Project Leadership and the Art of Managing Relationships: Successful project management in today’s business environment is increasingly complex. Effective management of the intricate “people” side is the glue that holds together a project of any caliber. This article appeared in the March 2010 issue of T+D Magazine. Read article...

Borrowing Leadership Behaviors: A leader who merely maximizes their own set of strengths can actually limit their ability to be their best. It may be valuable to learn about others’ strengths and learn to borrow those winning behaviors. Read article…

Navigating the Different Personality Assessments: Assessment instruments are sort of like maps of people – each starting with a different perspective or question and consequently creating different descriptions of the same person.  If you are wondering what sort of assessment to use to map people in a work situation, here’s a way of looking at your options. Read article…

Five Keys To Motivating Your Team Members - Motivation Is Everything And Translates To Profit: Motivation is described by psychologist Shay McConnon as ‘the inner desire to take action’. Tap into people’s motivation and you will strike gold! Read article...

SDI Strengthens Healthcare Leadership Skills in Resource-Poor Countries: Virtual leadership development program empowers health care teams facing challenging situations. Read article…

How the Business Bottom Line Benefits When People Really Matter: In 2006, its first year of operation, New World Te Rapa became the first ever supermarket to become a finalist for the national “Best Places to Work” award. In 2007 they went on to finish among the top five in the medium-large workplace category. These two remarkable achievements resulted from a combination of vision, passion, and commitment to a better way to approach the human resource issues that traditionally challenge the supermarket industry. Read article…

What’s Your Type and Why Does It Matter? A Physician’s Perspective: In this excerpt from an article first published in THE PHYSICIAN EXECUTIVE January/February 2006, one doctor explains why he prescribes the SDI over the MBTI. Read article…

Do You Hear What I Hear? There are thousands, if not tens of thousands of books written about communication and the challenges of communicating effectively. But we have found no filter more powerful than our own personality for buffering communication messages. We unconsciously encode and decode messages through the lens of our own unique set of values or Motivational Value System (MVS).  Read article…

The SDI and MBTI: Make Distinctions Rather Than Connections: Now that we have both results, how can we use them together? This article will provide some examples of training and coaching that used both of these insightful tools. Read article…

Motivation vs. Behavior: One of the key benefits of the SDI is its focus on the Motivation behind Behavior. Your challenge as a facilitator is helping them to understand this difference and avoid getting the dreaded: “That is not what I do!” Read article...

Leading by Color: A common misperception by people first exposed to Relationship Awareness is that the Reds are the “born leaders.” But as any good SDI facilitator knows, great leaders come from all parts of the triangle. We break down the leadership styles most often used by leaders within the various MVS groups. Read article...

How Does the SDI Correlate with the MBTI? As many adult learners do, people who ask this question are trying to relate something they are learning to something else they already know. And since the MBTI is widely used, we are faced with this question often. Here’s the long and short of it… Read article...
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The Evolution of Relationship Awareness Theory: There’s a reason the SDI consistently achieves Face Validity ratings over 99%. The validity, simplicity, and memorability of Relationship Awareness Theory is a direct result of the psychological science at its foundation. The following article discusses the theoretical and structural influences of Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm and Carl Rogers and how the Theory’s author, Elias Porter, was able to construct a self-discovery tool that was “for people, rather than about people.” Read article...

Porter and the Missing Link (to Freud): The cover story of the March 27, 2006 issue of Newsweek featured Sigmund Freud. In the article, the author illustrates the impact of his influence on some of the major movements in the field of psychology. Missing from this family tree of modern Psychology is the important branch originating from Erich Fromm’s expansion of Freud’s theories on motivation. Here’s our letter to the editor...

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