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The Berens CORE™ Method provides a rich, multifaceted understanding of some very important aspects of who we are as human beings. It provides an integrated typology with many practical uses. Equally important is the methodology of explaining, revealing, and applying this typology. The CORE Method represents over 30 years of evolving action research and has been in use under other names* until 2012. It represents the leading edge in understanding individual differences.

We all have a constant core that is at the center of who we are. It has always been there even as it has evolved over time. The Core Method helps you uncover this constant CORE:

Cognition—What information and evaluation processes do you tend to privilege and how do you tend to think about nearly everything? What is your cognitive world view?

Outlook—Where are you and where would you like to go? What is the theme and developmental path of your life?

Roots—What are your core psychological needs, values and talents? What needs are so essential to your existence that you will go to great lengths to get them met?

Expression—How do you tend to express yourself? How are you driven to interact with others? What is your natural energy and movement pattern?

Your CORE consists of the essential aspects of hidden and often unclaimed goodness as expressed through talents, deep motivations, drives, and how you naturally think about things. Knowing your CORE will help you better self-manage as well as get yourself out of the way when leading others. It will help you identify talents and core drivers and nurture those talents to to fully engage them in yourself. You will. . . .

• Help yourself (and others) bring all of who you are to to the workplace or in your personal life.
• Have a bigger impact in your own work and your life.
• Leverage the benefits of conflicting viewpoints and appreciate the diversity in others.
• Improve your ability to relate to people who are different from you.
• Recognize and foster talents and core values for more engagement.
• Discover what stresses you and others and learn what to do about it.

Using the powerful CORE lenses of personality you will arrive at a deep understanding of yourself as well as of others. Each of these lenses reveals important information about yourself that you most likely have not had language to express. For some, these aspects have been denied and need to be reclaimed. Either way, it is a joyful, rejuvenating experience to find your CORE self.

Cognition—how you are inclined to think about things. Cognition at its core deals with kinds of information and kinds of evaluation processes. What kinds of information do you tend to give privilege to and what kinds do you ignore? What kinds of decisions are easy for you and what kinds are difficult so you avoid them? This lens is built on the wisdom in Carl Jung's work on Psychological Types and the eight cognitive processes he identified and that show up in recent neuroscience research by Dario Nardi.

Outlook—your cognitive worldview, your developmental path, and your shadow side. You have a typical outlook on your life that comes from the theme of your personality and how it plays out in your own individuality in different contexts. This lens is built on the latest work in depth psychology by Jungian analyst, John Beebe, as well as on a groundbreaking analysis of cognitive patterns by Linda Berens and Christopher Montoya.

Roots—your core psychological needs and values that have been with you from the beginning and the talents that help you scratch the itch that the needs create. This is the heart of who we are, so you will learn more about the essence of the roots of your personality  as well as of those around you. This will open up a deep understanding of different perspectives, different talent agendas, and sources of conflict and stress. The Roots aspect of the CORE Methodology is grounded in the patterns David Keirsey called temperament and that were further differentiated and refined by Linda Berens.

Expression—the most easily observed aspect of your CORE as it is embodied in your communications and movements. Expression is based in the Berens Interaction Styles lens, which helps us establish rapport and greatly affects relationships of all kinds. Berens Interaction Styles is reflective of the long researched work on temperament in children as well as a deconstruction and reintegration of Social Styles and DiSC models.

The CORE™ Method includes

• Ways of explaining the lenses simply so they are easily understood, memorable, and relevant to many situations
• Practices for increasing self-awareness and mindfulness
• Practices for building effective and authentic work and personal relationships
• Holding the lenses lightly so knowledge of them increases development and interpersonal agility
• Self-discovery rather than dependence on a single data point such as an instrument alone
• Recognition that our behavior is a reflection of our core self, our current situation and life conditions, as well as where we are in our development

The CORE Method integrates an understanding of your Root essence with how you naturally Express that essence to arrive at sixteen type patterns. Each of these patterns can then be understood in terms of habits of Cognition and your Outlook so you get a more complete picture of how you've always been,who you are now and where you can develop further. Each aspect can be explored on its own with positive results and the assurance that the other aspects have been accounted for in the facilitation and in the materials. Unlike more simplistic tools and techniques that overlook important nuances in behavior and human motivation, the CORE Method reflects how we are naturally organized as complex living systems. Yet, it gives us an easily understood language to describe core patterns and dynamics.

* CORE has emerged as the leading edge integrated typology resulting from work done under the names of the TRI Methodology (Temperament Research Institute) and The Interstrength® Method (Interstrength Associates).