This self-assessment gives you an opportunity to explore a few different ways to think about what it means to be a “big-picture thinker.” You may resonate with one or all of them.

Image courtesy of the J.Paul Getty Museum

Big-picture thinkers take in information “intuitively.” The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assesses four different personality tendencies, one of which is how people like to take in information. The two choices are:

Big-picture thinkers lean toward N. If your answer to the first question was “b,” that’s a big-picture thinker answer.

The following characteristics generally describe people who lean towards N, as described by The Myers & Briggs Foundation. See which ones resonate for you.

• I remember events by what I read “between the lines” about their meaning.
• I solve problems by leaping between different ideas and possibilities.
• I am interested in doing things that are new and different.
• I like to see the big picture, then to find out the facts.
• I trust impressions, symbols, and metaphors more than what I actually experienced.
• Sometimes I think so much about new possibilities that I never look at how to make them a reality.

That last sentence in particular is a key phrase that my coaching is based on. I’m all about helping big-picture thinkers focus on the possibility that they want to bring into the world, and the actions they can take to do so.

Source: www.myersbriggs.org

2. Imagine that you get completely energized from a combination of the two thinking modes described below. What percent of your energy comes from each mode of thinking ? (Adjust the percentage on left-hand side to reflect your answer.)

Big-picture thinkers have a good dose of “right-brain thinking.” Although the science is evolving about whether there is a distinct “left-brain” or “right-brain,” there’s agreement that our brains can function in different modes. The left-brain mode is the linear, analytical, “one-step-at-a-time” type of thinking. The right-brain mode is the spatial, visual, synthesizing, or “everything at once” type of thinking.

Some of my clients are fairly equally balanced between left and right brain – they usually think of themselves as smart, and they feel as if they have access to both visual thinking and the ability to order things in a linear way. Other clients are further out on the right brain spectrum. These folks usually are fantastic visual thinkers, and I’ve noticed that many of them question whether they are smart, probably as a result of the orientation of traditional schools toward the linear and analytical.

Some big-picture thinkers identify as systems thinkers. Systems thinkers notice that very few things happen in isolation – they are interested in understanding the overall dynamics that influence how something does or does not work. For example, Eastern medicine tends to be more of a systems-thinking orientation to health care, in that it explicitly considers how all the different systems of the body interact with each other, while many types of Western medicine take a specialist approach to individual body parts or systems.

Looking at a whole system, or a system of systems, often gives big-picture thinkers a unique vantage point from which to determine the greatest points of leverage that influence the functioning of the system.

I hope that you have enjoyed discovering how being big-picture thinker shows up for you. Click here for a summary of these three types of big-picture thinking.