Not Just Another Assessment Tool

Ned Herrmann created and developed the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI^TM) while he was Director of Management Education at General Electric. Starting his research with large groups within GE, he expanded it over 20 years through tens of thousands of surveys. The HBDI^TM has been the subject of several independent validations, over 65 Ph.D. dissertations and numerous scientific papers.

The HDBI^TM is a 120-question survey that measures a person's preference both for right-brained or left-brained thinking and for conceptual or experiential thinking. The HBDI^TM results are presented in a full-color visual profile that shows how the different preferences combine into four distinct quadrants.

Business applications of thinking styles awareness

A major advantage of the HBDI^TM is that it not only depicts individual profiles, but it also can visually display the composition of groups and show at a glance what is driving or holding back the group.

§ Strategic Development: Map thinking styles of executives who shape strategy. Tailor strategy development process to turn differences from a liability into an advantage. Enhance clarity, confidence and consensus.

§ Team Effectiveness/Integration: Ensure a mix of thinking styles appropriate to each team's mission. Help each team member assume a role likely to drive team success. Overcome thinking-style barriers to cross-team integration.

§ Culture Change/Organizational Learning: Assess thinking styles across learning populations, tailor learning to match learner preferences. Factor thinking styles into your strategies for managing culture change, mergers, and acquisitions.

§ Sales & Marketing Effectiveness: Apply thinking styles to shape market research, gain new insights into target markets, and analyze trends. Factor customers' tendencies and preferences into sales/negotiation methods.

§ Communication/Conflict Resolution: Analyze your messages and their match to the thinking styles of your internal/external target audiences. Diversify and balance your communications to reach all audience segments. Reduce conflicts stemming from contrasting communication styles.

§ Leadership Development: Enhance leadership and foster effective leadership in others by discovering how thinking styles impact personal and corporate success.

§ Creativity & Communication: Compose R&D groups, task forces, and other groups to blend out-of-the-box thinkers and risk-takers with those demonstrating preferences toward analysis, planning and implementation.