Thinking about Thought some more...

If "Thought" is actually more about Time Required for Decision-Making, are there any scores that are more about... well, Thought.

What about Activity? Following the naming scheme, we know that this must mean that High-end Need scores indicate a Need for Activity. What about the Low-end Need scores? Low end scores indicate a Need for Reflection, which is a (quite literally) Thought-full activity. I like what the Coaching Guide says; it frames this Component as Mental Activity vs Physical Activity. Funnily enough though, when it distills this into Needs, it comes down on "personal control over scheduling" (low end) versus "a busy schedule" (high end). While I agree that these needs are symptomatic of low and high scores, I can't help feeling there is something going on at an even more fundamental level than this.

I wonder if this score is actually indicative of how we "stay on top", how we "process the stuff that happens", even perhaps the process by which we can assign meaning to what happens to us. High Activity Need people seem to "discover what it all means" in the context of having lots going on. The only metaphor - and it is a poor one - that springs to mind is of a Salmon leaping up waterfalls. Put a salmon in the pond in your back yard, I am not sure you will ever see the salmon leap (but you might see it swimming around in meaningless and ever decreasing circles trying to find some flow). But with the stream or river in full flow, it all makes sense to the salmon, and up she/he leaps. Poor metaphor because it would be too easy to start talking about adversity and swimming against the flow, and that isn't what this is about. I am suggesting that
High Activity Need folks can best think about themselves and what is happening and what it is all about, when they are in an activity-rich environment. Perhaps there is also something about sense or meaning being contextual rather than intrinsic.

Low Activity Need? These are people who can't "process stuff" very easily when even more stuff is whizzing past them. Think (and I agree, this is a really bad day for metaphors) of the Amsterdam gem-cutter. He knows his diamonds, but the last place that knowledge could be employed is scrabbling about in the gravel deposits with all the other diamond-hunters, under pressure to find the gem before someone else does. He might no longer even be able to recognise what is a diamond and what isn't, under that kind of pressure. Allow him to sit back down at his bench, and study a stone in peace and quiet, and in no time he can tell you whether it is flint or the Cullinan Diamond II - and then he will go on to reflect until he has its intrinsic (i.e. not contextual) meaning mapped out in the form of a cutting scheme.

So as the gem-cutter of Time takes a lazy bite out of the salmon of Fate, we can all see that this needs some thinking about.

Or not...

But in the mean time, I definitely think there is more about Thought in Activity than in Thought, if you see what I mean. But is that an end to our question?

Which Component is about Thought?

If you were asked this question in an examination or end-of-course test, your "trick-question" antennae ought to be twitching. The fact that one component is called "Thought" makes it too obvious to be a straightforward question. (At least in all the jurisdictions in which I have sat exams). On the other hand, why call it "Thought" if it isn't about ... "Thought"?

Actually, this is one of those multi-layered trick questions, so rather than write a 5000-word essay, maybe I will do this one in pieces. We might start by panning way back (high Global, folks) and noting that as our species is called homo sapiens (wise or knowing man), it could be unproductive to tell anybody that they don't think. Doing the Grid Walk when I was first certified (in the Birkman sense), I only referred to the blue square as "the "Thinking" Quadrant a couple of times before deciding this was more trouble than it was worth...

So let's look at why the eleven Birkman Behavioral Components are named as they are. First thing to note - these are all bi-polar scales, so even if the one called Thought was simply about that, and a Thought Need score of 99 meant that you "thought a lot", a score of 1 would not mean simply that you didn't. It would mean you had just as intense a need as the person with the 99, but that your need was in some way the opposite of what their need was.

Secondly, naming things is a fundamental - and non-trivial - human activity. Naming the 11 bi-polar Birkman Component scales was never going to be easy. The scheme Dr Birkman and his colleagues came up with was to use the high-end Need score to label each component, thus it is "Esteem" because the high-end Need score designates a Need to be given Esteem by others, "Acceptance" because the high-end Need score designates a Need to experience Acceptance from others; and "Thought" because the high-end Need score designates a Need to be given Time to Think about important Decisions. "Time to Think about important Decisions" is a little clunky, so we use "Thought" as shorthand for this. BUT - and here's the first part of the multi-layered trick answer - the key ingredient to the high-end score is actually TIME - not Thought.

So what about the low end Need score on the scale we call "Thought"? Well, that is a Need to get Decisions out of the Way, i.e. a need for Closure and getting on with the Job. So the scale as a whole can be summed up by one word: Decisiveness. Why wasn't the scale called this? Why weren't you called Walter? Who knows. Actually the naming scheme works fine, as long as we understand what it stands for. The component called "Thought" is a measure of Decisiveness.

Hopefully we can all see that this isn't quite the same as it being a measure of Thought, per se. It is about whether your need is for time to think or to get rapidly to closure. Which ever it is, noone is suggesting thought isn't involved in your processing.

So - are there any other components which might be about Thought in a more direct sense?