The Birkman Method is a robust assessment of Perception, Motivation and resultant Behaviours, suitable for helping individuals understand and manage themselves more effectively; and also for every phase of the organisational lifecycle for individual employees and groups of any size.
Birkman’s unique proposition is that it measures not only the surface awareness of individuals (which is what all assessments do) but also gets beneath the surface to measure unconscious expectations and views of what is ‘normal’. This means that whereas, say, a 360 assessment can identify how other people experience this individual, Birkman can establish what is actually going on, and why; and, most importantly , what the individual can do about it to mitigate their behaviour.
In addition to the core dataset of Interests, Behaviours and Needs (which is already far beyond what any other psychometric offers), Birkman includes a rich set of Career Matching scores, derived using regression analysis against 200+ career reference groups; and it also has available (additional Certification required) a meta-analysis of Perception called Mindset, which helps individual understand their relationship to how other people think and perceive reality.
For examples of specific applications, see the Applications page.
What is the Birkman Method?
In the field of Psychometrics, generally two things get talked about: Reliability; and Validity. We try to avoid using the word “Scientifically”, just because so many spurious instruments make claims to “be based on real Science” or “using the latest insight from Brain Science” or whatever; it usually means “the word ‘Science’ really turbo charges our Marketing…”
People can massage their results, so a claim to Reliability or Validity is only as good as the evidence, and ultimately its repeatability.
So what are Reliability and Validity? They are not everything - but they are still the entrance ticket to credibility. In the end, outcomes delivered sustainably and predictably are the real test.
Reliability is the extent to which the test is consistent. Is there internal consistency between the items making up a particular scale, ie are they all measuring the same thing? Cronbach’s Alpha is used typically for this. Secondly, is the test stable over time, for which Test/Retest analysis is the obvious tool.
Having established that the test has significant Reliability - meaning it has some basic rigour - we then need to ask whether what it measures is in any way useful: which is where we get to Validity.
Validity is generally measured in a number of ways: “Face Validity” is the most basic - does the test appear to be useful. No point having some very clever tool if users are convinced the results are wrong. So “do users find it accurate and useful” is the first level of validity testing. Thereafter the tests of validity become more technical: Construct Validity breaks down into Convergent Validity and Discriminant Validity.
(Are you sorry you asked, yet?)
Convergent Validity examines whether the instrument can be shown to measure the same Constructs as other instruments which claim to measure the same things; Discriminant Validity checks that the instrument really does not measure the same things as other instruments which only measure different things. In other words, does the instrument measure what it says it does - and not measure what it says it doesn’t!
With that short introduction, feel free to download the 2020 Birkman Method Technical Manual here: https://birkman.com/resources/ebooks/the-birkman-method-technical-manual-2020-edition in order to get the actual numerical results.
Is Birkman scientifically valid?
A Comparison Between The Birkman Method® and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®)
Birkman International, Inc. 2016
Birkman vs MBTI
A Comparison Between The Birkman Method® and the Hogan Personality Inventory®
Birkman International, Inc. 2016
Birkman vs Hogan
A Comparison Between The Birkman Method® and the Clifton StrengthsFinder® 2.0
Birkman International, Inc. 2016
Birkman vs Clifton StrengthsFinder
When it comes to behaviour, most people have some awareness of themselves: they know how they would like to see themselves on a good day, and they probably have some sense of their behaviour on a bad one. But Birkman Needs are something else, altogether.
Needs are the part of the equation which operates out of sight and largely out of mind. Very few people can even begin to articulate their own Needs, without assistance; and yet, when they see their Birkman Report, the sense of self-recognition is palpable. “Oh that’s why I always…” is a common cry.
So what is going on, here?
What we describe by shorthand as Needs, are even more fundamental than that: they are your expectations of how the world is meant to work; and they are, almost by definition, unconscious.
If I was to ask you what you most need in the environment around you, you would almost certainly give me an answer that reflects how you see yourself. For example, you might say "oh I need plenty of people around me”, when in fact that is how you like to see yourself. The real truth could be you like more of a balance; or even, plenty of time protected from social demands and all but your closest confidantes. But we are never going to learn that, just by asking you.
And that is what Birkman does, very cleverly and very accurately; it surfaces what you are really needing from your environment, without you realising it is doing that.
