Long before diversity became a political issue, Warren Lamb was encouraging diversity in management teams. His model of diversity was not based on age, race, creed, or gender. Rather it was based on decision-making style.
Lamb found that the best teams are made up of people who have different decision-making strengths. That is, you need someone on the team who is strongly motivated to Investigate, someone who Explores, someone who is quite Determined, someone high in Timing and so on.
There is just one problem. When people approach decisions in very different ways, they are likely to get on each other’s nerves. The Commitment-oriented individual wants to take action here and now. The Attention-oriented person needs time to think things over and have a good look around. Attenders can bother the Intention- oriented person who feels the first thing to be done to get to grips with the issues and resolve what needs to be done. So there is a lot of potential for conflict in a diverse team.
And this is where the third value comes in – divergent decision makers need to learn to tolerate each other’s approaches and to appreciate what these very different motivations bring to the table.
So, in addition to Warren Lamb’s grounded theory, which brings meaning to patterns of movement, I would like to add three values that are equally important to the practice of Movement Pattern Analysis and particularly important at this moment: respecting individuality, fostering diversity, and encouraging tolerance.