Setting the Record Straight

Setting the Record Straight
(Can I Achieve Forgiveness Before I Die?)

We all owe Roger Birkman for his tremendous contribution – not only to our own careers – but also to the psychological community. Less often acknowledged these days (except, perhaps, by Dr. B) are the arguably-equal contributions made by the late, great Dr. Roy Mefferd through his developmental work with The Method. One of the very great pleasures of my tenure at Birkman was the time spent with Dr. Mefferd. Indeed, my own labors would look very different without his wonderful contributions. However, it is time to confess that I was an accomplice to some “developments” that have haunted me for many, if not most, of the years since that time. Indeed, I should acknowledge and redress many past sins, but since they are too numerous for a single exercise, I will limit this particular discussion to the three bipolar scales: Public Contact:Detail; Global:Linear; and, Conceptual:Concrete.

Once those parameters had been thoroughly developed and tested, and were ready for production, we needed to develop snippets that would aid readers in their understanding. It was more than a little humorous watching Roy with a dictionary in one hand and a thesaurus in the other, frantically producing word maps and trying desperately to summarize the underlying meanings of the scores while maintaining some semblance of the true associations. The rest of us sort of waited around until he came up with something that he thought made sense; then we’d all get together in committee and debate the relative merits of his suggestions. For the most part, this was an effective, if inefficient, mechanism for verbalizing that which is dreadfully antagonistic to being verbalized. With respect to what is now being called Preferred Work Styles, we did a really bad job.

In statistics – especially statistics associated with social research of any kind – it’s important that what you say about something has at least a marginal basis in reality (truth?). When you build a statistic with simple items, it is usually pretty straightforward to keep the words consistent with the meanings of those items. But as you add complexity, for example by using multiple already complex items to produce yet another statistic, those underlying items can become masked by the influence of all the others, until they no longer have any real “definitional” power by themselves. The situation is akin to using both eggs and milk in a recipe (along with other ingredients). You can’t tell from the end product whether either or neither was used, much less in what amounts. When that happens, you must depend on what you know about the sample of data that you used to produce the statistics. More often than not, it is some characteristic (or set of characteristics) of the sample that reveal the true meaning of your new statistic, and not the original meanings of the building blocks. (It’s a cake, for crying out loud! To describe it in either milk or egg terms would not communicate the real nature or essence of the cake.)

The PWS scores are the result of linear regression equations, each utilizing between 15 and 20 complex building blocks (other Birkman parameters) which are weighted according to their level of “importance” to the equation. One result of their development is that they cannot be defined by the things which contribute to them. This much was clear to us. But in these three cases we proceeded to ignore everything we knew about the samples! And the rest, as they say, is history. So this is my belated attempt to say, “I’m sorry for those past transgressions,” and finally come clean. [Actually, I’m being a little harsh. Roy did start out by mapping characteristics he knew to be associated with the samples, but we took him so far afield that the end result has only marginal association with those characteristics.]

So here’s the real scoop: Those three two-tailed parameters were developed for very specific reasons, which was to make (establish) distinctions between certain groups. Let’s look at them in order.


Public Contact versus Detail
The development sample for this scale consisted entirely of people in administrative jobs; half of whom were in high-interaction, “front office” type jobs and public relations (this half also included some extroverts, but whose job situation was unknown), and the other half were in “back office,” high-task jobs (and some introverts whose job situations were unknown). So this is essentially an extrovert – introvert scale. This scale – at its core – distinguishes people who prefer interactive jobs from people who prefer tasks. It was developed specifically to make that distinction. And it does so with a lot of power. It is very predictive relative to that distinction. By the way; in the context of this scale, detail refers to task, not to what we might think of as “paying attention to details.”

This is perhaps the “cleanest” of the three scales, in terms of the verbiage associated with it in the Birkman literature. We didn’t stray to far off base with this one. High PC indicates a strong preference for assignments which offer lots of interaction and opportunities to discuss and even debate; while high Detail indicates a strong preference for assignments and responsibilities which involve “doing stuff” (as opposed to discussing stuff). To illustrate my ongoing insistence about the energizing, de-energizing nature of these scales; think about your own score here, If you score high on the PC side, you may have noticed that your most tiring days (working) are those which keep you pinned to the desk/computer “doing things” all day. And if you score high on the Detail side, you are most fatigued after a day of nothing but meetings. Middle scores genuinely need a balance of both in order to feel like “it was a good day.”


