Utilizing the Birkman to Assist Clients to Develop Greater Well-Being
By Mary Pat Mueller
Lately I have been thinking a lot about relationships. Many of the clients I see are having difficulty managing relationships, whether it be the relationship they have with their illness, work, family, friends or themselves. When we work with our clients we want to give them tools they can use to build capability. Some of what we do is educational, like explaining to a client with a mood disorder that their thoughts create their moods, which in turn create their behavior and their physical reactions. But higher developmental learning occurs when we assist our clients in becoming more self-aware. As Oliver Wendell Holmes stated, "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
Self-awareness and relationship management are two of the four dimensions in what Daniel Goleman, in his research and subsequent books define as emotional intelligence. The other two dimensions are social awareness and self-management. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand emotions, and a person's skill at using this awareness to manage themselves and the relationships they have with others. These four dimensions are important because together they capture almost everything you do that is not a function of how smart you are. Goleman's books state that self-awareness and social awareness are what people see whereas, self-management and relationship management are what people do. He goes on to say that a person needs to develop self-awareness first to have success in the other three dimensions. EQ is but a part of what defines a person, but it is the one part that a person has the ability to change to actively contribute to their well-being. Helping our clients develop emotional intelligence is important because the research on emotional intelligence or EQ tells us that emotional intelligence is more important in determining one's success than IQ.
With this in mind, four years ago I began using a tool called the Birkman with some of my clients. The Birkman is a behavioral inventory. It assists people in becoming more aware of their needs, their usual behavior when their needs are being met and their stress behavior when their needs are not being met. There are numerous ways to use the Birkman and many different reports it offers to assist us in working with others. I have found the report on the Birkman components, which are the eleven windows on a person's behavior to be life changing for my clients. Each component is presented in light of three different perspectives. Each perspective sheds light on traits that can and will impact a person's behavioral style in relationships. The eleven components combine to provide a revealing picture of the way a person relates to self and others.
I have used the Birkman in a number of different ways. I have used it with young people going to college or people in job transition. I have used it with couples to help them understand their differences and how their differences may affect the perspectives they hold. I have used it to assist people to understand themselves and their strengths in relationships. I have used it in conjunction with other therapists to assist them in helping their clients build capability. I always hear, "How did you find out so much about me from those silly questions I answered." When people become more aware of their behavior and the impact it has on themselves and others, it often propels them to change what's not working and develop what is.