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The Highlands Ability Battery The Highlands Ability Battery is a state of the art assessment tool that objectively measures your innate abilities. Abilities define what you do quickly and easily, and they affect the ways you most instinctively learn, communicate, lead, make decisions and solve problems, work with objects and use your mental and creative talents. It also provides insight into optimal work and educational environments for people. While you can learn skills to support these talents, your natural abilities are unaffected by education or experience. Natural abilities fully develop in each of us by age fourteen. They do not deteriorate with neglect, nor does practice sharpen them. They are not indicators of intelligence nor are they in any way judgmental. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘good’ or ‘bad’ profile. It is the overall pattern of your abilities that is important. Knowing which abilities are strong and which are weaker provides a powerful tool to help you be more productive and less stressed. Testing With Worksamples Gives Objective Information About Yourself Delivered digitally in a CD format that allows for remote usage, The Highlands Ability Battery is a rigorous 3.5 hour assessment. Unlike career tests which rely on self-reported characteristics, which may not uncover new information about yourself, the Ability Battery objectively measures 18 distinct natural abilities and brings to light talents which may have gone unrecognized and strengths you can build on. This is accomplished by requiring you to complete timed worksamples, an example of which is provided below, in which you cannot rely on your skills to solve the problems.
The Highlands Ability Profile
Spatial Relations
In the example above, you are asked to find the item in the bottom row which matches the figure in the top row, only seen from a different angle. You are given many problems like this to solve in this worksample. When you take the Ability Battery, you may notice that some of the worksamples will seem very easy and others quite challenging. This is normal. It reflects the experience of comparing a strong ability to a weaker ability.
After submitting your scores via the internet, you retrieve the results from the Highlands Company website, where you get a 20+ page report on your abilities including a graphic representation of your scores like the one shown above. You then schedule a two-hour feedback conference to go over the results with a trained counselor, by phone or in person. This conference will deepen your understanding of how your ability pattern applies to your situation. You will receive an audio-tape of this conference to aide further reflection. Benefits At the end of this assessment and feedback you will understand:
Don’t I already know my natural abilities? Not really. School and work typically tap into only a few of your natural abilities. Also, it’s exceedingly difficult to tell from grades, scholastic tests, or job performance just what your real abilities are. You could have a very strong talent for something and never know it. Learning exactly what your strongest natural abilities are helps you work in a way that both utilizes them best and provides new opportunities for growth and change. Do you still offer the pencil and paper version of the Ability Battery? How does the new CD version differ? The CD version of the test has the same validity as the paper and pencil version, based on extensive research undertaken by The Highlands Company in developing this version. The CD version offers greater flexibility about when and where to do the testing, but it does require access to a PC (not MacIntosh) with Windows operating system, a minimum of a 133 MHz processor with 32 MB Ram and Internet browser, VGA monitor, a mouse, CD ROM drive and soundcard with speakers--preferably headphones. The test taker should be comfortable working on the computer. Free technical assistance is available from The Highlands Company. The digital version does not have to be taken at one sitting, but you do need to arrange to be free of distractions or interruptions when testing. The pencil and paper version can be individually scheduled and administered in the Chicago area for an additional charge. Where can I get more information about testing and counseling? We are happy to speak with you by phone to determine which of our services is best suited for your situation. If your situation is complex, it might be best to set up an initial evaluation. Reading Don’t Waste Your Talent, (Longstreet Press, 2000) the book written by the founders of The Highlands Program, Bob McDonald, Ph.D. and Don Hutcheson, may also help you make up your mind. Contact us to order this book. Why we are better The key difference between the Highlands Ability Battery™ and other popular assessment tools – MBTI, Strong, True Colors, DiSC – is that the Battery requires hands-on performance of objective on-line tasks that measure natural abilities, while the other tools are tests of personality type and usually depend on self-report and/or group appraisals. The other tests may offer insights into personality types, but only the Highlands Ability Battery™ measures natural aptitudes or abilities. When people are able to compare assessments, they prefer the Highlands Ability Battery™ to the other tests as a measure of their abilities and as a guide to effective career planning.
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