Global versus Linear
Oh, my gosh! What have we done? Check it out:
The development sample for this scale consisted entirely of people in Production-type jobs; half of whom were employed in jobs which placed people outdoors (construction, farming, ranching, wildlife-related, etc.), and the other half were in jobs which were indoors (using/fixing equipment, working on assembly line, technology-related, etc.). This is a scale which predicts a preference for inside (Global) or outside (Linear) working environments. Nothing more! Now it may make sense to you that people who prefer working indoors think and solve problems differently than people who prefer working outside, but there is no scientific or statistical evidence to back up that theory. All that is basically made up (and I’m culpable here)! How we managed to get from inside/outside to “holistic versus sequential” is frankly beyond me; but we did.

Again I invite you to look at your own score and consider for a moment the “beauty” of this scale, and consider your own sources of productive energy. I submit that you will find one here. High linear scores welcome those opportunities to “get out.” Lunchtime (away from the office) can be re-energizing not only physically but also psychically.

Now before you point out that you spend a lot of time outdoors even though you are high Global, let me quickly add that this has little (if anything) to do with how one spends their recreational time. This is about work; not about play. If your job requires a lot of time spent out-of-doors, and you are high Global, I suggest that you are already looking for an alternative source of income. Bottom line: If what you tell people about their Global/Linear scores deviates too far from indoor/outdoor working environment, you are on a slippery slope.


Conceptual versus Concrete
Although not quite as egregious as Gl/Ln, the verbiage associated with this scale is also made up, having little association with its development. The sample used to create this parameter consisted only of people in sales positions (are you beginning to see the real relationships here?). Half of those were selling intangibles (“Conceptual”) while the other half were selling tangible items (“Concrete”). So this scale was originally developed for the sole purpose of distinguishing tangible sales from intangible or service sales people.

The nature of sales and the characteristics of the work situations associated with the data provide us with a little more leeway here than in the other two scales. In other words, it isn’t much of a stretch to think “product versus process,” or even “project versus process” (process would be the Conceptual side in both cases). A product and a project share some key similarities (having definite starting and ending points; a sense of completion or accomplishment; etc.), but the word “project” is more appropriate for most organizational use. That is the distinction I use most often in my own work.

However, it does seem to me to be too much of a stretch to ascribe the use of “abstract information, experience, intuition, and knowledge” more to a process orientation than to a project orientation. Nor do I find that Concrete orientations have a monopoly on the use of analysis and facts to solve problems. Indeed, most accountants are conceptual. Don’t tell them that they don’t use analysis and facts to solve problems! (Furthermore they probably should generally avoid the temptation to find “fresh and imaginative solutions.”)

While it’s true that these scales were produced for very specific purposes, and predictively they are quite powerful in their application (consistent with their intent), it is also true that they have something to say about everyone, not just those in administrative, production, or sales jobs. For me, that information is more descriptive or even prescriptive in its utility. Following in summary fashion is how I typically couch these scales in training and understanding:

Public Contact / Detail is about daily routine. High PC prefers a work day of responsibilities and activities involving interaction. In contrast, high Detail prefers a work routine consisting more of activities involving tasks (i.e., less interaction).

Global / Linear is about working environment. High Gl prefers an indoor environment (and the trappings associated with same); high Ln prefers freedom to move around, and at the extreme, even an outdoor work setting.

Conceptual / Concrete is about approach to work. High Cn looks at productivity from a systemic, procedural orientation; high Ct prefers work with more of a project orientation.


Now I recognize that many of you have adopted wondrous approaches to working your magic with your clients using these scales, and I’m not about to suggest that you should stop doing so. But I am suggesting that you exercise caution when “interpreting” these scales (I would beg you to avoid terms like problem-solving style or way of thinking), and am hopeful that this little diatribe proves to be of some use to you in those endeavors.