What is the HBDI Assessment?

Making Business Matter (MBM)

17-08-2021 • 11 mins

Explore the HBDI Assessment Tool Join Andy Palmer and Sarah Garratt in the tenth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode is about ‘What is the H.B.D.I. Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument assessment’. Or in short, what is HBDI assessment? Exploring a number of questions to understand this assessment tool. You Can Read the HBDI Assessment Episode Transcript Below: Andy Palmer: Welcome to MBM's Weekly Training Booster. We are Weekly Training Booster number 10. This week we're going to talking about what is the HBDI, Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. Today I'm joined by my colleague, Sarah, who's going to ask me some questions to help bring this to life, and I'll do my very best to answer them. Sarah, thanks for joining us this week. Great to have you here. Let's start, what's your questions for me on the HBDI assessment? Sarah Garratt: Okay. Thanks, Andy. First question, what is the HBDI assessment? Andy Palmer: Good stuff. All right. So the HBDI assessment, or the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument, is a psychometric test that allows people to understand their thinking preferences. And once they can understand their different individual thinking preferences, they can then start to understand and value, become more tolerant of others. So what we've really got here is a metaphoric model of how our brain works, taking into account the left and right hemispheres and the upper and lower parts of our brain. And what the HBDI profile [inaudible 00:01:06] and says is that, each of these four quadrants is responsible for different thinking, decision making and communicating preferences. Now the thing with the HBDI profile is there's no better or worse profile, there is no right or wrong. What it does, is allow us to start to understand why we have differences and similarities between different people and using this model can be truly powerful for many, many reasons. Sarah Garratt: Okay, thank you. And would you say that it was a personality test or not? Click the image to watch the video   Andy Palmer: No, not at all. So the HBDI profile unlike others, does not measure personality. It also doesn't measure temperament, it doesn't measure intelligence, it just purely looks at our preferences to these four different quadrants. And we can use our whole brain and that's absolutely critical to remember, we just have preferences. Now we can have a preference to what is referred to as the, A quadrant or the blue quadrant and that's about facts, it's about understanding logical, analytical, factual, here and now information. If we then continue round and I'll bring each of these quadrants to life. So that's our blue quadrant. If we move down into the green quadrant or the B quadrant, this is about organization, it's about sequence, it's about steps and stages. So people with a high degree of preference here, super organized and they can see the steps and the stages required in terms of understanding their individual thinking processes. We continue around and we move round into the C quadrant, which is the red quadrant, this is about feelings, it's about people's interpersonal skills, their communication skills, understanding the needs and the wishes of others is super important to those with a high preference here. And then lastly, we've got that D quadrant, the upper right or yellow quadrant. That's about holistic, conceptual thinking. It's not about the here and now, but it's about synthesizing and integrating with other people in the future and understanding the why of what those thinking preferences are like. So not about personality, more about preferences to thinking and decision-making styles. Sarah Garratt: Okay. Thank you. And HBDI profile, in terms of the quadrants, are we able to utilize every quadrant or are we just limited to one specific? Andy Palmer: Yeah, it's a very good question. It's a very good question because more often than not,