Highlands Ability Battery – Understanding abilities and talents
Abilities & the Whole Person
By the time an individual’s abilities are measured and interpreted by the Highlands Ability Battery, other influences have helped to shape and define her as a unique human being who faces life’s challenges in her own unique way. Highlands has developed a structure for relating the results of the Ability Battery to these other influences. In this way, we are able to see a picture of the Whole Person, especially as the other elements help us to understand and develop our abilities.
The Whole Person
Highlands has identified eight critical factors which combine to make the Whole Person. These factors are represented as an interlocking wheel. The eight critical factors are:
Natural Abilities. These are identified and measured by the Highlands Ability Battery. A person is happiest and performs best when her natural abilities are employed to the fullest.
Skills. These are those function-driven tasks an individual has learned to do well. They develop over time through study, education, application and practice. To the extent an individual takes advantage of her innate abilities in developing a skill, the skill will be acquired more quickly, easily and fully.
Personal Style. Every individual has developed speech patterns, body language, social devices, and personality traits unique to her. Because other individuals respond either more or less favorably to a person’s personal style, it’s important to identify its ingredients in each individual to enable that individual to relate better to other people.
Interests. Over the years, a person develops interests unique to her. When these are identified and recognized, the individual can be helped to combine these with her abilities to achieve a fuller and more integrated use of both.
Family of Origin. An individual’s background and family shape her life and her work ethic. We encourage the individual to examine and to understand how her family’s history and her intra-family relationships have influenced her.
Values. An individual’s values (i.e., her scales for judging good and evil, wise and foolish, moral and immoral) define her reaction to people and events around her. When a sense of her values is combined with knowledge of the other factors in the whole person, the individual is helped to bring her plans and choices into sharper focus.
Goals. Every person has goals which control and drive her activities, both every day and over the foreseeable future. The individual may wish to modify these goals in light of her innate abilities. The results of the timeframe worksample may show, for example, that she may be happiest pursuing short-term goals.
Career Development Stage. Each individual confronts critical stages or transition in her life. Some of these are work- or career-related. These career issues are sometimes self-created and sometimes caused by external forces (e.g., company downsizing). By defining and discussing the issues confronting the individual, we are able to help her through these transitions.