Inform Yourself

My good friend Jay Niblick, founder of Innermetrix International, recently completed a study called The Genius Project. His study became the basis for his latest book, What’s Your Genius?

Voices in Your Head

The root of Dr. Hartman’s (Father of the Genius Project) discovery was in his identification of three distinct dimensions of value (i.e., different ways of judging or valuing things). Each of these dimensions could be associated with it’s own neural network if you will, and all of the natural talents you have for how we think and make decisions fit into one of these three categories or classes of talent. Hartman assigned the following titles and descriptions to these three ways of perceiving reality:

• The Systemic dimension: The dimension of formal concepts. Ideas of how things should be. This dimension is one of definitions or ideals, goals, structured thinking, policies, procedures, rules, laws, and “oughts” and “shoulds”.

• The Extrinsic dimension: The dimension of comparisons, relative and practical thinking, “real” results (as opposed to theoretical results in the Systemic dimension). It includes the elements of the real, material world, comparisons of good/better/best, and seeing things as they compare with other things in their class.

• The Intrinsic dimension: The dimension of uniqueness, of persons or things as they exist in themselves. The dimension that focuses on the essence or being of the object. This is the valuing of an object or person with an eye toward its singularity, uniqueness, or spirituality.

Dr. Hartman’s work on Formal Axiology has filled volumes so we won’t get into a deep discussion on the specifics of the science. What we do want to take from Hartman’s work, however, is that since all of our natural talents fall into one of these three classes of talents if we can understand and measure our abilities in each then we can learn where our genius lives.

My only problem with Dr. Hartman’s work is with his titles. I’ve found that my corporate clients think they are too scientific so I’ve given them new titles and definitions that are a little easier to understand:

• The Head (Hartman’s Systemic): the class of talents that deals with intellectual or conceptual thinking, creating order and structure, long-range planning, problem solving and big-picture or strategic thinking. Thinking

• The Hand (Hartman’s Extrinsic): the class of talents that deals with practical thinking, real-world action orientation, details, results and tangible or tactical thinking. Doing

• The Heart (Hartman’s Intrinsic): the class of talents that deals with people, empathy, sensitivity and understanding for others and emotional or humanistic thinking. Feeling

While all of us possess some level of ability in all three of these classes, they are not all equal. All of that creating and pruning of neural networks that we do causes us to develop our own unique level of ability and preference for each. Some people have a natural talent for the Head dimension, and as such they possess superior talents for intellectualizing, theorizing, solving problems and thinking strategically. Some people have more robust networks for dealing with the Hand dimension and find they have natural talents for understand how things work, catching the smallest details, being able to stay locked onto the end goal without distraction, being pragmatic and thinking tactically. Still others find their greatest set of talents live in the Heart dimension and they are naturally gifted when it comes to understanding others, being aware of their thoughts and emotions, communicating with them, perceiving their motivations and connecting with them.

These three classes are like voices in your head. Since they are subconscious filters, determining which information you see clearly and which you don’t, they speak to you all day long, telling you which stimuli to notice and which to ignore. As such they shape or create your perception of reality. If the neural network supporting the class of talents called the Head is well developed than this voice talks to you clearly about all the structure and order in your environment. If your Hand dimensions is built on a robust neural network, it shares with you all of the data coming in concerning your physical or tangible reality, and if the Heart dimension is refined and well developed it talks to you about the emotions and feelings of those around you.

While it’s possible to have equal talents for all three of these dimensions, and therefore equal levels of natural talents in each, most people develop stronger networks for just one or two and it is this combination that makes each of us unique.