Practical Application of The Birkman Method

People Professionals in Asia sometimes struggle to understand where Birkman fits in the scheme of things: “is Birkman for recruitment, or coaching, or what, exactly?”

And that is the point. Dr Birkman didn’t start by trying to solve a narrow problem (“how to recruit better people” or “how to develop leaders”); but rather, he wanted to understand: why people behave so differently from what they say about themselves.

The answer to that fundamental question, required him to understand something absolutely critical about perception; namely, that we all have two distinct sets of perceptions: who we think we are, ourselves; and what we think is normal. And there is no necessary overlap between those two.

This leaves us with some fascinating sources of insight. Yes, people will tend to present in the way they see themselves to be - for example, “I see myself as very energetic”; and yet what really determines whether we see them in that light, or as something rather more reactive and ‘stressed’ is actually whether those around them are behaving in a manner they consider ‘normal’. So if they think it is normal for people to get plenty of time to unplug from work, and they are not getting that - then we are unlikely to see the energetic version of them, but rather, an unnaturally tired and detached person.

That is a simplification of what Birkman is doing, but perfectly explains the answer to Dr Birkman’s original question, above.

So if TBM is explaining how people behave and why, what phases of the ‘employee lifecycle’ can it illuminate?

And the answer is, not surprisingly, all of them!

Selection

TBM excels at getting beneath “the presentation layer” in recruitment, and allowing you to ask the questions that really matter.

Onboarding

A good deal of the perceived failure rate that is normally attributed to poor onboarding, actually arises from people simply not understanding one another’s perspectives; TBM will solve this.

Team Performance / Team Building

Assembling the best people is a good start; but you have to get them to perform together, in order to actually succeed: TBM empowers teams and their leaders to do just this.

Career Development

Retention horizons are getting ever shorter, but this need not be so; employees who know they are being grown for new and developing opportunities will stay longer; TBM unlocks potential.

Project Assignment

When something special or significant comes up in the way of projects or other non-BAU activity, how do you decide who is ready to run with the opportunity? TBM can help you make good choices.

Individual Coaching / Professional Development

TBM is used extensively by coaches of all kinds around the world; whatever the level and objective of your coaching assignment, TBM gives you the inside track.

Leadership Development / Leadership Readiness

Self-awareness - especially the kind that includes the ability to self-manage - is critical in the development of new and growing leaders. TBM can help you establish who is ready - and what they might need to be working on.

Executive Coaching

Birkman gets deployed all the way to the C-Suite in Fortune 500 and other global giants. Especially with the addition of the Mindset Report (a meta-analysis of perspectives), TBM helps even the top team perform beyond themselves.

Outplacement / Retirement

When people leave your organisation, it is easy to miss the biggest opportunity to build the best employee brand: which is helping people move on to their next thing. That may be a different business, it may be their Third Age occupation or vocation. TBM helps you help them.

The list above only summarises some of the more obvious examples. But in addition to these more individual and team applications, Birkman scales remarkably well.

People Professionals can use Birkman to zoom out from individual employees or a small team, to look at a whole function, or market, all the way out to looking at the organisation as a whole. So if we wanted to add to the list above, we could include:

Organisational Development

Putting TBM data from the whole organisation under the lens is a great way to spot what is significant. It may be “this is why we excel at x”; and it could be “this is why we struggle with y”. Either way, TBM is your best tool for understanding the secret sauce - and making it better.

Culture Mapping

New CEOs and other leaders often fall into the culture trap: “I am going to change the culture of this place…” It’s a great thought, but hard to pull off. Do you have a map of where the culture is already? Do you know what you have to work with - levers you can pull on, shared assumptions and so on? TBM can equip you to journey into the heart of your culture - and come out with greater understanding.

Preparation for M&A

Everyone knows that no M&A exercise ever realises the predicted increase in value; but it doesn’t have to be that way. TBM allows you to map both halves of the equation, and do the work of integration with understanding and success.

Change / Transformation Programmes

If you are looking to bring about change, then understanding what is already flowing in the right direction can be a help. TBM means you can know what should go easily, and what may present challenges, when you are still at the planning stage.