The Birkman Method: Your Personality at Work

Q & A with Sharon Birkman Fink and Stephanie Capparell, authors of The Birkman Method: Your Personality at Work

The Birkman Method is a positive psychology assessment tool. It identifies your needs and interests, and how you relate to the people around you. It can identify your greatest strengths, describe the environment that gives you the most satisfaction, and point to what can put you under pressure. It also helps you see what may be causing friction between you and your colleague, boss, spouse, or family member. These are important because accurate awareness of yourself and the world around you is critical in helping you navigate successfully through life. With this kind of nonjudgmental information in hand, employers see retention and engagement soar.

Yes, there are serious consequences. When your needs are recognized and fed, they energize and recharge us, , and help us find greater fulfillment. When they are ignored by us or misunderstood by others, the result can be self-defeating actions or a blame-game that sinks relationships in the workplace and at home. We become "less than" what we can be and frustrated in our endeavors, which we call stress behavior. Stress behaviors are never pretty! But Birkman can warn us when we have left our productive zone and headed to the flip side of our strengths. It can also tell us exactly how we'll react under stress and what triggers to avoid altogether.

Each person who buys the book will be able to complete a full Birkman questionnaire and receive his or her own personal Life Style Grid with an easy-to-understand summary of key Birkman scores, which are more thoroughly described in the book. The reader also can select a special bonus report from one of three Birkman-on-Demand topics: My Strengths, Handling Conflict, or Motivating for Best Performance. The book then helps you understand your results and personal report.

Absolutely! First of all, the decades of science behind The Birkman Method give you objective information to see whether you are headed in the right direction in terms of your career interests and personal passions. It can show whether the work you choose-both the industry and also your particular job role or function-truly aligns with your personality and temperament.

This is one of the most powerful applications of the Birkman and one that is used most often by corporations, sports teams, and nonprofit groups. Team members learn to appreciate the ways they are alike and also how they approach challenges with differing but equally valuable strengths. Each team member's important contribution to the group becomes immediately clear, which can also reveal the areas where a team requires more attention and representation.

The Birkman Method has many examples of teams thriving in a productive workplace, able to engage in safe and positive dialogue to break down barriers to productivity. Many workplaces have used The Birkman Method to replace tension and conflict with understanding and harmony.