TBM gets used around the world as the premier tool in developing leaders in organisations of every shape and size, from global MNCs and major Not-for-Profits and Government Agencies, all the way to start-ups and family owned SMEs.
The simple reason for this is that with half an hour completing the questionnaire, and a one hour debrief, any leader has already received more accurate and meaningful insight that they may have in the whole rest of their working career. By focusing in on Motivation and Perception, the leader gets to understand things about themselves about which they may have been unaware, and which are outside their ability to change; but (and it is the biggest of “buts”) which they absolutely can leverage in order to change their behaviour.
And of course: that is the minimalist approach. Ongoing coaching engagements, and formal group programmes can be built around Birkman insight, and are able to consistently deliver great results, because of the depth, accuracy and stability of the data.
Find out more, by speaking with a Birkman Certified Professional or contact Kokkoi to find out about Birkman Certification.
Leadership Development
If you want to go a step further than developing individual Leaders, Leadership Readiness is a systemic approach to developing leaders, beginning with assessing how ready they are to lead, and what changes they need to be making.
It is a systems approach because it can work with cohorts, not just individual leaders; and further it is predicated on the notion that anyone can be a leader; provided they are willing to put in the hard work. Ultimately it supports the notion that the whole organisation is a leadership pipeline - a much more fruitful approach than simply having a pipeline of leaders, each of who represents a large and potential risky bet.
And leaders who are already in post aren’t left out: this process is non-judgemental and doesn’t set out to exclude anyone, so existing leaders can benefit from the same insights as your leaders-in-training.
Find out more, by speaking with a Birkman Certified Professional or contact Kokkoi to find out about Birkman Certification.
Leadership Readiness
Coaching is the basement level application for TBM, in the sense that the first thing most BCPs (Birkman Certified Professionals) apply themselves to is some form of Coaching; that is also why Birkman values its accreditations to ICF and [is there another], meaning that Birkman Certification counts towards CPF credits.
And it is no surprise that Birkman is so popular with coaches: nothing else gives the depth of insight into what is going on, under the surface in a client; nor does anything else do so without any negative judgement being passed. In TBM there are not “good” or “bad” scores, there is just insight and understanding.
So whether you are offering Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Career Coaching or whatever - TBM is the things you shouldn’t leave home without.
Find out more, by speaking with a Birkman Certified Professional or contact Kokkoi to find out about Birkman Certification.
Coaching
The biggest challenge in recruitment is knowing what you are looking at across the interview room table. Everybody wants to look at their best in an interview; some are clearly better at this than others - but that absolutely does not correlate to actual performance once in role.
So who is this?
The value of TBM in recruitment selection is that it enables you to get “beneath the presentation layer”, the face that every candidate wants to present to you. TBM allows you to ask the questions that matter - the ones that validate whether this role is going to be sustainable for this candidate, and what issues we might be running into along the way. Not every issue is a deal-breaker; quite the opposite - the important thing is does our candidate recognise the issue, and have they learnt to manage it in a positive and productive manner?
TBM data can be tailored to match every recruitment scenario, from your next C-suite hire to mass screening for call centre operatives - and in every case, it gives you the edge in finding the very best candidates, to sustain top performance.
Find out more, by speaking with a Birkman Certified Professional or contact Kokkoi to find out about Birkman Certification.
Recruitment
Teams struggle to deliver outcomes effectively for two big reasons: one, they don’t really understand themselves or each other; and two, they have no way of mapping their team strengths and potential blindspots.
The result of this is that they tend to deal in caricatures, rather than reality - “oh you sales guys…” rather than “Robin, I think you could help us solve this problem…”. Worse, they may see themselves in a particular way - “we’re the action team around here” when either that is far from the truth (actually, we are the “second-guess ourselves ten times a day” team) or it covers up some significant gaps (“yes, we are the ‘take action and lose the paperwork we never filled in’ team…”)
TBM offers a powerful diagnostic and team-effectiveness tool. The Birkman Map quickly enables teams to identify potential blindspots for themselves, but more than that, the detailed data on motivational interests, task-orientation and the perceptions that drive behaviour mean that team members can acquire a more nuanced understanding of their colleagues - and of themselves.
Find out more, by speaking with a Birkman Certified Professional or contact Kokkoi to find out about Birkman Certification.
Team Effectiveness
The challenge of career development is to separate past success and history from future potential. The truth is that only potential really has traction; past success can have come about for all kinds of reasons, and can easily drive the person into a dead end where they can no longer add value or perform.
