Boxes aren't for people

(Excerpt from Chapter 5—Unboxing Personality in 𝑫𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎; 𝑮𝒓𝒐𝒘 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎)

People are like the pieces of peculiar art on Via Padova in Milan, Italy. Most passers-by see only the five yellow metal structures on the sidewalk: two circles, two triangles, and an arrow. However, those who look up at the right moment, when the structures align three-dimensionally as planned by the artist, see the perfect shape of a yellow bicycle. One more step and the bicycle would be gone again, and all they’d see would be the five disjointed shapes on the sidewalk.

The yellow bicycle is an example of illusion art. What is the illusion—the separate parts or the bicycle they form together?
When it comes to people, we stroll by them and see only parts of them, too. Those parts, I believe, are the illusion. When we line up just right to finally look at them for all they are, as the Artist intended, we really see the person!

How do we line up right to do that?

During our DiSC training, Annatjie and I found that our DiSC profiles didn’t accurately describe us, mostly because we had to choose whether to complete the test from a work angle or a home-life angle. We are both vastly different at work than in a social setting. The result, therefore, described us only in part. It showed the illusion—only pieces of the bicycle.

We dreamed of a profile that could quickly and accurately recognize and describe our three-dimensional identities—socially, in work mode, and under the influence of our life view. What if we could add that all up like the yellow pieces of the bicycle to arrive at a comprehensive picture of how people love, live, learn, and lead?

We believed a three-dimensional approach would be the most important aspect of our test design. Yes, at the foundation of our model, we would start with the four Tree Types, but the Tall Trees Leadership Profile (TTLP) would not sort people into these four boxes. It would blow the box into 2744 pieces because there would be 14x14x14 unique possible outcomes. In each of the three dimensions—Work Profile, Social Profile, and Life View Profile—people would be any one of the 14 Tree Types or combinations:
a Boxwood
a Rose Bush
a Palm Tree
a Pine Tree
a Box-Rose (you probably guessed it—a combination of Boxwood and Rose Bush)
a Box-Palm
a Box-Pine
a Pine-Palm
a Pine-Rose
a Palm-Rose
a Contra-Palm (Boxwood, Rose, and Pine—everything but Palm)
a Contra-Pine
a Contra-Boxwood, or
a Contra-Rose

Our profile had to help describe what a person looked like when these 14 possibilities blended with each other three times to result in a person’s overall Tall Trees Leadership Profile (TTLP). What would that TTLP be if they had the Work Profile of a Box-Palm, the Social Profile of a Pine-Palm, and the Life View Profile of a Boxwood? It couldn’t be up to them to figure it out. Our profile had to make sense of it for them and describe such unique blends in a picture that is as coherent as the yellow bicycle.

While this three-dimensionality would be our ultimate contribution to the world of personality profiles, we also dreamed that our assessment would be:
* so affordable that organizations could profile all levels of the company instead of just top management
* accessible for non-profits and churches, who are often expected to deliver input for free
* in a language that applies from birth to adulthood and from the bedroom to the boardroom so that generations could connect with each other, and the healing work in relationships could flow from homes to schools, workplaces, churches, and larger communities.

We both knew right away that it would take a David-versus-Goliath miracle. Actually, David versus a whole army of Goliaths. On the battlefield for the uniqueness of individuals, we would face giants like DiSC, Myers-Briggs (MBTI), Jung’s 16 types, the Big Five or OCEAN, Hartman’s Personality Profile or the Color Code, the Enneagram, Strengthsfinder 2.0, the Kersey Temperament Assessment, the Lemon Leadership Profile, and countless others.

This would not be a battle to slay them, of course. It would be a battle to convince trainers, coaches, psychometrists, talent scouts, recruiters, youth workers, pastors, family therapists, parents, and ultimately each individual whose identity we wanted to liberate, to try out our unique roadmap to growth: a rational, relational tool that is uncompromising in its defense of unique design.

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐲, 𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟎, 𝐰𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓? 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥, 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞. 𝐖𝐞'𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝-𝐭𝐨-𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡 $𝟐𝟗!

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Change-Them.../dp/B0C5VC9G1C