Completing your Neethling Brain Instruments: Thinking Preference Assessments

This article provides an overview of what the Neethling Brain Instrument - Thinking Preference Assessments are and how to go about completing your assessment through The Briony Liber Coaching Group.

What are the Neethling Brain Instrument – Thinking Preference Assessments?

The NBI® is a 30-question diagnostic survey that indicates your personal thinking preferences. Your thinking preferences influence the way you communicate, make decisions, solve problems, and manage those around you. Understanding your thinking preferences can give you a new perspective on yourself and those you interact with every day.

The NBI® General Adult instrument offers insight into the way you prefer to think and increases your awareness of and sensitivity to the thinking preferences of others.

Understanding your thinking profile will enable you to develop better relationships, make more dynamic contributions in a team context, and make sound and relevant decisions. It will also put you in a position to make more accurate job and career choices and to determine the correct subject or field of study for your academic life, leading to a more productive and fulfilling personal and professional life.

The assessments were developed by South African Dr Kobus Neethling based on the profiling of more than 200,000 adults and children from a number of countries. Ongoing research at a number of universities and institutes remains an essential part of whole brain science at present.

NBI doesn’t measure good or bad, nor success or failure. Taking the assessment will not reveal any negative secrets about you, and without even assessing you, we can provide you with a bit of inside knowledge:

“There is absolutely nothing in you that can be described as bad, or will lead you to failure.” You are a unique human being, and what you have is perfect as it is. NBI will not upgrade you to a “better model”, but wishes to provide you with a user manual to better understand yourself and assist you in getting “the best mileage” out of the present model.

Are you qualified to offer these assessments?

Yes. I completed three days of in-person training with SolutionsFinding.co.za and was certified as an NBI Practitioner (SA010-1579) in May 2017. In addition I am a registered coach with COMENSA (NO. 4238)

What kinds of assessments are there?

There are a number of different assessments - I generally allocate the NBI General Adult as a starting point.

The NBI® General Adult instrument offers insight into the way you prefer to think and increases your awareness of and sensitivity to the thinking preferences of others around you.

Other assessments include the NBI Business Relationship Style, NBI Leadership Style, etc.

The Business Relationship profile, for instance, gives you insights into your preferences in relationships in the workplace, insights into your own and your colleagues’ unique preferences, and how this impacts your work relationships.

Developing a clear understanding of your thinking preferences within the context of your workplace and colleagues will go a long way towards growing your understanding, tolerance, and curiosity instead of frustration, judgement, and criticism.

Can I fail the assessment?

No! This is not a test that you can pass or fail. This assessment produces a thinking preference profile. The resulting brain profile is, in essence, the synopsis or summary of a person’s thinking preferences at a specific time in his/her life. Because the point of departure is ‘thinking preferences,’ it is important to note that there are no right or wrong or good or bad profiles.

The profile indicates preferences, not skills. While you may have a strong preference for something, you might not have had the opportunity to develop those skills. Equally, you may have developed skills in areas that do not particularly energise you but have served a function in your life or work.

A Neethling Instruments Brain Profile is a descriptive, non-judgemental analysis, with no profile being better or worse than another. Instead, the profile gives a description of an individual’s thought preferences, and recommendations are made based on those preferences.

What resources do I need to complete the profile?

The assessment is done online. You will need access to a computer or laptop and an internet connection.

Try to set aside 15 to 20 minutes of quiet, uninterrupted time so that you can focus on the assessment.

Anything else I need to know before I get started?

Because this is a preferences assessment, please, as far as possible, try to do the following:

• Don’t overthink your answers.

• Try and respond from a point of preference as opposed to what you think you SHOULD be doing or find you ARE DOING as a function of a specific context. In other words, in an ideal world where you could think and do things in a way that you would prefer, how would you do these things?

• If you are doing the business relationships assessment, in this instance respond to the questions in relation to how you prefer to conduct your business relationships – i.e. in the context of work.

You may find that your general adult preferences (which are not supposed to be context specific) and your business relationships preferences may differ.

What happens once I have completed the assessment?

On completion, your computer-generated report will be emailed to me. If we have not already set a date to meet to discuss the results, I will then contact you to set that date.

We will then have 1 - 1.5 hours to discuss your assessment.

I will take you through the assessment in detail, help you interpret what the results mean, help you identify clues within others so that you can get an idea of the type of thinking preferences other people may operate under, and work through various ways in which you can use your whole brain (i.e., go beyond your natural preferences) to optimise communication, management, relationships, and leadership styles.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me for assistance at briony@brionyliber.com.