Are you at a turning point in your life? Do you feel like you are on the right track? Are you a high school student trying to find a college or university that matches who you are? Are you a college student considering your future career direction? Are you an adult in the midst of job or career change or are you trying to make a better fit within your current organization? In each of these situations, it helps to take a comprehensive approach that includes consideration of the following:

    * What career development stage are you in?
    * What are your natural abilities and talents?
    * What have you learned how to do?
    * What are your interests?
    * What is your personal style?
    * What is the role of your family of origin?
    * What are your values?
    * What are your goals

Knowing your natural abilities is a vital starting point to this process. Each of us has a different pattern of natural abilities that allow us to do or learn to do certain kinds of things easily and quickly. They have little to do with knowledge or culture, or education, or even interests. Musical talent or visual spatial ability are examples of such aptitudes. Individuals who choose life paths consistent with their natural talents and personal style tend to be happier and experience less stress.Based on seventy years of research, the Highlands Ability Battery is a state-of-the-art assessment tool designed to reveal your natural abilities.

The key difference between the Highlands Ability Battery and other popular assessment tools – MBTI, Strong, True Colors, DiSC – is that the Battery requires hands-on performance of objective on-line tasks that measure natural abilities, while the other tools are tests of personality type and usually depend on self-report and/or group appraisals. The other tests may offer insights into personality types, but the Highlands Ability Battery measures natural aptitudes or abilities. This difference is crucial to students faced with college choices and selection of major subjects or to adults involved in career selection or change. Since abilities are hard-wired and do not significantly change after age 14, the information obtained from abilities assessment will serve individuals throughout their educational and career journey. A student who knows the range of their abilities is better able to use them in his or her life and work as well as in relations with others, generally resulting in less stress and greater career satisfaction.

The Highlands Ability Battery will not identify a specific career or job for you. Rather, through the Highlands Ability Battery, you will discover your:

Personal style, which indicates, among other things, whether you work best as an individual contributor or as a member of a team
Driving abilities, which indicate how you approach and react to your work or school environment and the type of work you feel most drawn to.
Specialized abilities, which support and enhance your learning, work and life
Learning channels, which describe how you best take in information
Communication and decision making style

You will also:

    * Understand why certain tasks are easier (or more difficult) for you
    * Identify how you can work with less stress and greater enjoyment
    * Achieve greater efficiency in problem solving and decision making
    * Identify how you best learn new information

As you consider various careers or jobs, you can compare the characteristics of those careers and jobs with your ability pattern and get a sense of how fulfilling (or frustrating) the job will be.

Beginning with results from the Highlands Ability Battery, I will work with you to develop a personal vision that incorporates answers to the above questions. After a brief intake session which can be in person or by telephone, I will give you a key code to take the Highlands Ability Battery online. The Highlands consists of 19 timed work samples.  By means of a comprehensive written report and personalized feedback session (in person or by telephone), you will gain a clear understanding of how you best solve problems, how you take in and communicate new information, and what work environments will make you most productive. Additional coaching sessions can be scheduled to assist you in further developing your personal vision.

The following interview from the book Roadmap to Success with Tom Tavantzis by David E. Wright, President of Insight Publishing, provides a good background on the self-assessment process. Tom Tavantzis Interview

For more information on the Highlands Ability Battery click here.

Contact me if you would like to take the Highlands Ability Battery or do other career exploration work.