HVP Indicators: Relational Skills & Dealing with Personal Issues
Part 7: The Integrity of our connection to ourselves and to others.
Introduction
Earlier in the series, we talked about Tolerance as measuring our capacity to appreciate others as intrinsically valuable humans with unique experiences and perspectives (this is not the same as agreeing with them).
We talked about The Meaningfulness of Work measurement that reflects how we see and think about the intrinsic value and unique qualities of ourselves.
Those measurements are about how we think about ourselves and others.
Now we’re looking at how we implement or carry out this thinking in real life.
These two indicators, Relational Skills toward others & Dealing with our own Personal Issues measure our integrity around how we connect with others and ourselves.
How This All Fits Together
The indicators we’ve talked about up to this point have been about how we notice and assimilate information. This includes how clearly we see the situations around us and how we solve problems and create solutions. Now we’re getting into the last part of decision making, which is about implementation.
Decision Making in Three Parts:
Noticing the information available to work with.
Problem-solving by taking that information and creating new ideas or new solutions.
Choose the best solutions to implement.
So we are looking at our degrees of consistency in the ways we think and how we implement that thinking in regards to People, Work, and Strategic thinking.
Relational Skills & Empathy is about how we connect with others, and treat others.
Dealing with Personal Issues is about how we make choices around our needs, desires, preferences, and we take care of ourselves.
When these two measurements are combined with the Tolerance and Meaningfulness of Work indicators, we have a pretty clear picture of how we connect with ourself and with others.
Integrity is the core principle of connection with yourself and others.
Relational Empathy Toward Others
The Relational Skills & Empathy indicator reflects our ability to understand and make sense of complex situations relating to other people, and then act in a manner that is consistent with our thinking.
For example, we might think other people are important but, in our actions, we do not take the time to hear the other person’s viewpoint.
This is specifically about our ability to be present to people on a personal level, to get them but also to act in a way that is consistent with how we value them.
In the example above, this score indicates a strong sense of really getting the nuances of people and seeing them as individuals. There’s a strong sense of congruence between how this person thinks about people (See the Tolerance score in Part 2) and how they actually treat people.
How We Care For Ourselves
Dealing with Personal Issues is the self-side score, which reflects the clarity and congruence in which we carry out and implement boundaries, prioritize important needs, and set personal standards.
In the example above, this score indicates that the individual can take the necessary steps to care for themself, but might tend to look for input from an inner circle before taking action.
This isn’t good or bad–it’s just information.
It might result in the individual being more open to different perspectives, or it might be that they have difficulty taking action on their own behalf without an external “permission slip.”
Another way we can use the information in the example is to put this self-side score, which is good, beside the world-side score, which is very strong. This gives us information about the difference of congruence between how this individual sees and responds to others versus how they view and respond to themselves.
In Real Life
Overall, this is about considering our congruence and integrity between how we think about others and how we treat them, how we think about ourselves and how we actually treat ourselves.
Signals that help us notice these gaps between our thinking and doing are things like:
Feeling defensive around different thoughts and opinions.
Listening distractedly while acting present.
Treating others perspectives, ideas and needs as more important or valuable than our own. And vice versa.
Resentment or anger and feeling uncared for or unheard.
When we experience a strong sense of congruence in both of these areas, we have the internal bandwidth to allow others to have different thoughts and opinions while being clear about our own. We can relax.
We recognize that having a strong self-side allows us to have a greater bandwidth in caring for others, appreciating others, and understanding others.
Ultimately when we have integrity in relationship to ourselves, we have a foundation for strong connection to others. It’s all ridiculously connected.
NOTE: If you are new here–so glad to have you! This is the seventh part in a 21-part series about the specific information that is measured in 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 have in order 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