TBM has a number of clear advantages as the tool supporting Career Development. First, TBM data tends to be very stable over time in individuals; an individual can safely use an existing profile for at least 5 years, and in our experience still be getting new insights for at least twenty years.
Secondly, TBM data measures the underlying structure of a person’s perceptions and perspectives. Most people can swim against the flow for a while, and may even succeed like that for a season. But the success is time limited; sooner or later, they realise that they need to start working with the grain of who they most truly are. TBM offers the level of insight that allows anyone to fine-tune their self-understanding and to identify where they can uniquely offer most value to an organisation or their own business.
Finally, the existence of Career Matching data within the TBM dataset means that any person can build a ‘menu of viable options’ for themselves - even if none of the specific careers work for them. Analysis of common threads can lead to deeper understanding of what will work for the individual.
Find out more, by speaking with a Birkman Certified Professional or contact Kokkoi to find out about Birkman Certification.
Career Development
One of the biggest untapped resources most medium and large organisations have is their existing workforce. Often people get a job because they just applied, when the job they could truly shine in sits vacant in an adjacent department or function.
Smart organisations realise that the risks inherent in external recruitment - inaccurate CVs, behaviours that don’t surface at interview, etc - make internal hiring and organisational mobility a much more sensible first approach to filling any role. The organisation already knows the candidate and can see their work-ethic and general demeanour; if they have untapped potential that may well have become obvious to their supervisor.
TBM gives an objective basis to internal mobility, allowing perceived talent to be validated in a fair, accurate and non-judgemental way. No one is served when a successful employee is moved somewhere that they will never be able to sustain; everyone wins when they go somewhere that truly suits their unique mix of motivational and perceptual strengths.
Find out more, by speaking with a Birkman Certified Professional or contact Kokkoi to find out about Birkman Certification.
Internal Mobility
One thing every teacher knows by experience is that every young person is different, especially in the way in which they react to different learning opportunities. The student who has sat unengaged for weeks can suddenly light up when the mode or context of learning changes; but how is the teacher meant to guess what will work for whom?
Learning styles enjoyed a vogue for a long time: the only problem was that no-one ever managed to come up with a schema for these that stood up to scientific analysis.
Birkman offers a much more robust insight, which is highly predictive of actual response in the classroom - and which is both psychometrically reliable (it always produces a similar answer for a given individual) and valid (it measures what it says it measures and subjects recognise the accuracy of the insight).
The combination of Birkman Interests (areas which will be highly motivating or otherwise for the subject) and Organisational Focus (which is an indicator of the types of task a person will unthinkingly gravitate towards) offers educators - both classroom teachers, and administrators - huge insight into the young people they are working with. And in particular, it is a reliable guide to the mode(s) of learning that will keep a particular student engaged. That means teachers can plan their lessons with an intentional mix of modes, likely to keep the most students engaged for more time than simply “trying to mix things up”.
Find out more by speaking with Kokkoi - who can connect you with a provider near you.
Education
There is a strange tendency when it comes to Career Advice and Youth Employment, which is to assume there is “one right answer” for each young person. As a result, approaches tend to focus on “getting the (or a) right answer” which will move the young person from unemployed to employed - and off the books.
That is not to say that “getting started” isn’t a big deal; a job packing boxes or cleaning floors now may well be the foundation that “running a Billion Dollar company” is built upon; there is a lot that can be learnt from simply gaining some discipline.
But as a systemic approach to solving Youth Unemployment, this leaves a lot to be desired.
Birkman offers a different approach, with several layers to it.
What areas of work are likely to keep this young person engaged and willing to work through challenges and difficulties? (Birkman Interests)
What types of task will they gravitate to, regardless of what else is going on? (Organisational Focus)
How do they present themselves (assertive, quiet, organised, enthusiastic,…)? (Usual Behaviour)
What do we need to understand about what is really going on beneath the surface? Underlying Needs)
How might they trip themselves up? (Stress Behaviour)
Who do they most resemble in the workplace, in terms of people who are successful and satisfied in their role? (Career Families and Career Titles)
Nowhere in that list have we suggested “… therefore they should become a plumber / baker / brain surgeon / bus driver”. And that is because human potential needs nurturing; and no assessment can take account of all the immediate circumstances of a young life; but neither should circumstances be allowed the final say. Very few genuinely successful people started out with everything going their way.
So the fundamental approach which TBM enables is to help the young person build their own menu of sustainable options; and then map out a path to get to one or more of them.
Find out more by speaking with Kokkoi - who can connect you with a provider near you.
Youth Employment
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