Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [30]
The number of descriptors you have ticked or selected gives a measure of the size and range of your ‘personality’ – it is an indication of what natural tendencies you see yourself as having.
Someone with a wide range of behaviours (a high score) is equipped with the ‘Swiss Army knife’ version of ‘personality’. You could say they have a ‘tool’ for every perceivable eventuality. Ideally, a score of 100 per cent is the goal. That would indicate that a person is equipped to deal effectively with any situation and able to call upon the most appropriate behaviour. They would be able to work with and get the most from other people, see and value their strengths and adopt a variety of different perspectives.
If you have a narrow range of traits (a low score) this suggests you have a restricted ‘toolset’ for a wide range of demands and situations. That may result in your operating ineffectively, since you have fewer ‘tools’ at your disposal. You are trying to manage in the world using perhaps only 1/10th of your potential.
People with a low range of behaviours may find it stressful if called upon to step outside their comfort zone, generate ideas or adapt quickly to change. By increasing their behavioural flexibility and adding new behaviours to their repertoire, research shows these individuals achieve better results in their work and personal life, with less effort and less stress.
Your flex score
The second score requires you to count the number of pairs of behaviours you ticked.
To remind you, the pairs are:
Unassertive Assertive
Trusting Wary
Calm/relaxed Energetic/driven
Reactive Proactive
Definite Flexible
Risk-taker Plays safe
Behave as others want Behave as you wish
Spontaneous Systematic
Single-minded Open-minded
Introverted Extroverted
Conventional Unconventional
Individually-centred Group-centred
Firm Gentle
Lively Laid back
Predictable Unpredictable
Only count a pair if you ticked both of them. There are 15 pairs, so take your score and divide it by 15 and multiply the result by 100. This will give you another number between 0 and 100 per cent. On this score it is not uncommon to get zero, and most people score about 15 per cent – i.e. two to three pairs ticked out of fifteen.
Most people score much less than 50 per cent, even though 100 per cent is achievable on both the behaviour range score and the flex score.
Interpreting your behaviour-rater score
I can hear complaints from some of you. Some of you will be feeling a little cheated. Don’t forget that feeling because I will be coming back to it. Some of you will be saying that you did not realise you could tick the opposites! Others may be saying you have more behaviours in your repertoire than you ticked but they are not representative of how you normally behave (or something like that).
Perhaps some of you behave differently at home, or with your partner, than you do at work or with your boss and you have not represented these nuances in your answers. Yes, that is likely. But your scores do represent something about you and you need to reflect upon that feeling of being cheated because that might be a barrier to change.
I have often found the most inflexible successful people are the ones who most strongly ‘defend’ themselves when they score less than they expect. I have FIT profiled many CEOs and senior managers, Premier League football managers, top financiers and the like. These are successful people. And successful people like to believe they are successful because the way they behave is the best way to win. But there are many routes to success for talented people. And it is likely that other routes would make them even more successful, or successful with less sweat, or less collateral damage to themselves (less stress, perhaps?) and those around them (less unhappy families, perhaps?). We are all, after all, habitual about how