwork.


here is a grid depicting a varied collection of styles based upon my M.I.N.D. Design


Here are some diagrams from the HBDI - created by Ned Herrmann in the late 70s and early 80s initially.  His work continues on through the Herrmann Whole Brain Group in Lake Lure, North Carolina.





The work of David Kolb was the first I became aware of in 1976 with his Learning Style Inventory.  Anthony Gregorc, Dunn and Dunn and many others have created very similar models over the past 50 or so years



Human Synergistics was one of the large companies I became aware of in 1980 that used a more complex model.


The MBTI - Meyers-Briggs instrument claimed to be based on the 16 temperament styles of Karl Jung has been very successful and used around the world for decades.

Here is the NBI - created by Dr. Kobus Neethling of Pretoria, South Africa and his colleagues



Here are a mixture of others












Add to these THINKING STYLE MODELS

there are many 
BEHAVIOR STYLES OR PATTERNS MODELS.  
Most of those can be traced back to the work of William Marston in the 1920s (The Emotions of Normal People) and the work of one of his graduate students, Walter Clarke, A-V-A   Vector Analysis or commonly known as

D - I - S - C

Dominance - Influence - Steadiness - Compliance 
(most common terms)




In the past year or so I have become aware of another detailed and well developed model that focuses primary on behavior or style of action called

INSIGHTS, INC.



All of these are useful tools, depending upon how they are used.

Professionally I prefer to use a mix of instruments/exercises/tools to help people learn how to use basic models to better understand THEMSELVES in order to WORK more effectively with OTHERS who are the same or different.

M.I.N.D. Design - Thinking Styles
Behavior Patterns - How we choose to behave or act.
Value Systems - the motivators behind why we do what we do.

These 3 variables or dimensions help to better differentiate individuals.


In the late 70s the following graphic was treated as absolute science.  Research continues to expand yet research does not consistently produce this simplistic of a result of how the various parts of our brains function.



In the early 80s I experience a truly basic model
that simply uses 4 shapes, 3 geometric and 1 amorphic.

In 2004 I began using the 4 Shapes, my modified version as a warm up exercise to help people to begin to think and learn about THINKING DIFFERENCES or THINKING DIVERSITIES.



Then I follow up with using my basic 9 question version of my M.I.N.D. Design to provide more depth.  For people who wanted more depth I would encourage them to use MBTI, HBDI, NBI.

To learn more about the 4 Shapes go to:

http://www.cre8ng.com/my-products/shapes-exercisequiz

To learn more about my M.I.N.D. Design go to:

http://www.cre8ng.com/m-i-n-d-design


To truly become successful in any human activity you get involved with you need to approach it using your preferred way of thinking added to your growing skills in thinking taking into consideration who you are working with at the time.

It was summed up a millennium or two ago

WHEN IT ROME DO AS THE ROMANS DO
or
DO UNTO OTHERS AS THEY 
PREFER YOU DO ONTO THEM.



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