High Challenge

Just to make sure we can entertain some thoughts about the other end of the Challenge scale (if in fact it isn't more like a circle) (or even a mobius strip... or a double helix...) (and assuming that you MidWestern BUG people didn't get all Challenged out)...

Some years ago, just after returning from Advanced Training, where a comment in passing had been made about "recommending professional help" if you came across someone with more than 7 reversals, I did a Birkman for someone who had 8, with of course a Challenge score of 99. Given this person was very senior in a major government-linked institution in London, I was just a little concerned. (Hey - I'm a 55 - I may seem high Challenge to my 36 wife, but really I am right there in the middle...)

And of course, what was fascinating was that this lady recognised all of it, and was entirely at home with every reversal AND the 99 Challenge score.

"Do you ever find that you maybe set yourself up to fail? That you keep pushing the bar higher until you can't jump it? Ever jump off bridges and then start calculating the distance to the bottom of the gorge on the way down?"

"Oh yes, that's me, all the time." I even felt she couldn't quite understand why I was being slightly apologetic about it. And why not? It may have seemed alien to me, but she had lived this pattern every day of her adult life. So once more, a lesson not to try to "dull the effect" of what the tool is saying. I might not be comfortable having those scores; but for her, this is home.

(And by the way - I really saw no signs that she needed the kind of professional help that had been suggested to me would have been indicated by the 8 reversals. But here's the interesting thing. Born in Ghana, came to UK mid childhood. Early development and later socialisation in totally different cultures; I wonder how much that played into a set of scores that were almost all reversed? And does being so aware of the reality of multiple and contradictory cultures make you more at home with that level of reversal? As I say, she absolutely acknowledged what the scores suggested in terms of internal contradictions.)

Face the (Low) Challenge

Now I know that some Birkman Consultants find the idea of doing feedback by phone rather strange, and that's fine.* We do a lot of our work that way, and Sarah (as in Mrs Mason, sometimes known as Sarah Jury) has a real gift for it. Honestly. Clients who don't know she is my wife rave on to me about how my colleague made them forget it was a phone call, it was like she was in the room etc etc. They never say that about me!

But every now and again we have had either someone stop the session after a couple of minutes / or freak out / or - as today - ask if one of us could give them just five minutes face to face to go through some scores they haven't ever had a session on, even though I know they had the phone session on exactly those scores just a few weeks back.

And in common - it is always people with ultra-low Challenge scores. (<5)

Not terribly surprising when you think about low Challenge. "Face" (in the oriental sense of the giving and receiving of respect / position etc) is extremely important to low Challenge, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that "face to face" communication protects and promotes "Face" more than talking over the phone.

So - even if you would never consider doing feedback by phone in a billion years, this may have other implications for communication with low Challenge clients, or at least underline the importance of choosing a time and place when you can give them absolute personal attention when there is something important to communicate that is about them.

*And if you wouldn't consider doing feedback over the phone - just have a look at your own Challenge Score. I've just realised that two of the people who told me that doing feedbacks by phone was a weird thing to do were sub-five Challenge scores themselves...