Q: How much do the answers on the FEBI reflect how you want to see yourself vs. how you actually behave and feel? It seems crucial to have conversations with others to test the veracity of the FEBI report.
A: Conversations with others absolutely help to bring the FEBI report to life and tease out its insights. I usually start a FEBI coaching session by testing the FEBI results against a person's own experience, as well as my experience of their energy. If either one of us senses a mismatch, that's the first good conversation to have. All instruments capture some combination of present-moment state and long-term traits, though we find that clear pattern differences are durable when people have taken the FEBI multiple times. We also know that pattern preferences themselves can influence how we answer questions on an instrument (for example, people strong in Collaborator tend to answer enthusiastically high on many questions and their scores overall are higher). On top of that, some people are simply more self aware than others.
Having said all that, our research comparing FEBI self scores with 360 data - which are observations from others - show strong correlations that others tend to see our weaknesses in the same pattern as we do. About 1/3 of the time, areas for development - as seen by others - relate to an overused Home pattern; about 3/4 of the time, developmental areas relate to an underused 4th pattern. So even though we only answer the FEBI for ourselves, we tend to arrive at answers that are broadly consistent with the views of others.
