The who you want to be vs. who you are idea was from Stan in our class. I could have gotten that wrong. It seemed more like the façade that you wish falls away and you are left nakedly exposed under pressure. However, I think you position makes good sense.

Even then, Stan has always said that the HumPat numbers can be changed with effort. Just not a lot very quickly, and not too many at one time. This is different from maladaptive behaviours I’ve picked up.

Besides, one’s personality profile has almost no bearing on what you will do, just on how you will frame something. My training included interpreting for a woman whose results looked entirely touchy-feely, caring for others deeply and non-logical. “Well, to start with, don’t work with numbers,” I said. At which she and our “coach” burst out laughing: she was a very successful accountant. It’s not about the work or the job but how you can successfully frame it. So one’s personality doesn’t have as strong affect on action as we would like to think.

This could be easily tested by having someone who is outgoing developing a high score (say, 3+) for something like Quietness. I’m not sure how one would undertake this. It’s not about developing the habit of silence but the strong need for it.

Stan had some interesting thoughts about the high scores (>3) that are regularly appearing on younger people’s test results. He thinks that the more personally-focused society doesn’t force us to mitigate our strong predilections. So if I’m gregarious I’m allowed to continue on that and not ever checked socially.

On changing, one of the things that I like about Stan’s and Warren’s perspectives is that they both believe that there is no “best” type. Stan sees your Human Patterns as simply who you are, and that there is no good or bad result, although you may need to compensate for some of them. Warren’s seven decision styles have no overarching, “I’m better than you” type. All are necessary in decent sized organizations at all times. I think both would agree that some types (personality for Stan, decision style for Warren) work better in a particular situation than others, but that does not mean that you cannot achieve with the others. Understanding the others is very helpful and can give you more options. Changing yourself isn’t necessary, although I may want to do the social equivalent of dying my hair and changing my fashion to better fit in with a certain social group.

Whether my proactive (relaxed) numbers reflect my desired self, I don’t really know. Maybe some of it yes, some of it no, but I’m not going to dive into that now.

As for reactive (stressed) scores. Rather than be indicative of our ‘true selves’, I tend to see those as patterns of adaptation to stress that we’ve developed over our lifetime up to the point of assessment. On some level, those are the responses that we feel ‘work’ for us. They result from a mixture of inborn temperament and environmental response to our behaviors over time. There are reasons we behave as we do under pressure – some obvious to us and some subconscious.

The main reason I make this distinction is because if we view our reactive profile as “how we truly are”, it becomes hard to convince ourselves that change and further adaptations are possible. If we view our reactive profile as “how we’ve adapted to react to stress over a long period of time,” then we have a shot at making tweaks in our patterns if we do the work.

Stan may or may not agree with this, I don’t know. I haven’t discussed this precise point with him.