A behavioral and occupational assessment that measures how you see yourself, how others experience you, and what you need from your environment to be at your best. It has been doing that work for seventy years.
The origin
In May of 1944, a B-17 pilot named Roger Birkman was shot down over Belgium. He survived, and he came home carrying an observation that wouldn’t leave him alone: people flying the same missions, in the same aircraft, seeing the same events, experienced them completely differently. Perception, he realized, wasn’t a footnote to human behavior. It was the whole story.
He went on to study industrial and organizational psychology, and in 1951 he turned that question into an instrument. What became the Birkman Method has been measured, validated, and refined ever since. Dr. Birkman spent his life on it. The company he founded still stewards the science today.
The difference
The Birkman doesn’t hand you a type or sort you into a box. It measures something rarer: the gap between the behavior people see and the needs underneath it, the needs that are often invisible to others and sometimes to you. It knows what you look like at your best, what quietly fuels that best, and what happens when the fuel runs out.
That’s why it has lasted seventy years while assessment fads came and went. It describes real people accurately enough that they recognize themselves, and it holds up under the statistical scrutiny that serious organizations require before they trust an instrument with their leaders.
The company it keeps
More than 10,000 companies have used the Birkman Method to select, develop, and understand their people. In our own practice we’ve brought it to leaders at Dell, Apple, HP, IBM, Sonos, Cirrus Logic, Semtech, GSD&M, and the City of Austin, and to thousands of individuals whose stakes were personal rather than corporate. A marriage. A career change. A kid heading to college.
The instrument doesn’t care whether the decision is worth millions or is simply yours. It answers the same way: with an accurate picture of who you are.
Your move
If you’ve never taken the Birkman, we’ll set you up with the assessment and a one-on-one feedback session with an Advanced Certified Birkman Consultant. If you’ve already taken it, your results are still valid and still yours. Upload them and put them to work.
The Birkman Method® is a registered trademark of Birkman International, Inc. Primrose Guides is an independent platform and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Birkman International.