In short, Needs are what you most need to know about yourself, but are least equipped to work out for yourself. Which is why Birkman is so valuable in both individual and organisational applications.
Birkman Needs, Explained
If you know anything about Birkman, you may know that “Stress” is part of it. So what is Stress Behaviour in Birkman terms, and why does it matter?
Stress, or more accurately, reactive behaviours, were part of the original impetus for Roger Birkman’s research. He had observed that under combat situations, members of the same aircrew - even sitting next to each other under a perspex canopy in broad day light - would perceive and report completely different experiences. When he looked at this in more depth after the Second World War, he realised that this was not just a combat issue: different people would perceive the same situations quite differently, and - here comes the Stress part - respond quite differently. And it was nothing to do with whether or not a situation was inherently ‘stressful’; one person might think nothing of it, and another react very strongly.
So when we talk about Stress in Birkman terms, we are not talking about working an 178-hour week or not getting enough sleep (necessarily); we are specifically talking about how each individual perceives certain situations and then responds reactively to them. Technically what we are describing as Stress could be best explained as “an unconscious, counter-productive attempt to get your Needs met” - provided you understand that what we call Needs is shorthand for “your basic expectations of how the world is meant to work.”
So for example, if you expect that the world around you should respect lines of authority, and one or more people around you are completely ignoring or scorning authority, your reactive Stress Behaviour is likely to be that you become hyper assertive or argumentative or provocative; and that this is an unconscious attempt to get those others to realise that authority is there to be respected.
Stress always makes most sense when you are looking at your own scores, but that is the basic equation Dr Birkman uncovered: if the world isn’t behaving as I expect, I will react accordingly.
Stress Behaviour, Explained
The temptation when starting out with TBM is to see the word “Interests” and dismiss it as a bit ‘fluffy’. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In nearly every case you will ever see, the exact pattern of high and low Interest scores is going to tell you exactly why this person shines in a particular area - or why they have been so frustrated in a particular situation or role.
Birkman Interests were originally added by Dr Birkman to his “Test of Social Comprehension” so that it would be more useful in helping respondents to make career choices. At an early stage, he took the data he had been collecting via this ‘Interests Inventory’ to a poly-math University of Texas Professor, Roy Mefferd Jr, for help with the statistics. Mefferd conducted the analysis, and came back to Birkman to tell him that his data was far more powerful that he had realised. Regression analysis showed that although high scores were indeed predictive of the potential to enjoy an area of work, low scores were far more highly predictive of failure in the associated work areas.
In other words, someone with a high Numerical score might or might not enjoy working as a Financial Analyst (say); but people with a low Numerical score would not be able to sustain the role at all. This is just an illustration; the actual data is more fine-grained than the example suggests.
The broader point is this: people who complete the Birkman Questionnaire get deep insight into the exact mix of interests that represent their ‘sweet spot’ and which gives rise to a menu of potential career options; and they get a clear warning signal to limit their exposure to a particular area or areas, as far as possible.
And that makes Interests very powerful indeed.
Why Interests Matter
Assessments with colours are something of a turn-off to many people today - they are sick of being given a different colour to remember every other week. So why does TBM use colours?
Birkman was actually the very first to make use of colour in this way, and it did so as a deliberate strategy to help users make overall sense of some highly detailed, fine-grained data. It can be a big ask at an early stage to get people to hold 37 different data points in their head at once; so the Birkman Map, with its four colours and 3 place markers is essentially aggregating those 37 data points into just three.
All aggregation involves some ‘flattening out” of the data; but TBM avoids this by using a genuine Map - not four coloured buckets. In other words, if you imagined 9 Usual Behaviour markers spaced across the Blue Quadrant of the Map, each would have a quite different meaning - but with a common association to “Blue behaviour”. The person on the outer Blue / Green boundary will behave very differently from the person on the outer Blue / Yellow boundary - and both will be quite distinct from the person in the outer Blue corner.
The use of colour within Birkman is consistent. So Interest scores and Behavioural Components are all colour coded - having the three “Red” Interests as your highest scores, will push your Map Interests marker strongly towards the outer Red corner, tempered only somewhat by any other high scores of other colours, and so on.
In the long run, the detailed underlying scores give the most information; but the use of colour in TBM makes it possible to see the big picture quickly and pretty accurately, especially when looking at team versions of the Map.
Birkman Colours, Explained
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