Practical Application

What is The Birkman Method for?

Birkman will always be a premium tool for coaching individuals; globally, it continues to be the mainstay in Coaching practice, for those who have experienced it themselves. Many coaches who are trained in several assessments, settle on using Birkman because of the deep insights it provides for their clients, the ease with which it can be understood and applied and the positive impact and change it produces..

The reason for this is simple: no other tool is able to distinguish so accurately between three key aspects of a single person:

  • the person everyone sees most of the time;

  • the person who appears when things are not going so well; and, most critically,

  • the person no one sees but who will be instantly recognisable to the subject once this ‘hidden’ self is described.

Other assessments which have attempted something similar, only do so on the basis of extrapolating their existing data; the TBM dataset captures all these three aspects as distinct data points.

This means that TBM provides a more accurate reading of the real issues that leaders face in their day to day leadership.

But what is Birkman for in Business and other Organisations?

Roger Birkman sought to understand the individual - which is why his work is so powerful in the coaching of individuals. But it wasn’t just the individual in isolation:it was understanding the individual in their organisational setting (and more generally, their social context) which was the true grail.

In fact, the first iteration of what is now called The Birkman Method Questionnaire, was entitled “A Test of Social Comprehension”; a fact worth remembering. No one exists in a vacuum; whatever a person says they are like at work needs to be considered alongside what they will be reacting to when surrounded by other people. That is not only different for every person, it is also dependent upon the people and context around them.

Here is one articulation of the problem that Birkman solves:

“We test and select for the smartest people, with the most qualification for their role; and yet, when we assemble them as a team, they can hardly be trusted to break out of a wet paper bag, let alone give us a commanding lead in the market…”

And before you leap to a wrong conclusion here, we are not saying that you chose the wrong people; very few people, comparatively, are “just wrong for the role”; at least, not if you did your homework in selecting them. But very few people have the activated self-awareness required to allow them to perform well across a range of settings and with a diverse group of colleagues.

Birkman data supports getting the best selection of people together and then equipping and empowering them to actually perform as required, in order to deliver the mission.

Applications

If that makes it difficult to pin TBM to a particular part of the People cycle, you are not mistaken: TBM is fundamentally about understanding people, individually and together, so you can apply it everywhere within the People space; including, but not limited to:

  • Organisational Development

  • Change Management Programmes

  • M&A Activity

  • Culture Mapping

  • Performance Analysis

  • Recruitment Selection (Executive)

  • Recruitment screening at scale, (e.g. Call Centres, Customer Service Reps)

  • On Boarding, Team Formation

  • Team Performance, Team Building

  • Career and Professional Coaching

  • Leadership Development and Readiness

  • Promotion, Executive Coaching

  • etc etc etc.

BCPs (Birkman Certified Professionals) tend to specialise. That is why we have a listing of BCPs operating in the UK and Europe; check out their specialisations and contact them to find out how they can help you solve your people challenges.