Dominant Thinking Style Assessment
What do your Thinking Styles Reveal?
Have you ever asked yourself the following questions?
Why did you choose a profession in DATA?
Why did you choose your specific Knowledge Area?
Do you know what THINKING STYLE you have?
Would you like to find out and obtain a personal Thinking Style Profile?
We have some ideas of how Thinking Styles influence career paths. Your input is critical, and we need your help to develop a model.
Anthony Gregoric developed his theory of Thinking Styles to explain the various ways in which a person's mind acquires and processes information.
There are two main streams:
1. Perception: How we acquire information
a. Concrete: Information is tangibly experienced through the five senses.
b. Abstract: Beyond the five senses to intangible things such as ideas, feelings and relationships
2. Ordering: How we process information
a. Sequential: Organise information in a linear, sequential way
b. Random: Organise information in chunks with no particular order
The brain will use one perceptual and one ordering approach when processing any information. People may use many during the day, depending on the tasks, but will prefer one or two combinations. Understanding the dominant thinking styles can enable more effective communications. It can also reveal which jobs a person will be comfortable doing and what will be more stressful and tiring.
If you score below 30 on a thinking style, you are less likely to use it. Over 40 means this is the dominant thinking style, and below 20 shows you are weaker in this area. You may score over 30 in divergent styles, which means you can intentionally switch your approach when necessary.
We at Modelware Systems offer a holistic Data Management Learning Pathway to enable Data Professionals to achieve their career targets. The Pathway involves training, support preparing for CDMP exams resulting in CDMP Professional or CDMP Master certification, ongoing mentoring, extra case studies, and general support.
Career targets vary by individual, but we have identified four leading roles:
1. An Executive in the organisation (CDO, CDAO)
2. A Thought Leader in your chosen Knowledge Area, and you can help customers adopt new industry trends and thinking
3. A focussed Specialist in your Knowledge area
4. A Manager of a team of Data professionals
We hypothesise that the thinking styles differ between all our target roles, and we would like to assess enough Data professionals to identify patterns. We have already identified a strong correlation among project managers. We expect CDOs to be high in the Concrete Random, Specialists in Abstract or Concrete Sequential, and Managers with good interpersonal skills to be more Abstract Random.
Any individual who takes on our challenging program must have the potential and the desire to reach the target. We have been investigating the available human capital assessments and psychometric testing. We have found them too broad as the organisations offering them do not understand different data roles requirements.
We are, therefore, in the process of designing our own. It will not replace cognitive testing, and if that is a requirement, we will refer the candidate to an assessment organisation.
We will assess the candidate on three levels; all aimed to identify the most desirable target and even the best Data Management Knowledge area for that person.
Our first level of testing is to identify Thinking Styles, based on Anthony Gregoric’s theory which proposes that people process information concretely or abstractedly and order information sequentially or randomly.
We will uncover the candidate’s strengths in the second level, and the third level will be interview-type questions to ascertain the correct DMBOK Knowledge Area role for the person.
We need your help to develop our model. Please complete the Google Forms assessment here or scan the QR Code with your phone. We will send you a report similar to the one below. We are able to graph for individuals, as well as to superimpose the Thinking Styles results of your team in one diagram.
Thank you so much!
Sample Thinking Styles Feedback Report showing the difference between Howard and Veronica:
Your Profile Graph:
Explanation
Anthony Gregoric developed his theory of Thinking Styles to explain the various ways in which a person's mind acquires and processes information.
There are two main streams:
1. Perception: How we acquire information
a. Concrete: Information is tangibly experienced through the five senses.
b. Abstract: Beyond the five senses to intangible things such as ideas, feelings and relationships
2. Ordering: How we process information
a. Sequential: Organise information in a linear, sequential way
b. Random: Organise information in chunks with no particular order
The brain will use one perceptual and one ordering approach when processing any information. People may use many during the day, depending on the tasks, but will prefer one or two combinations. Understanding the dominant thinking styles can enable more effective communications. It can also reveal which jobs a person will be comfortable doing and what will be more stressful and tiring.
If you score below 30 on a thinking style, you are less likely to use it. Over 40 means this is the dominant thinking style, and below 20 shows you are weaker in this area. You may score over 30 in divergent styles, which means you can intentionally switch your approach when necessary.
Understanding the thinking styles
1. The Sequentials thrive on order and can be upset interacting with people who take the abstract approach.
a. Concrete Sequential
A person with this dominant thinking style likes predictability and dislikes working with teams or abstract ideas. They thrive in a structured environment and work well with clear directions where they can learn a skill through practice and then repeat what they have learned. They can be exceptional task-masters if the work outline is clear and they are comfortable with repetitious work. They dislike open-ended questions, a lack of structure, disorganised people and discussions that seem to have no point. People with a concrete sequential dominant thinking style tend to have a black and white outlook on life.
b. Abstract Sequential
Many scientists fall into this category, which combines thinking abstractly with a strong tendency to process and organise information. Someone with this thinking style likes to have his or her view heard and could be the "biggest ego in the room." People with an abstract sequential dominant thinking style like to work alone. They thrive in stimulating environments that allow them to explore a subject in detail without a lot of tedious or repetitive work. However, tact and accepting others' ideas can be challenging for people with this thinking style dominance. They may miss or not care about social cues, leading them to monopolise conversations and disrespect people with diverging views from their own.
2. The Randoms thrive on loose connections that bind ideas together, whether they are concrete or abstract.
a. Abstract Random
People with this thinking style dominance thrive on teamwork and can often perceive the unseen, like relationships. They are highly attuned to the subtext of conversations and find the health of relationships to be as important as the outcome. People with this thinking style dominance dislike working in environments that do not nurture relationships – they dislike dictatorial leaders, narrow boundaries, unfriendly people and competition. They also like to work on things at a high-level and can be frustrated when asked to focus on one thing at a time or to look at or share exact details. One notable quality of this style is that abstract random people strongly dislike even constructive criticism, which they may take as being a personal judgment against them.
b. Concrete Random
Hands-on risk-takers, concrete random dominant people, are intuitive problem-solvers who like to experiment, learn from the process, and repeat the process. With a natural ability to see the big picture, they can be highly competitive and work through problems independently. Like abstract random dominant thinkers, they dislike boundaries and can be frustrated by formal structures, routines and especially repetition. They also do not like to show how they got to an answer, a process they find to be tedious. People with this thinking style can be easily frustrated by repetition.
How Thinking Styles affect learning
Would you like to find out how we can help you reach your career goals?
Modelware Systems provides a Data Management Professional Assessment Process to help you understand the required KSCA (knowledge, skills, competencies and attitudes) that employers seek. The process also helps you understand your data management KSCAs that you have acquired and, more importantly, your desired KSCAs.
The assessment process
ThinkingStyles Assessment helps us understanding how you PERCEIVE and ORDER the processing of information. ThinkingSyles helps us understand how this positions you in terms of professional specialisation and leadership
StrengthsFinder Assessment helps us understand what you naturally do best. This assessment helps us understand how this will position you in terms of management.
Knowledge Area Assessment uses the ThinkingStyles & StrengthsFinder Assessment results and an in-depth interview to plot a career path by agreeing on a target state.
Using the information collected above, we can recommend a learning pathway to navigate your career path. An example of a Data Modelling Learning pathway is shown below.
Thank you so much!
With much appreciation and kind regards
Veronica Diesel