HVP Indicators: Problem-Solving Styles
Part 5: The power of our pause.
Beware: changing your pauses can change the tempo and direction of your life. Proceed with caution. :)
Intro
The pause is the place where something new can happen. It’s the space when we can say yes or no. Might be the daily choices that add up over the weeks, months, and years. Might be the single yes or no that changes the rest of our life.
The Problem-Solving Style indicators show us how quickly and intentionally we move through these pauses in our life and how well it’s working for us.
The Recap
In the sample reports below, you can see that the Problem-Solving Style indicators follow the first four indicators that we talked about.
We started by talking about the clarity of the windshield we see the world through and the attention we give to our internal dashboard signals. Then we talked about the three different types of information we tend to notice, both through the windshield out in the world and on our internal dashboard.
The Problem-Solving styles are like summaries to these first indicators. They say something like, so all that said, here’s how this is working out for you.
About Our Pauses
On the external World-side, The Problem-Solving Style gives us information about the length of our pauses. There’s a range here, and this indicator helps us see where we land on it.
We might routinely make snappy decisions, with little need for thinking or deliberation. We might tend to sit with our decisions for awhile or really step back and take days or weeks before circling around with our final choice.
These pauses happen in the space between when someone asks us a question and when we answer.
They happen in the time between when we are offered opportunities and when we accept or decline.
They happen between other people’s choices and our own response.
The pauses also happen in the rhythms of our daily life. A commute between work and homelife (I do the sit-in-car-for-a-moment move when I pull in the driveway). A sabbath. A stroll.
Some of us do work that really requires fast decisions, and some of us do work that requires us to resist the pressure to move quickly so we can make deeply deliberate and thoughtful choices.
If we’re bleeding out in the emergency room, we want our triage nurse to make split second choices. If we’re preparing for brain surgery, we want a doctor who takes time to sift through all of the information, consult with peers, and make very deliberate decisions. You get my drift.
Part of this reflects how easily we adjust our pauses to the size and impact of the choice.
Part of this is about seeing our personal primary style, since we tend to default to a response time that we’re most comfortable with.
In the sample report above, this indicator reflects an individual who tends to take time to step back to think through long-term implications before making a more deliberate decision. Now if we want to look at how well this is working out for this individual, we can look at the internal side of this indicator.
How It’s Working Out
On the internal Self-side, the Problem-Solving Style gives us information about the result of our current problem-solving style and tendencies.
This indicator reflects how well our current decision making process is working for us—smooth and efficiently or if there’s more of a built-up backlog of choices we’re rushing through.
This indicator also gives us our first glimpse into how comfortably we can tolerate the unknown, relax in pressure, and pause before “knowing” the answer or result.
In the sample report above, this indicator reflects an individual who has the space and bandwidth to make the decisions at a tempo that works well for them. The low number reflects that while their problem-solving style might be more slow and deliberate (as we see on the World-side), it’s ultimately quite effective and efficient for this person.
The Problem-Solving Style gives us the opportunity to understand the connection between our best decision making style and the impact it makes in our entire life.
In Real Life
This pair of indicators give us information about how comfortable we feel with our pauses and how our current decision tempo is working out for us. Once we can see what we’re doing and how it’s working, we get to go out and discover what works better for us.
We can look at other parts of our HVP report for specific clues, but at the end of the day, we take these new insights into the world and get to know ourselves more deeply.
We can get to know more about how we make our best decisions–do we follow our gut, navigate by emotional instinct, or use logic and information?
How can we tell when we’re rushing through these pauses or dragging them out?
What is it like when we are intentional and calm in our pauses?
The power in the pause is that these are the moments that direct our life. Intention in the pause becomes an intentional life.
NOTE: If you are new here–so glad to have you! This is the fifth part in a 21-part series about the specific information that is available through a Hartman Value Profile report. The purpose is to create an HVP indicator index for anyone to use, whether you have your own HVP report or not.
If you don’t have a report, this series is designed so that you can use each article as a starting point to notice how you think and make decisions in your daily life. HVP reports reflect very specific information that is often challenging to see in ourselves, but it isn’t necessary to see yourself more clearly.
Indicator Series:
About the 21-Part Indicator Index
Pt. 2: Tolerance & Meaningfulness of Work
Pt. 3: Trainability & Value of Work
Pt. 4: HVP Indicators: Strategic Conceptualize & Organizational Ability