Our Tools

ToolboxA surgeon uses the same set of skills to underpin a range of treatments, from stitching a wound to performing open heart surgery. An architect uses the same set of principles to design everything from a single room extension to a monumental skyscraper. Just like our fellow professionals, we have a core set of expertises and tools that enable us to help our clients – people just like you – to make the changes they want and need with the minimum of fuss, time and effort.

Whether it’s personal coaching and change, workshops or training courses, or designing and delivering entire development programmes or projects, we know we can combine what we have with what you bring to create just what you want.

As well as the capability that two decade’s experience in education, corporate R&D, competitive & consumer intelligence and training & development brings, our favourite assessment, awareness and development tools fit into three layers of our psyche:

  • Behaviour – What we DO.

    By examining what we actually do, especially from other’s points of view, we can get a proper grasp of our interactions with others and the world at large.

    Where changes in behaviour are required, we use a combination of standard and NLP-based coaching, along with more formal training via workshops, courses and full programmes.

  • Attitudes & Values – What we THINK & BELIEVE.

    These are one of the components that drive our behaviour, and also to some extent determine the kinds of work and home environments we find engaging and motivating.

    Changes in Attitudes & Values are tricky to train conventionally, so we focus more on NLP-based coaching, mentoring, and experiential workshops and programmes.

  • Personality- Who we ARE.

    Personality, as measured by psychometric profiling tools and models, reveals the structure of our thinking, feeling and acting, at a more fundamental level. To investigate our personalities properly means we need to use an analytical tool, and for this we usually favour the very widely applicable MBTI®, or the more business-focused Facet5.

    Personality is almost impossible to change significantly, so our focus here is on working with our clients to deepen their understanding and maximise the use of their strengths whilst managing the potential risks that all personality types and traits carry inherently. Our focus is on increasing flexibility, authenticity and competency along with mutual respect for others preferences, and we employ a range of coaching approaches along with experiential training and development programmes.

(Note: These tools are more focused on positive growth and development in a professional or business capacity, but we also work with individuals with specific issues on a more personal level and one of the tools we use in that context is hypnosis - click here for more specific information.)

Click on the headings below to reveal more details about the contents of our toolbox:

Facet5

This is more of a premium suite of tools than a single one, although they’re all based around the Facet5 questionnaire. This tool is specifically designed to be used in a business context more than general personal development and because of that take-up in the corporate environment is growing at an increasing pace.

It’s a variant of one of the most rigorously researched and validated personality models available – the so-called ‘Big 5′ model. Because of these solid foundations, Facet5 users are guaranteed a set of practically applicable insights into their own personality, enabling you to drill down into the detail of the five fundamental aspects of your personality: Will, Energy, Affection, Control, and Emotionality.

Facet5 has five main arenas of use:

  1. Personal Development
  2. Recruitment & Selection
  3. Team Dynamics
  4. Leadership & Management
  5. Strategy & Organisational Development

To find out more about how Facet5 can help you or your organisation, get in touch today, or visit Facet5.com for even more details.

MBTI®: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Step 1 & 2)

The MBTI is a mature tool that’s been honed and refined over its lifetime and has become one of the most widely utilised type-based profiling tools of all time. Unlike the Facet5, it’s not business focused and instead provides highly personal insights into our preferences and behaviours across all areas of life.

There are two levels – Step 1 and Step 2 – within the MBTI framework. Step 1 is the general tool that is most well-known and provides us with an analysis of our underlying personality ‘type’ from a profile of our preferences around attention and energy, how we experience and process the world, our decision-making and analysing styles and our overall attitude towards order, organisation and time. Step 2 goes much deeper and provides a more detailed examination of the component parts of those preferences, providing a richer foundation for personal awareness and longer-term development and growth.

The MBTI is, though, perhaps most frequently used for:

  1. Personal Awareness & Growth (Step 1 / 2)
  2. Career Counselling (Step 1 / 2)
  3. Long-term Coaching & Development (Step 2)
  4. Communication & Relationships (Step 1 / 2)
  5. Team Dynamics (Step 1)
  6. Leading, Managing & Influencing (Step 1 / 2)
  7. Stress Management (Step 1 / 2)

To find out more about how MBTI can help you in your own development, or your organisation in developing its people, get in touch today, or visit Oxford Psychological Press (who own the UK rights to the MBTI) for even more details.

360° Feedback*

Most profiling or psychometric tools depend on you answering questions about yourself. While is very useful and a well constructed tool can make sure you’re being as open and honest as you can be, there’s no real substitute for other’s perceptions of you. This is especially true in an organisational setting if you’re in, or about to step up to, a position of management or leadership.

The 360° technique allows you to gather feedback from key people around you, without direct reference to where each piece of feedback came from. This means that those offering the feedback are more likely to feel free to tell the truth as they see it, rather than how they think you’d like to be told it! And since the 360° is a technique rather than a set questionnaire, the questions can be carefully tailored for a specific context or need.

Provided some key conditions are met relating to the people you ask for feedback, the 360° report that comes back to you offers a unique opportunity to check your own view against that of those who you work with, find areas of agreement and opportunities for development.

A 360° Feedback process is most often used in a business context for:

  1. Personal Awareness & Growth
  2. Management & Leadership Development
  3. Customer & Client Service Improvement
  4. Career Development
  5. Training Needs Assessment
  6. Executive Coaching

To find out more about the ways 360° Feedback can help you in your career, or your team or organisation as a whole get in touch today or take a look at the Consulting Tools website for more details.

(*We access this tool via one of our training partners.)

SDI® - Strengths Deployment Inventory*

The ‘Strengths Deployment Inventory’ is a simple yet powerful tool for insights into understanding the motivations behind our, and other’s, actions. The tool is based on Relationship Awareness Theory, and one of its truisms is that most conflict comes from disagreements and debates about people’s actions – what they do or think should be done. When we understand the ‘why’ of those actions, conflicts become easier to resolve before they escalate, and can even be avoided in the first place.

As well as dealing with and avoiding conflict, the SDI results give a head-start on how best to motivate others to act and is therefore highly applicable to teamwork, management and leadership.

Unlike the MBTI and Facet5, which are highly useful when used on an intra-personal basis and can then be utilised within a team, the SDI’s design means that it’s real power comes when used on an inter-personal basis, though it can still yield useful learning points when used for a sole profile.

We recommend using the SDI for:

  1. Team-Building & Team Effectiveness
  2. Motivational Management & Leadership Development
  3. Mediation & Conflict Management Training
  4. ‘New to Position’ Coaching & Training
  5. Team, Department & Organisational Culture Assessment
  6. Trouble-Shooting Consultancy

If you’d like to find out more about how the SDI can help you and your organisation as a whole get in touch today. Before you contact us, you might want to take a look at the Personal Strengths website for more details on the tool and its applications.

(*We access this tool via one of our training partners.)

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